Lady Audley's Secret (Oxford World's Classics) by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Author:Mary Elizabeth Braddon [Braddon, Mary Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780199577033
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2012-01-12T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER VIII

SO FAR AND NO FARTHER

ROBERT left Audley the next morning by an early train, and reached Shoreditch a little after nine o’clock. He did not return to his chambers, but called a cab and drove straight to Crescent Villas, West Brompton. He knew that he should fail in finding the lady he went to seek at this address, as his uncle had failed a few months before, but he thought it possible to obtain some clue to the schoolmistress’s new residence, in spite of Sir Michael’s ill success.

‘Mrs Vincent was in a dying state, according to the telegraphic message,’ Robert thought. ‘If I do find her, I shall at least succeed in discovering whether that message was genuine.’

He found Crescent Villas after some difficulty. The houses were large, but they lay half embedded amongst the chaos of brick and mortar rising around them. New terraces, new streets, new squares led away into hopeless masses of stone and plaster on every side. The roads were sticky with damp clay, which clogged the wheels of the cab and buried the fetlocks of the horse. The desolation of desolations—that awful aspect of incompleteness and discomfort which pervades a new and unfinished neighbourhood*—had set its dismal seal upon the surrounding streets which had arisen about and entrenched Crescent Villas; and Robert wasted forty minutes by his own watch, and an hour and a quarter according to the cabman’s reckoning, in driving up and down uninhabited streets and terraces, trying to find the Villas: whose chimney-pots were frowning down upon him, black and venerable, amid groves of virgin plaster, undimmed by time or smoke.

But having at least succeeded in reaching his destination, Mr Audley alighted from the cab, directed the driver to wait for him at a certain corner, and set out upon his voyage of discovery.

‘If I were a distinguished QC, I could not do this sort of thing,’ he thought; ‘my time would be worth a guinea or so a minute, and I should be retained in the great case of Hoggs v. Boggs, going forward this very day before a special jury at Westminster Hall. As it is, I can afford to be patient.’

He inquired for Mrs Vincent at the number which Mr Dawson had given him. The maid who opened the door had never heard that lady’s name: but after going to inquire of her mistress, she returned to tell Robert that Mrs Vincent had lived there, but that she had left two months before the present occupants had entered the house, ‘and missus has been here fifteen months,’ the girl added, explanatorily.

‘But you cannot tell me where she went on leaving here?’ Robert asked, despondingly.

‘No, sir; missus says she believes the lady failed, and that she left sudden like, and didn’t want her address to be known in the neighbourhood.’

Mr Audley felt himself at a standstill once more. If Mrs Vincent had left the place in debt, she had no doubt scrupulously concealed her whereabouts. There was little hope,

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