The young lady bent her head in recognition of Robert"s bow.
"Let her hear it," he thought. "If she has so little feeling as to show no emotion upon such a subject, let her hear the worst I have to tell."
There was a few minutes" pause, during which Robert took some papers from his pocket; among them the doc.u.ment which he had written immediately after George"s disappearance.
"I shall require all your attention, Mr. Talboys," he said, "for that which I have to disclose to you is of a very painful nature. Your son was my very dear friend--dear to me for many reasons. Perhaps most of all dear, because I had known him and been with him through the great trouble of his life; and because he stood comparatively alone in the world--cast off by you who should have been his best friend, bereft of the only woman he had ever loved."
"The daughter of a drunken pauper," Mr. Talboys remarked, parenthetically.
"Had he died in his bed, as I sometimes thought he would," continued Robert Audley, "of a broken heart, I should have mourned for him very sincerely, even though I had closed his eyes with my own hands, and had seen him laid in his quiet resting-place. I should have grieved for my old schoolfellow, and for the companion who had been dear to me. But this grief would have been a very small one compared to that which I feel now, believing, as I do only too firmly, that my poor friend has been murdered."
"Murdered!"
The father and daughter simultaneously repeated the horrible word. The father"s face changed to a ghastly duskiness of hue; the daughter"s face dropped upon her clasped hands, and was never lifted again throughout the interview.
"Mr. Audley, you are mad!" exclaimed Harcourt Talboys; "you are mad, or else you are commissioned by your friend to play upon my feelings. I protest against this proceeding as a conspiracy, and I--I revoke my intended forgiveness of the person who was once my son!"
He was himself again as he said this. The blow had been a sharp one, but its effect had been momentary.
"It is far from my wish to alarm you unnecessarily, sir," answered Robert. "Heaven grant that you may be right and I wrong. I pray for it, but I cannot think it--I cannot even hope it. I come to you for advice.
I will state to you plainly and dispa.s.sionately the circ.u.mstances which have aroused my suspicions. If you say those suspicions are foolish and unfounded I am ready to submit to your better judgment. I will leave England; and I abandon my search for the evidence wanting to--to confirm my fears. If you say go on, I will go on."
Nothing could be more gratifying to the vanity of Mr. Harcourt Talboys than this appeal. He declared himself ready to listen to all that Robert might have to say, and ready to a.s.sist him to the uttermost of his power.
He laid some stress upon this last a.s.surance, deprecating the value of his advice with an affectation that was as transparent as his vanity itself.
Robert Audley drew his chair nearer to that of Mr. Talboys, and commenced a minutely detailed account of all that had occurred to George from the time of his arrival in England to the hour of his disappearance, as well as all that had occurred since his disappearance in any way touching upon that particular subject. Harcourt Talboys listened with demonstrative attention, now and then interrupting the speaker to ask some magisterial kind of question. Clara Talboys never once lifted her face from her clasped hands.
The hands of the clock pointed to a quarter past eleven when Robert began his story. The clock struck twelve as he finished.
He had carefully suppressed the names of his uncle and his uncle"s wife in relating the circ.u.mstances in which they had been concerned.
"Now, sir," he said, when the story had been told, "I await your decision. You have heard my reasons for coming to this terrible conclusion. In what manner do these reasons influence you?"
"They don"t in any way turn me from my previous opinion," answered Mr.
Harcourt Talboys, with the unreasoning pride of an obstinate man. "I still think, as I thought before, that my son is alive, and that his disappearance is a conspiracy against myself. I decline to become the victim of that conspiracy."
"And you tell me to stop?" asked Robert, solemnly.
"I tell you only this: If you go on, you go on for your own satisfaction, not for mine. I see nothing in what you have told me to alarm me for the safety of--your friend."
"So be it, then!" exclaimed Robert, suddenly; "from this moment I wash my hands of this business. From this moment the purpose of my life shall be to forget it."
He rose as he spoke, and took his hat from the table on which he had placed it. He looked at Clara Talboys. Her att.i.tude had never changed since she had dropped her face upon her hands. "Good morning, Mr.
Talboys," he said, gravely. "G.o.d grant that you are right. G.o.d grant that I am wrong. But I fear a day will come when you will have reason to regret your apathy respecting the untimely fate of your only son."
He bowed gravely to Mr. Harcourt Talboys and to the lady, whose face was hidden by her hands.
He lingered for a moment looking at Miss Talboys, thinking that she would look up, that she would make some sign, or show some desire to detain him.
Mr. Talboys rang for the emotionless servant, who led Robert off to the hall-door with the solemnity of manner which would have been in perfect keeping had he been leading him to execution.
"She is like her father," thought Mr. Audley, as he glanced for the last time at the drooping head. "Poor George, you had need of one friend in this world, for you have had very few to love you."
CHAPTER XXIII
CLARA.
Robert Audley found the driver asleep upon the box of his lumbering vehicle. He had been entertained with beer of so hard a nature as to induce temporary strangulation in the daring imbiber thereof, and he was very glad to welcome the return of his fare. The old white horse, who looked as if he had been foaled in the year in which the carriage had been built, and seemed, like the carriage, to have outlived the fashion, was as fast asleep as his master, and woke up with a jerk as Robert came down the stony flight of steps, attended by his executioner, who waited respectfully till Mr. Audley had entered the vehicle and been turned off.
The horse, roused by a smack of his driver"s whip and a shake of the shabby reins, crawled off in a semi-somnambulent state; and Robert, with his hat very much over his eyes, thought of his missing friend.
He had played in these stiff gardens, and under these dreary firs, years ago, perhaps--if it were possible for the most frolicsome youth to be playful within the range of Mr. Harcourt Talboys" hard gray eyes. He had played beneath these dark trees, perhaps, with the sister who had heard of his fate to day without a tear. Robert Audley looked at the rigid primness of the orderly grounds, wondering how George could have grown up in such a place to be the frank, generous, careless friend whom he had known. How was it that with his father perpetually before his eyes, he had not grown up after the father"s disagreeable model, to be a nuisance to his fellow-men? How was it? Because we have Some One higher than our parents to thank for the souls which make us great or small; and because, while family noses and family chins may descend in orderly sequence from father to son, from grandsire to grandchild, as the fashion of the fading flowers of one year is reproduced in the budding blossoms of the next, the spirit, more subtle than the wind which blows among those flowers, independent of all earthly rule, owns no order but the harmonious law of G.o.d.
"Thank G.o.d!" thought Robert Audley; "thank G.o.d! it is over. My poor friend must rest in his unknown grave; and I shall not be the means of bringing disgrace upon those I love. It will come, perhaps, sooner or later, but it will not come through me. The crisis is past, and I am free."
He felt an unutterable relief in this thought. His generous nature revolted at the office into which he had found himself drawn--the office of spy, the collector of d.a.m.ning facts that led on to horrible deductions.
He drew a long breath--a sigh of relief at his release. It was all over now.
The fly was crawling out of the gate of the plantation as he thought this, and he stood up in the vehicle to look back at the dreary fir-trees, the gravel paths, the smooth gra.s.s, and the great desolate-looking, red-brick mansion.
He was startled by the appearance of a woman running, almost flying, along the carriage-drive by which he had come, and waving a handkerchief in her uplifted hand.
He stared at this singular apparition for some moments in silent wonder before he was able to reduce his stupefaction into words.
"Is it _me_ the flying female wants?" he exclaimed, at last. "You"d better stop, perhaps," he added, to the flyman. "It is an age of eccentricity, an abnormal era of the world"s history. She may want me.
Very likely I left my pocket-handkerchief behind me, and Mr. Talboys has sent this person with it. Perhaps I"d better get out and go and meet her. It"s civil to send my handkerchief."
Mr. Robert Audley deliberately descended from the fly and walked slowly toward the hurrying female figure, which gained upon him rapidly.
He was rather short sighted, and it was not until she came very near to him that he saw who she was.
"Good Heaven!" he exclaimed, "it"s Miss Talboys."
It was Miss Talboys, flushed and breathless, with a woolen shawl thrown over her head.
Robert Audley now saw her face clearly for the first time, and he saw that she was very handsome. She had brown eyes, like George"s, a pale complexion (she had been flushed when she approached him, but the color faded away as she recovered her breath), regular features, with a mobility of expression which bore record of every change of feeling. He saw all this in a few moments, and he wondered only the more at the stoicism of her manner during his interview with Mr. Talboys. There were no tears in her eyes, but they were bright with a feverish l.u.s.ter--terribly bright and dry--and he could see that her lips trembled as she spoke to him.
"Miss Talboys," he said, "what can I--why--"
She interrupted him suddenly, catching at his wrist with her disengaged hand--she was holding her shawl in the other.
"Oh, let me speak to you," she cried--"let me speak to you, or I shall go mad. I heard it all. I believe what you believe, and I shall go mad unless I can do something--something toward avenging his death."