LITMIR.BIZ

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more persevering, the most self-assertive sex. They want freedom of opinion, variety of occupation, do they? Let them have it. Let them be lawyers, doctors, preachers, teachers, soldiers, legislators — anything they like — but let them be quiet — if they can.”

      Mr. Audley pushed his hands through the thick luxuriance of his straight brown hair, and uplifted the dark mass in his despair.

      “I hate women,” he thought, savagely. “They’re bold, brazen, abominable creatures, invented for the annoyance and destruction of their superiors. Look at this business of poor George’s! It’s all woman’s work from one end to the other. He marries a woman, and his father casts him off penniless and professionless. He hears of the woman’s death and he breaks his heart — his good honest, manly heart, worth a million of the treacherous lumps of self-interest and mercenary calculation which beats in women’s breasts. He goes to a woman’s house and he is never seen alive again. And now I find myself driven into a corner by another woman, of whose existence I had never thought until this day. And — and then,” mused Mr. Audley, rather irrelevantly, “there’s Alicia, too; she’s another nuisance. She’d like me to marry her I know; and she’ll make me do it, I dare say, before she’s done with me. But I’d much rather not; though she is a dear, bouncing, generous thing, bless her poor little heart.”

      Robert paid his bill and rewarded the waiter liberally. The young barrister was very willing to distribute his comfortable little income among the people who served him, for he carried his indifference to all things in the universe, even to the matter of pounds, shillings and pence. Perhaps he was rather exceptional in this, as you may frequently find that the philosopher who calls life an empty delusion is pretty sharp in the investment of his moneys, and recognizes the tangible nature of India bonds, Spanish certificates, and Egyptian scrip — as contrasted with the painful uncertainty of an Ego or a non-Ego in metaphysics.

      The snug rooms in Figtree Court seemed dreary in their orderly quiet to Robert Audley upon this particular evening. He had no inclination for his French novels, though there was a packet of uncut romances, comic and sentimental, ordered a month before, waiting his pleasure upon one of the tables. He took his favorite meerschaum and dropped into his favorite chair with a sigh.

      “It’s comfortable, but it seems so deuced lonely to-night. If poor George were sitting opposite to me, or — or even George’s sister — she’s very like him — existence might be a little more endurable. But when a fellow’s lived by himself for eight or ten years he begins to be bad company.”

      He burst out laughing presently as he finished his first pipe.

      “The idea of my thinking of George’s sister,” he thought; “what a preposterous idiot I am!”

      The next day’s post brought him a letter in a firm but feminine hand, which was strange to him. He found the little packet lying on his breakfast-table, beside the warm French roll wrapped in a napkin by Mrs. Maloney’s careful but rather dirty hands. He contemplated the envelope for some minutes before opening it — not in any wonder as to his correspondent, for the letter bore the postmark of Grange Heath, and he knew that there was only one person who was likely to write to him from that obscure village, but in that lazy dreaminess which was a part of his character.

      “From Clara Talboys,” he murmured slowly, as he looked critically at the clearly-shaped letters of his name and address. “Yes, from Clara Talboys, most decidedly; I recognized a feminine resemblance to poor George’s hand; neater than his, and more decided than his, but very like, very like.”

      He turned the letter over and examined the seal, which bore his friend’s familiar crest.

      “I wonder what she says to me?” he thought. “It’s a long letter, I dare say; she’s the kind of woman who would write a long letter — a letter that will urge me on, drive me forward, wrench me out of myself, I’ve no doubt. But that can’t be helped — so here goes!”

      He tore open the envelope with a sigh of resignation. It contained nothing but George’s two letters, and a few words written on the flap: “I send the letters; please preserve and return them — C.T.”

      The letter, written from Liverpool, told nothing of the writer’s life except his sudden determination of starting for a new world, to redeem the fortunes that had been ruined in the old. The letter written almost immediately after George’s marriage, contained a full description of his wife — such a description as a man could only write within three weeks of a love match — a description in which every feature was minutely catalogued, every grace of form or beauty of expression fondly dwelt upon, every charm of manner lovingly depicted.

      Robert Audley read the letter three times before he laid it down.

      “If George could have known for what a purpose this description would serve when he wrote it,” thought the young barrister, “surely his hand would have fallen paralyzed by horror, and powerless to shape one syllable of these tender words.”

      Chapter 25

       Retrograde Investigation.

       Table of Contents

      The dreary London January dragged its dull length slowly out. The last slender records of Christmas time were swept away, and Robert Audley still lingered in town — still spent his lonely evenings in his quiet sitting-room in Figtree Court — still wandered listlessly in the Temple Gardens on sunny mornings, absently listening to the children’s babble, idly watching their play. He had many friends among the inhabitants of the quaint old buildings round him; he had other friends far away in pleasant country places, whose spare bedrooms were always at Bob’s service, whose cheerful firesides had snugly luxurious chairs specially allotted to him. But he seemed to have lost all taste for companionship, all sympathy with the pleasures and occupations of his class, since the disappearance of George Talboys. Elderly benchers indulged in facetious observations upon the young man’s pale face and moody manner. They suggested the probability of some unhappy attachment, some feminine ill-usage as the secret cause of the change. They told him to be of good cheer, and invited him to supper-parties, at which “lovely woman, with all her faults, God bless her,” was drunk by gentlemen who shed tears as they proposed the toast, and were maudlin and unhappy in their cups toward the close of the entertainment. Robert had no inclination for the wine-bibbing and the punch-making. The one idea of his life had become his master. He was the bonden slave of one gloomy thought — one horrible presentiment. A dark cloud was brooding above his uncle’s house, and it was his hand which was to give the signal for the thunder-clap, and the tempest that was to ruin that noble life.

      “If she would only take warning and run away,” he said to himself sometimes. “Heaven knows, I have given her a fair chance. Why doesn’t she take it and run away?”

      He heard sometimes from Sir Michael, sometimes from Alicia. The young lady’s letter rarely contained more than a few curt lines informing him that her papa was well; and that Lady Audley was in very high spirits, amusing herself in her usual frivolous manner, and with her usual disregard for other people.

      A letter from Mr. Marchmont, the Southampton schoolmaster, informed Robert that little Georgey was going on very well, but that he was behindhand in his education, and had not yet passed the intellectual Rubicon of words of two syllables. Captain Maldon had called to see his grandson, but that privilege had been withheld from him, in accordance with Mr. Audley’s instructions. The old man had furthermore sent a parcel of pastry and sweetmeats to the little boy, which had also been rejected on the ground of indigestible and bilious tendencies in the edibles.

      Toward the close of February, Robert received a letter from his cousin Alicia, which hurried him one step further forward toward his destiny, by causing him to return to the house from which he had become in a manner exiled at the instigation of his uncle’s wife,

      “Papa is very ill,” Alicia wrote; “not dangerously ill, thank God; but confined to his room by an attack of low fever which has succeeded a violent cold. Come and see him, Robert,

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