Mary Elizabeth Braddon - Essential Novelists - Mary Elizabeth Braddon

I cannot tell how long he sat blankly staring at one paragraph among the list of deaths, before his dazed brain took in its full meaning; but after considerable pause he pushed the newspaper over to Robert Audley, and with a face that had changed from its dark bronze to a sickly, chalky grayish white, and with an awful calmness in his manner, he pointed with his finger to a line which ran thus:

"On the 24th inst., at Ventnor, Isle of Wight, Helen Talboys, aged 22."

THE HEADSTONE AT VENTNOR.

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YES, THERE IT WAS IN black and white—"Helen Talboys, aged 22."

When George told the governess on board the Argus that if he heard any evil tidings of his wife he should drop down dead, he spoke in perfect good faith; and yet, here were the worst tidings that could come to him, and he sat rigid, white and helpless, staring stupidly at the shocked face of his friend.

The suddenness of the blow had stunned him. In this strange and bewildered state of mind he began to wonder what had happened, and why it was that one line in the Times newspaper could have so horrible an effect upon him.

Then by degrees even this vague consciousness of his misfortune faded slowly out of his mind, succeeded by a painful consciousness of external things.

The hot August sunshine, the dusty window-panes and shabby-painted blinds, a file of fly-blown play-bills fastened to the wall, the black and empty fire-places, a bald-headed old man nodding over the Morning Advertizer, the slip-shod waiter folding a tumbled table-cloth, and Robert Audley's handsome face looking at him full of compassionate alarm—he knew that all these things took gigantic proportions, and then, one by one, melted into dark blots and swam before his eyes, He knew that there was a great noise, as of half a dozen furious steam-engines tearing and grinding in his ears, and he knew nothing more—except that somebody or something fell heavily to the ground.

He opened his eyes upon the dusky evening in a cool and shaded room, the silence only broken by the rumbling of wheels at a distance.

He looked about him wonderingly, but half indifferently. His old friend, Robert Audley, was seated by his side smoking. George was lying on a low iron bedstead opposite to an open window, in which there was a stand of flowers and two or three birds in cages.

"You don't mind the pipe, do you, George?" his friend asked, quietly.

"No."

He lay for some time looking at the flowers and the birds; one canary was singing a shrill hymn to the setting sun.

"Do the birds annoy you, George? Shall I take them out of the room?"

"No; I like to hear them sing."

Robert Audley knocked the ashes out of his pipe, laid the precious meerschaum tenderly upon the mantelpiece, and going into the next room, returned presently with a cup of strong tea.

"Take this, George," he said, as he placed the cup on a little table close to George's pillow; "it will do your head good."

The young man did not answer, but looked slowly round the room, and then at his friend's grave face.

"Bob," he said, "where are we?"

"In my chambers, dear boy, in the Temple. You have no lodgings of your own, so you may as well stay with me while you're in town."

George passed his hand once or twice across his forehead, and then, in a hesitating manner, said, quietly:

"That newspaper this morning, Bob; what was it?"

"Never mind just now, old boy; drink some tea."

"Yes, yes," cried George, impatiently, raising himself upon the bed, and staring about him with hollow eyes. "I remember all about it. Helen! my Helen! my wife, my darling, my only love! Dead, dead!"

"George," said Robert Audley, laying his hand gently upon the young man's arm, "you must remember that the person whose name you saw in the paper may not be your wife. There may have been some other Helen Talboys."

"No, no!" he cried; "the age corresponds with hers, and Talboys is such an uncommon name."

"It may be a misprint for Talbot."

"No, no, no; my wife is dead!"

He shook off Robert's restraining hand, and rising from the bed, walked straight to the door.

"Where are you going?" exclaimed his friend.

"To Ventnor, to see her grave."

"Not to-night, George, not to-night. I will go with you myself by the first train to-morrow."

Robert led him back to the bed, and gently forced him to lie down again. He then gave him an opiate, which had been left for him by the medical man whom they had called in at the coffee-house in Bridge street, when George fainted.

So George Talboys fell into a heavy slumber, and dreamed that he went to Ventnor, to find his wife alive and happy, but wrinkled, old, and gray, and to find his son grown into a young man.

Early the next morning he was seated opposite to Robert Audley in the first-class carriage of an express, whirling through the pretty open country toward Portsmouth.

They landed at Ventnor under the burning heat of the midday sun. As the two young men came from the steamer, the people on the pier stared at George's white face and untrimmed beard.

"What are we to do, George?" Robert Audley asked. "We have no clew to finding the people you want to see."

The young man looked at him with a pitiful, bewildered expression. The big dragoon was as helpless as a baby; and Robert Audley, the most vacillating and unenergetic of men, found himself called upon to act for another. He rose superior to himself, and equal to the occasion.

"Had we not better ask at one of the hotels about a Mrs. Talboys, George?" he said.

"Her father's name was Maldon," George muttered; "he could never have sent her here to die alone."

They said nothing more; but Robert walked straight to a hotel where he inquired for a Mr. Maldon.

Yes, they told him, there was a gentleman of that name stopping at Ventnor, a Captain Maldon; his daughter was lately dead. The waiter would go and inquire for the address.

The hotel was a busy place at this season; people hurrying in and out, and a great bustle of grooms and waiters about the halls.

George Talboys leaned against the doorpost, with much the same look in his face, as that which had frightened his friend in the Westminister coffee-house.

The worst was confirmed now. His wife, Captain Maldon's daughter was dead.

The waiter returned in about five minutes to say that Captain Maldon was lodging at Lansdowne Cottage, No. 4.

They easily found the house, a shabby, low-windowed cottage, looking toward the water.

Was Captain Maldon at home? No, the landlady said; he had gone out on the beach with his little grandson. Would the gentleman walk in and sit down a bit?

George mechanically followed his friend into the little front parlor—dusty, shabbily furnished, and disorderly, with a child's broken toys scattered on the floor, and the scent of stale tobacco hanging about the muslin window-curtains.

"Look!" said George, pointing to a picture over the mantelpiece.

It was his own portrait, painted in the old dragooning days. A pretty good likeness, representing him in uniform, with his charger in the background.

Perhaps the most animated of men would have been scarcely so wise a comforter as Robert Audley. He did not utter a word to the stricken widower, but quietly seated himself with his back to George, looking out of the open window.

For some time the young man wandered restlessly about the room, looking at and sometimes touching the nick-nacks lying here and there.

Her workbox, with an unfinished piece of work; her album full of extracts from Byron and Moore, written in his own scrawling hand; some books which he had given her, and a bunch of withered flowers in a vase they had bought in Italy.

"Her portrait used to hang by the side of mine," he muttered; "I wonder what they have done with it."