The Worlds Greatest Books - Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
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Lucy for some moments was quite silent. Then, turning to him with a
sudden passion in her manner that lighted up her face with a new and
wonderful beauty, she fell on her knees at his feet. Clutching at a
black ribbon about her throat, she exclaimed:
"How good, how noble, how generous you are! But you ask too much of me.
Only remember what my life has been! From babyhood I have never seen
anything but poverty. My father was a gentleman, but poor; my mother--
but don't let me speak of her. You can never guess what is endured by
genteel paupers. I cannot be disinterested; I cannot be blind to the
advantages of such a marriage. I do not dislike you--no, no; and I do
not love anyone in the world," she added, with a laugh, when asked if
there was anyone else.
Sir Michael was silent for a few moments, and then, with a kind of
effort, said: "Well, Lucy, I will not ask too much of you; but I see no
reason why we should not make a very happy couple."
When Lucy went to her own room she sat down on the edge of the bed, and
murmured: "No more dependence, no more drudgery, no more humiliations!
Every trace of the old life melted away, every clue to identity buried
and forgotten except this"--and she drew from her bosom a black ribbon
and locket, and the object attached to it. It was a ring wrapped in an
oblong piece of crumpled paper, partly written and partly printed.
_II.--The Return of the Gold-Seeker_
A tall, powerfully-built young man of twenty-five, his face bronzed by
exposure, brown eyes, bushy black beard, moustache, and hair, was pacing
impatiently the deck of the Australian liner Argus, bound from Melbourne
to Liverpool. His name was George Talboys. He was joined in his
promenade by a shipboard-friend, who had been attracted by the feverish
ardour and freshness of the young man, and was made the confidant of his
story.
"Do you know, Miss Morley," he said, "that I left my little girl asleep,
with her baby in her arms, and with nothing but a few blotted lines to
tell her why her adoring husband had deserted her."
"Deserted her!" cried Miss Morley.
"Yes. I was a cornet in a cavalry regiment when I first met my darling.
We were quartered in a stupid seaport town, where my pet lived with her
shabby old father--a half-pay naval man. It was a case of love at first
sight on both sides, and my darling and I made a match of it. My father
is a rich man, but no sooner did he hear that I was married to a
penniless girl than he wrote a furious letter telling me that he would
never again hold any communication with me, and that my yearly allowance
was stopped.
"I sold out my commission, thinking that before the money I got for it
was exhausted I should be sure to drop into something. I took my darling
to Italy, lived in splendid style, and then, when there was nothing left
but a couple of hundred pounds, we came back to England and boarded with
my wretched father-in-law, who fleeced us finely. I went to London and
tried in vain to get employment; and on my return, my little girl burst
into a storm of lamentations, blaming me for the cruel wrong of marrying
her if I could give her nothing but poverty and misery. Her tears and
reproaches drove me almost mad. I ran out of the house, rushed down to
the pier, intending, after dark, to drop quietly into the water and end
all.
"While I sat smoking two men came along, and began to talk of the
Australian gold-diggings and the great fortunes that were to be made
there in a short time. I got into conversation with them, and learned
that a ship sailed from Liverpool for Melbourne in three days. The
thought flashed on me that that was better than the water. I returned
home, crept upstairs, and wrote a few hurried lines which told her that
I never loved her better than now when I seemed to desert her; that I
was going to try my fortune in a new world; that if I succeeded I should
come back to bring her plenty and happiness, but if I failed I should
never look upon her face again. I kissed her hand and the baby once, and
slipped out of the room. Three nights after I was out at sea, bound for
Melbourne, a steerage passenger with a digger's tools for my baggage,
and seven shillings in my pocket. After three and a half years of hard
and bitter struggles on the goldfields, at last I struck it rich,
realised twenty thousand pounds, and a fortnight later I took my passage
for England. All this time I had never communicated with my wife, but
the moment fortune came, I wrote, telling her I should be in England
almost as soon as my letter, and giving her an address at a coffee-house
in London."
That same evening Phoebe Marks, maid to Lady Audley, invited her cousin
and sweetheart, Luke Marks, a farm labourer with ambitions to own a
public-house, to survey the wonders of Audley Court, including my lady's
private apartments and her jewel-box. During the inspection, by
accident, a knob in the framework of the jewel-box was pushed, and a
secret drawer sprang out There were neither gold nor gems in it. Only a
baby's little worsted shoe, rolled in a piece of paper, and a tiny lock
of silky yellow hair, evidently taken from a baby's head. Phoebe's eyes
dilated as she examined the little packet.
"So this is what my lady hides in the secret drawer," she said, putting
the little packet in her pocket.
"Why, Phoebe, you're never going to be such a fool as to take that?"
cried Luke.
"I'd rather have this than the diamond bracelet you would have liked to
take," she said, her lips curving into a curious smile. "You shall have
the public-house, Luke."
_III.--Robert Audley Comes on the Scene_
Robert Audley was supposed to be a barrister, and had chambers in Fig
Tree Court, Temple. He was a handsome, lazy, care-for-nothing fellow of
seven-and-twenty, the only son of the younger brother of Sir Michael
Audley, who had left him a moderate competency.
One morning, Robert Audley strolled out of the Temple, Blackfriarswards.
At the corner of a court in St. Paul's Churchyard he was almost knocked
down by a man of his own age dashing headlong into the narrow opening.
Robert remonstrated; the stranger stopped suddenly, looked very hard at
the speaker, and cried, in a tone of intense astonishment:
"Bob! I only touched British ground after dark last night, and to think
I should meet you this morning!"
George Talboys, for the stranger was the late passenger on board the
Argus, had been from boyhood the inseparable chum of Robert Audley. The
tale of Talboys' marriage, his expedition to Australia, and his return
with a fortune, was briefly told. The pair took a hansom to the
Westminster coffee-house where Talboys had written to his wife to
forward letters. There was no letter, and the young man showed very
bitter disappointment. By and by George mechanically picked up a "Times"
newspaper of a day or two before, and stared vacantly at the first page.
He turned a sickly colour, and pointed to a line which ran: "On the 24th
inst., at Ventnor-Isle of Wight, Helen Talboys, aged 22." He knew no
more until he opened his eyes in a room in his friend's chambers in the
Temple.
Next day he and Robert Audley journeyed by express to Ventnor, learned
on inquiry at the principal hotel that a Captain Maldon, whose daughter
was lately dead, was staying at Lansdowne Cottage; and thither they
proceeded. The captain and his little grandson, Georgey, were out.
George Talboys and his friend visited the churchyard where his wife was
buried, commissioned a mason to erect a headstone on the grave, and then
went to the beach to seek Captain Maldon and the little boy.
The captain, when he saw his son-in-law, coloured violently with
something of a frightened look. He told Talboys that only a few months
after his departure he and Helen came to live at Southampton, where she
had obtained a few pupils for the piano; but her health failed, and she
fell into a decline, of which she died. Broken-hearted, Talboys started
for Liverpool to take ship for Australia, but failed to catch the
steamer; returned to London, and accompanied Robert Audley on a long
visit to Russia.
A year passed, and Robert proposed to take his friend to Audley Court,
but had a letter from his cousin Alicia, saying that her stepmother had
taken into her head that she was too ill to entertain, though in reality
there was nothing the matter with her.
"My lady's airs and graces shan't keep us out of Essex, for all that,"
said Robert Audley. "We will go to a comfortable old inn in the village
of Audley."
Thither they went; but Lady Audley, who had casually seen him, although
he was unaware of it, continued on one excuse or another to avoid
meeting George Talboys. The two young men strolled up to the Court in
the absence of Sir Michael and Lady Audley, where they met Alicia
Audley, who showed them the lime walk and the old well.
Robert was anxious to see the portrait of his new aunt; but Lady
Audley's picture was in her private apartments, the door of which was
locked. Alicia remembered there was, unknown to Lady Audley, access to
these by means of a secret passage. In a spirit of fun the young men
explored the passage and reached the portrait. George Talboys sat before
it without uttering a word, only staring blankly.
"We managed it capitally; but I don't like the portrait," said Robert,
when they had crept back. "There is something odd about it."
"There is," answered Alicia. "We never have seen my lady look as she
does in that picture; but I think she could look so."
Next day Talboys and Robert went fishing. George pretended to fish;
Robert slept on the river-bank. The servants were at dinner at the
Court; Alicia had gone riding. Lady Audley sauntered out, book in hand,
to the shady lime walk. George Talboys came up to the hall, rang the
bell, was told that her ladyship was walking in the lime avenue. He
looked disappointed at the intelligence, and walked away. A full hour
and a half later, Lady Audley returned to the house, not coming from the
lime avenue, but from the opposite direction. In her own room she
confronted her maid, Phoebe. The eyes of the two women met.
"Phoebe Marks," said my lady presently, "you are a good girl; and while
I live and am prosperous, you shall not want a firm friend and a
twenty-pound note."
_IV.--The Search and the Counter Check_
Robert Audley awoke from his nap to find George Talboys gone. He
searched in the grounds and in the inn for him in vain. At the
railway-station he heard that a man who, from the description given,
might be Talboys, had gone by the afternoon train to London. In the
evening he went up to the Court to dinner. Lady Audley was gay and
fascinating; but gave a little nervous shudder when Robert, feeling
uneasy about his friend, said so.
Again, when Lady Audley was at the piano he observed a bruise on her
arm. She said that it was caused by tying a piece of ribbon too tightly
round her arm two or three days before. But Robert saw that the bruise
was recent, and that it had been made by the four fingers, one of which
had a ring, of a powerful hand.
Suspicion began to be aroused in the mind of Robert Audley, first as to
the real identity of Lady Audley; and second, as to the fate of his
friend. He brought into play all the keenness of his intellect, and
abandoned his lazy habits. He went to Southampton, saw Captain Maldon,
who told him that George Talboys had arrived the morning before at one
o'clock to have a look at his boy before sailing for Australia. On
inquiry at Liverpool, this proved to be false.
He sought the assistance of George's father, Squire Talboys, at Grange
Heath, Dorsetshire, to discover the murderer; but the squire resolutely
refused to accept that his son was dead. He was only hiding, hoping for
forgiveness, which would never be given.
The beautiful sister of George Talboys followed Robert when he left the
mansion and besought him passionately to avenge her brother's murder, in
which she implicitly believed, and this he promised to do.
Then he learned that Phoebe, Lady Audley's maid, had married her cousin
Luke Marks, who, under veiled threats, had obtained one hundred pounds
from her ladyship to enable him to lease the Castle Inn. And having
visited the place, and held conversation with the half-drunken landlord,
he felt assured that Luke Marks and his wife had by some means obtained
a sinister power over Lady Audley.
Robert thereafter traced the life history of Helen Maldon from her
marriage to George Talboys at Wildernsea, Yorkshire, her secret
departure from there after her husband's desertion, her appearance the
following day as a teacher in a girl's school at Brompton under the name
of Lucy Graham; her arrival as a governess in Essex, and finally her
marriage to Sir Michael Audley.
Once more he returned to the Court, where his uncle was lying ill,
attended by Lady Audley. He demanded a private audience of my lady, at
which he told her he had discovered the whole of the conspiracy
concocted by an artful woman who had speculated upon the chance of her
husband's death, and had secured a splendid position at the risk of
committing a crime.
"My friend, George Talboys," said Robert, "was last seen entering these
gardens, and was never seen to leave them. I will have such a search
made as shall level that house to the earth, and root up every tree
rather than I will fail in finding the grave of my murdered friend."
"You shall never live to do this," she said. "I will kill you first!"
That evening Lady Audley gave to her husband a gloss of what his nephew
had said, and boldly accused him of being mad. "You would," she said,
"never let anyone influence you against me, would you, darling?"
"No, my love; they had better not try it."
Lady Audley laughed aloud, with a gay, triumphant peal as she tripped
out of the room; but as she sat in her own chamber, brooding, she
muttered: "Dare I defy him? Will anything stop him but--death?"
Just then Phoebe Marks arrived to warn Lady Audley that Robert had
appeared at the Castle Inn. She also explained that a bailiff was in the
house, as the rent was due, and she wanted money to pay him out. Lady
Audley, insisted to Phoebe's astonishment, that she herself would bring
the money. She did so; and, unknown to Phoebe, cunningly set fire to the
inn, hoping that Robert Audley would meet his death. She and her maid
then left the inn to make the long tramp back to the Court. Half the
distance had been covered, when Phoebe looked back and saw a red glare
in the sky. She stopped, suddenly fell on her knees, and cried: "Oh, my
God! Say it's not true! It's too horrible!"
"What's too horrible?" said Lady Audley.
"The thought that is in my mind."
"I will tell you nothing except that you are a mad woman; and go home."
Lady Audley walked away in the darkness.
_V.--My Lady Tells the Truth_
Lady Audley next day was under the dominion of a terrible restlessness.
Towards the dinner hour she walked in the quadrangle. In the dusk she
lost all self-control when a figure approached. Her knees sank under her
and she dropped to the ground. It was Robert Audley who helped her to
rise and then led her into the library. In a pitiless voice he called
her the incendiary of the fire at the inn. Fortunately, he had changed
his room, and escaped being burnt to death, saving, at the same time,
Luke Marks. The day was now past, he insisted, for mercy, after last
night's deed of horror; and she should no longer pollute the Court with
her presence.
"Bring Sir Michael," she cried, "and I will confess everything!"
And so the confession was made. Briefly stated, it was that as a little
child, in a Hampshire coast village, when she asked where her mother
was, the answer always was that that was a secret. In a fit of passion
the foster-mother told her that her own mother was a madwoman in an
asylum many miles away. Afterwards, she learned that the madness was a
hereditary disease, and she was instructed to keep the secret because it
might affect her injuriously in after life. Then she detailed the story
of her life until her marriage with Sir Michael Audley, justifying that
on the ground that she had a right to believe her first husband was
dead. In the sunshine of love at Audley Court she felt, for the first
time in her life, the miseries of others, and took pleasure in acts of
kindness.
In an Essex paper she read of the return of her first husband to
England. Knowing his character, she thought that unless he could be
induced to believe she was dead, he would never abandon his search for
her. Again she became mad. In collusion with her father she induced a
Mrs. Plowson in Southampton, who had a daughter in the last stage of
consumption, to pass off that daughter as Mrs. George Talboys, and
removed her to Ventnor, Isle of Wight, with her own little boy schooled
to call her "mamma." There she died in a fortnight, was buried as Mrs.
George Talboys, and the advertisement of the death was inserted in the
"Times" two days before her husband's arrival in England.
Sir Michael could hear no more. He and his daughter Alicia departed that
evening for the Continent. Next day, Dr. Mosgrave, a mental specialist,
arrived from London. He was fully informed of the history of Lady
Audley, examined her, and finally reported to Robert: "The lady is not
mad, but she has a hereditary taint in her blood. She has the cunning of
madness, with the prudence of intelligence. She is dangerous." He gave
Robert a letter addressed to Monsieur Val, Villebrumeuse, Belgium, who,
he said, was the proprietor and medical superintendent of an excellent
_maison de sante_, and would, no doubt, willingly receive Lady Audley
into his establishment, and charge himself with the full responsibility
of her future life.
Robert escorted Lady Audley to Villebrumeuse, where she was presented to
Monsieur Val as Madame Taylor. When Monsieur Val retired from the
reception room, at my lady's request, she turned to Robert, and said:
"You have brought me to a living grave; you have used your power basely
and cruelly."
"I have done that which I thought was just to others, and merciful to
you," replied Robert. "Live here and repent."
"I cannot," cried my lady. "I would defy you and kill myself if I dared.
Do you know what I am thinking of? It is of the day upon which George
Talboys--disappeared! The body of George Talboys lies at the bottom of
the old well in the shrubbery beyond the lime walk. He came to me there,
goaded me beyond endurance, and I called him a madman and a liar. I was
going to leave him when he seized me by the wrist and sought to detain
me by force. You yourself saw the bruises. I became mad, and drew the
loose iron spindle from the shrunken wood of the windlass. My first
husband sank with one horrible cry into the black mouth of the well!"
_VI.--The Mystery Cleared Up_
On arrival in London, Robert Audley received a letter from Clara Talboys
saying that Luke Marks, the man whom he had saved in the fire at the
Castle Inn, was lying at his mother's cottage at Audley, and expressed a
very earnest wish to see him. Robert took train at once to Audley.
The dying man confessed that on the night of George Talboys's
disappearance, when going home to his mother's cottage, he heard groans
come from the laurel bushes in the shrubbery near the old well. On
search, he found Talboys covered with slime, and with a broken arm. He
carried the crippled man to his mother's cottage, washed, fed, and
nursed him.
Next day Talboys gave him a five-pound note to accompany him to the town
of Brentwood, where he called on a surgeon to have his broken arm set
and dressed. That done, Talboys wrote two notes in pencil with his left
hand, and gave them to Luke to deliver--one with a cross to be handed to
Lady Audley, and the other to the nephew of Sir Michael, and then took
train to London in a second-class carriage.
Phoebe, who had seen from her window Lady Audley pushing George Talboys
into the well, said that my lady was in their power, and that she would
do anything for them to keep her secret. So the letters were not
delivered.
He hid them away; not a creature had seen them. The old mother, who had
been present throughout the confession, took the papers from a drawer
and handed them to Robert Audley.
The note to Robert said that something had happened to the writer, he
could not tell what, which drove him from England, a broken-hearted man,
to seek some corner of the earth where he might live and die unknown and
forgotten. He left his son in his friend's hands, knowing that he could
leave him to no truer guardian. The second note was addressed "Helen,"
saying, "May God pity and forgive you for that which you have done
to-day, as truly as I do. Rest in peace. You shall never hear from me
again. I leave England, never to return.--G. T."
Luke Marks died that afternoon. Robert Audley wrote a long letter the
same evening, addressed to Madame Taylor, in which he told the story
related by Marks; and as soon as possible he went down to Dorsetshire to
inform George Talboys's father that his son was alive. He stayed five
weeks at Grange Heath, and the love which had come to him at first sight
of Clara Talboys rapidly ripened.
Consent to the marriage was given, with a blessing by the old
Roman-minded squire, and the pair agreed to go on their honeymoon trip
to Australia to look for the son and brother. Robert returned for the
last time to his bachelor chambers in the Temple. He was told that a
visitor was waiting for him. The visitor was George Talboys, and he
opened his arms to his lost friend with a cry of delight and surprise.
The tale was soon told. When George fell into the well he was stunned
and bruised, and his arm broken. After infinite pains and difficulties
he climbed to the top and hid in a clump of laurel bushes till the
arrival of Luke Marks. He had not been to Australia after all, but had
exchanged his berth on board the Victoria Regia for another in a ship
bound for New York. There he remained for a time till he yearned for the
strong clasp of the hand which guided him through the darkest passage of
his life.
Two years passed. In a fairy cottage on the banks of the Thames, between
Teddington Lock and Hampton Bridge, George Talboys lives with his sister
and brother-in-law, the latter having now obtained success at the Bar.
Georgey pays occasional visits from Eton to play with a pretty baby
cousin. It is a year since a black-edged letter came to Robert Audley,
announcing that Madame Taylor had died after a long illness, which
Monsieur Val described as _maladie de longueur_. Sir Michael Audley
lives in London with Alicia, who is very shortly to become the wife of
Sir Harry Towers, a sporting Herts baronet.
* * * * *
EDWARD BRADLEY ("CUTHBERT BEDE")
The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green
Edward Bradley is one of few English humorists of the
mid-Victorian era who produced any work that is likely to
survive the wear of time and change of taste. "The Adventures
of Mr. Verdant Green," his earliest and best story, is, in its
way, a masterpiece. Never has the lighter and gayer side of
Oxford life been depicted with so much humour and fidelity;
and what makes this achievement still more remarkable is the
fact that Cuthbert Bede (to give Bradley the name which he
adopted for literary purposes and made famous) was not an
Oxford man. He was born at Kidderminster in 1827, and educated
at Durham University, with the idea of becoming a clergyman.
But not being old enough to take orders, he stayed for a year
at Oxford, without, however, matriculating there. At the age
of twenty he began to write for "Punch," and "The Adventures
of Verdant Green" was composed in 1853, when he was still on
the staff of that paper. The book, on its publication, had an
immense vogue, and though twenty-six other books followed from
his pen, it is still the most popular. He died on December 11,
1889.
_I.--A Very Quiet Party_
As Mr. Verdant Green was sitting, sad and lonely, in his rooms
overlooking the picturesque, mediaeval quadrangle of Brazenface College,
Oxford, a German band began to play "Home, Sweet Home," with that truth
and delicacy of expression which the wandering minstrels of Germany seem
to acquire intuitively. The sweet melancholy of the air, as it came
subdued into softer tones by distance, would probably have moved any lad
who had just been torn from the shelter of his family to fight, all
inexperienced, the battle of life. On Mr. Verdant Green it had such an
overwhelming effect that when his scout, Filcher, entered the room he
found his master looking very red about the eyes, and furiously wiping
the large spectacles from which his nick-name, "Gig-lamps," was derived.
The fact was that Mr. Verdant Green was a freshman of the freshest kind.
It was his first day in Oxford. He had been brought up entirely by his
mother and a maiden aunt. Happily, Mr. Larkyns, the rector of Manor
Green, the charming Warwickshire village of which the Greens had been
squires from time immemorial, convinced his mother that Verdant needed
the society of young men of his own age. Mr. Larkyn's own son, a manly
young fellow named Charles, had already been sent up to Brazenface
College, where he was rapidly distinguishing himself; and after many
tears and arguments, Mrs. Green had consented to her boy also going up
to Oxford.