Aurora Floyd by M. E. Braddon
CHAPTER I.
HOW A RICH
BANKER MARRIED
AN ACTRESS.
CHAPTER II.
AURORA.
CHAPTER III.
WHAT BECAME OF
THE DIAMOND
BRACELET.
CHAPTER IV.
AFTER THE BALL.
CHAPTER V. JOHN
MELLISH.
CHAPTER VI.
REJECTED AND
ACCEPTED.
CHAPTER VII.
AURORA'S STRANGE
PENSIONER.
CHAPTER VIII.
POOR JOHN
MELLISH COMES
BACK AGAIN.
CHAPTER IX. HOW
TALBOT BULSTRODE
SPENT HIS
CHRISTMAS.
CHAPTER X.
FIGHTING THE
BATTLE.
CHAPTER XI. AT
THE CHATEAU
D'ARQUES.
CHAPTER XII.
STEEVE HARGRAVES,
"THE SOFTY."
CHAPTER XIII.
THE SPRING
MEETING.
CHAPTER XIV.
"LOVE TOOK UP
THE GLASS OF
TIME AND TURNED
IT IN HIS
GLOWING HANDS."
CHAPTER XV. MR.
PASTERN'S
LETTER.
CHAPTER XVI. MR.
JAMES CONYERS.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE TRAINER'S
MESSENGER.
CHAPTER XVIII.
OUT IN THE RAIN.
CHAPTER XIX.
MONEY MATTERS.
CHAPTER XX.
CAPTAIN PRODDER.
CHAPTER XXI. "HE
ONLY SAID I AM
A-WEARY."
CHAPTER XXII.
STILL CONSTANT.
CHAPTER XXIII.
ON THE THRESHOLD
OF DARKER
MISERIES.
CHAPTER XXIV.
CAPTAIN PRODDER
CARRIES BAD NEWS
TO HIS NIECE'S
HOUSE.
CHAPTER XXV. THE
DEED THAT HAD
BEEN DONE IN THE
WOOD.
CHAPTER XXVI. AT
THE GOLDEN LION.
CHAPTER XXVII.
"MY WIFE! MY
WIFE! WHAT WIFE?
I HAVE NO WIFE."
CHAPTER XXVIII.
AURORA'S FLIGHT.
CHAPTER XXIX.
JOHN MELLISH
FINDS HIS HOME
DESOLATE.
CHAPTER XXX. AN
UNEXPECTED
VISITOR.
CHAPTER XXXI.
TALBOT
BULSTRODE'S
ADVICE.
CHAPTER XXXII.
ON THE WATCH.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
CAPTAIN PRODDER
GOES BACK TO
DONCASTER.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
DISCOVERY OF THE
WEAPON WITH
WHICH JAMES
CONYERS HAD BEEN
SLAIN.
CHAPTER XXXV.
UNDER A CLOUD.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
REUNION.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
THE BRASS
BUTTON, BY
CROSBY,
BIRMINGHAM.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
OFF THE SCENT.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
TALBOT BULSTRODE
MAKES ATONEMENT
FOR THE PAST.
L'ENVOI.
CHAPTER I. HOW A RICH BANKER MARRIED
AN ACTRESS.
Faint streaks of crimson glimmer here and there amid the rich
darkness of the Kentish woods. Autumn's red finger has been lightly
laid upon the foliage—sparingly, as the artist puts the brighter tints
into his picture; but the grandeur of an August sunset blazes upon the
peaceful landscape, and lights all into glory.
The encircling woods and wide lawn-like meadows, the still ponds of
limpid water, the trim hedges, and the smooth winding roads; undulating
hill-tops, melting into the purple distance; laboring-men's cottages,
gleaming white from the surrounding foliage; solitary roadside inns
with brown thatched roofs and moss-grown stacks of lop-sided chimneys;
noble mansions hiding behind ancestral oaks; tiny Gothic edifices;
Swiss and rustic lodges; pillared gates surmounted by escutcheons hewn
in stone, and festooned with green wreaths of clustering ivy; village
churches and prim school-houses—every object in the fair English
prospect is steeped in a luminous haze, as the twilight shadows steal
slowly upward from the dim recesses of shady woodland and winding lane,
and every outline of the landscape darkens against the deepening
crimson of the sky.
Upon the broad façade of a mighty redbrick mansion, built in
the favorite style of the early Georgian era, the sinking sun lingers
long, making gorgeous illumination. The long rows of narrow windows are
all aflame with the red light, and an honest homeward-tramping villager
pauses once or twice in the roadway to glance across the smooth width
of dewy lawn and tranquil lake, half fearful that there must be
something more than natural in the glitter of those windows, and that
may be Maister Floyd's house is afire.
The stately red-built mansion belongs to Maister Floyd, as he is
called in the honest patois of the Kentish rustics; to Archibald
Martin Floyd, of the great banking-house of Floyd, Floyd, and Floyd,
Lombard street, City.
The Kentish rustics knew very little of this city banking-house, for
Archibald Martin, the senior partner, has long retired from any active
share in the business, which is carried on entirely by his nephews,
Andrew and Alexander Floyd, both steady, middle-aged men, with families
and country-houses; both owing their fortune to the rich uncle, who had
found places in his counting-house for them some thirty years before,
when they were tall, raw-boned, sandy-haired, red-complexioned Scottish
youths, fresh from some unpronounceable village north of Aberdeen.
The young gentlemen signed their names M`Floyd when they first
entered their uncle's counting-house; but they very soon followed that
wise relative's example, and dropped the formidable prefix. "We've nae
need to tell these Southeran bodies that we're Scotche," Alick remarked
to his brother as he wrote his name for the first time A. Floyd, all
short.
The Scottish banking-house had thriven wonderfully in the hospitable
English capital. Unprecedented success had waited upon every enterprise
undertaken by the old-established and respected firm of Floyd, Floyd,
and Floyd. It had been Floyd, Floyd, and Floyd for upward of a century;
for, as one member of the house dropped off, some greener branch shot
out from the old tree; and there had never yet been any need to alter
the treble repetition of the well-known name upon the brass plates that
adorned the swinging mahogany doors of the banking-house. To this brass
plate Archibald Martin Floyd pointed when, some thirty years before the
August evening of which I write, he took his raw-boned nephews for the
first time across the threshold of his house of business.
"See there, boys," he said: "look at the three names upon that brass
plate. Your uncle George is over fifty, and a bachelor—that's the
first name; our first cousin, Stephen Floyd, of Calcutta, is going to
sell out of the business before long—that's the second name; the third
is mine, and I'm thirty-seven years of age, remember, boys, and not
likely to make a fool of myself by marrying. Your names will be wanted
by and by to fill the blanks; see that you keep them bright in the
meantime; for, let so much as one speck rest upon them, and they'll
never be fit for that brass plate."
Perhaps the rugged Scottish youths took this lesson to heart, or
perhaps honesty was a natural and inborn virtue in the house of Floyd.
Be it as it might, neither Alick nor Andrew disgraced their ancestry;
and when Stephen Floyd, the East-Indian merchant, sold out, and Uncle
George grew tired of business, and took to building, as an elderly,
bachelor-like hobby, the young men stepped into their relatives' shoes,
and took the conduct of the business upon their broad Northern
shoulders. Upon one point only Archibald Martin Floyd had misled his
nephews, and that point regarded himself. Ten years after his address
to the young men, at the sober age of seven-and-forty, the banker not
only made a fool of himself by marrying, but, if indeed such things are
foolish, sank still farther from the proud elevation of worldly wisdom
by falling desperately in love with a beautiful but penniless woman,
whom he brought home with him after a business tour through the
manufacturing districts, and with but little ceremony introduced to his
relations and the county families round his Kentish estate as his
newly-wedded wife.
The whole affair was so sudden, that these very county families had
scarcely recovered from their surprise at reading a certain paragraph
in the left-hand column of the Times, announcing the marriage of
"Archibald Martin Floyd, Banker, of Lombard street and Felden Woods, to
Eliza, only surviving daughter of Captain Prodder," when the
bridegroom's travelling carriage dashed past the Gothic lodge at the
gates, along the avenue and under the great stone portico at the side
of the house, and Eliza Floyd entered the banker's mansion, nodding
good-naturedly to the bewildered servants, marshalled into the hall to
receive their new mistress.
The banker's wife was a tall young woman of about thirty, with a
dark complexion, and great flashing black eyes that lit up a face which
might otherwise have been unnoticeable into the splendor of absolute
beauty.
Let the reader recall one of those faces whose sole loveliness lies
in the glorious light of a pair of magnificent eyes, and remember how
far they surpass all others in their power of fascination. The same
amount of beauty frittered away upon a well-shaped nose, rosy, pouting
lips, symmetrical forehead, and delicate complexion, would make an
ordinarily lovely woman; but concentrated in one nucleus, in the
wondrous lustre of the eyes, it makes a divinity, a Circe. You may meet
the first any day of your life; the second, once in a lifetime.
Mr. Floyd introduced his wife to the neighboring gentry at a
dinner-party, which he gave soon after the lady's arrival at Felden
Woods, as his country seat was called; and this ceremony very briefly
despatched, he said no more about his choice either to his neighbors or
his relations, who would have been very glad to hear how this
unlooked-for marriage had come about, and who hinted the same to the
happy bridegroom, but without effect.
Of course this very reticence on the part of Archibald Floyd himself
only set the thousand tongues of rumor more busily to work. Round
Beckenham and West Wickham, near which villages Felden Woods was
situated, there was scarcely any one debased and degraded station of
life from which Mrs. Floyd was not reported to have sprung. She was a
factory-girl, and the silly old banker had seen her in the streets of
Manchester, with a colored handkerchief on her head, a coral necklace
round her throat, and shoeless and stockingless feet tramping in the
mud: he had seen her thus, and had fallen incontinently in love with
her, and offered to marry her there and then. She was an actress, and
he had seen her on the Manchester stage; nay, lower still, she was some
poor performer, decked in dirty white muslin, red cotton velvet, and
spangles, who acted in a canvas booth, with a pitiful set of wandering
vagabonds and a learned pig. Sometimes they said she was an equestrian,
and it was at Astley's, and not in the manufacturing districts, that
the banker had first seen her; nay, some there were ready to swear that
they themselves had beheld her leaping through gilded hoops, and
dancing the cachuca upon six barebacked steeds in that sawdust-strewn
arena. There were whispered rumors that went even farther than
these—rumors which I dare not even set down here, for the busy tongues
that dealt so mercilessly with the name and fame of Eliza Floyd were
not unbarbed by malice. It may be that some of the ladies had personal
reasons for their spite against the bride, and that many a waning
beauty, in those pleasant Kentish mansions, had speculated upon the
banker's income, and the advantages attendant upon a union with the
owner of Felden Woods.
The daring, disreputable creature, with not even beauty to recommend
her—for the Kentish damsels scrupulously ignored Eliza's wonderful
eyes, and were sternly critical with her low forehead, doubtful nose,
and rather wide mouth—the artful, designing minx, who, at the mature
age of nine-and-twenty, with her hair growing nearly down to her
eyebrows, had contrived to secure to herself the hand and fortune of
the richest man in Kent—the man who had been hitherto so impregnable
to every assault from bright eyes and rosy lips, that the most
indefatigable of manoeuvring mothers had given him up in despair, and
ceased to make visionary and Alnaschar-like arrangements of the
furniture in Mr. Floyd's great red-brick palace.
The female portion of the community wondered indignantly at the
supineness of the two Scotch nephews, and the old bachelor brother,
George Floyd. Why did not these people show a little spirit—institute
a commission of lunacy, and shut their crazy relative in a mad-house?
He deserved it.
The ruined noblesse of the Faubourg St. Germain, the faded
duchesses and wornout vidames, could not have abused a
wealthy Bonapartist with more vigorous rancor than these people
employed in their ceaseless babble about the banker's wife. Whatever
she did was a new subject for criticism; even at that first
dinner-party, though Eliza had no more ventured to interfere with the
arrangements of the man-cook and housekeeper than if she had been a
visitor at Buckingham Palace, the angry guests found that everything
had degenerated since "that woman" had entered the house. They hated
the successful adventuress—hated her for her beautiful eyes and her
gorgeous jewels, the extravagant gifts of an adoring husband—hated her
for her stately figure and graceful movements, which never betrayed the
rumored obscurity of her origin—hated her, above all, for her
insolence in not appearing in the least afraid of the lofty members of
that new circle in which she found herself.
If she had meekly eaten the ample dish of humble-pie which these
county families were prepared to set before her—if she had licked the
dust from their aristocratic shoes, courted their patronage, and
submitted to be "taken up" by them—they might, perhaps, in time, have
forgiven her. But she did none of this. If they called upon her, well
and good; she was frankly and cheerfully glad to see them. They might
find her in her gardening-gloves, with rumpled hair and a watering-pot
in her hands, busy among her conservatories; and she would receive them
as serenely as if she had been born in a palace, and used to homage
from her very babyhood. Let them be as frigidly polite as they pleased,
she was always easy, candid, gay, and good-natured. She would rattle
away about her "dear old Archy," as she presumed to call her benefactor
and husband; or she would show her guests some new picture he had
bought, and would dare—the impudent, ignorant, pretentious
creature!—to talk about Art, as if all the high-sounding jargon with
which they tried to crush her was as familiar to her as to a Royal
Academician. When etiquette demanded her returning these stately
visits, she would drive boldly up to her neighbors' doors in a tiny
basket carriage, drawn by one rough pony; for it was an affectation of
this designing woman to affect simplicity in her tastes, and to abjure
all display. She would take all the grandeur she met with as a thing of
course, and chatter and laugh, with her flaunting theatrical animation,
much to the admiration of misguided young men, who could not see the
high-bred charms of her detractors, but who were never tired of talking
of Mrs. Floyd's jolly manners and glorious eyes.
I wonder whether poor Eliza Floyd knew all or half the cruel things
that were said of her. I shrewdly suspect that she contrived somehow or
other to hear them all, and that she rather enjoyed the fun. She had
been used to a life of excitement, and Felden Woods might have seemed
dull to her but for these ever-fresh scandals. She took a malicious
delight in the discomfiture of her enemies.
"How badly they must have wanted you for a husband, Archy," she
said, "when they hate me so ferociously. Poor, portionless old maids,
to think I should snatch their prey from them! I know they think it a
hard thing that they can't have me hung for marrying a rich man."
But the banker was so deeply wounded when his adored wife repeated
to him the gossip which she had heard from her maid, who was a stanch
adherent to a kind, easy mistress, that Eliza ever after withheld these
reports from him. They amused her, but they stung him to the quick.
Proud and sensitive, like almost all very honest and conscientious men,
he could not endure that any creature should dare to befoul the name of
the woman he loved so tenderly. What was the obscurity from which he
had taken her to him? Is a star less bright because it shines on a
gutter as well as upon the purple bosom of the midnight sea? Is a
virtuous and generous-hearted woman less worthy because you find her
making a scanty living out of the only industry she can exercise, and
acting Juliet to an audience of factory hands, who gave threepence
apiece for the privilege of admiring and applauding her?
Yes, the murder must out; the malicious were not altogether wrong in
their conjectures: Eliza Prodder was an actress; and it was on the
dirty boards of a second-rate theatre in Lancashire that the wealthy
banker had first beheld her. Archibald Floyd nourished a traditional,
passive, but sincere admiration for the British Drama. Yes, the British Drama; for he had lived in a day when the drama was
British, and when George Barnwell and Jane Shore were
among the favorite works of art of a play-going public. How sad that we
should have degenerated since those classic days, and that the graceful
story of Milwood and her apprentice-admirer is now so rarely set before
us! Imbued, therefore, with the solemnity of Shakespeare and the drama,
Mr. Floyd, stopping for a night at this second-rate Lancashire town,
dropped into the dusty boxes of the theatre to witness the performance
of Romeo and Juliet—the heiress of the Capulets being
represented by Miss Eliza Percival, alias Prodder.
I do not believe that Miss Percival was a good actress, or that she
would ever become distinguished in her profession; but she had a deep,
melodious voice, which rolled out the words of her author in a certain
rich though rather monotonous music, pleasant to hear; and upon the
stage she was very beautiful to look at, for her face lighted up the
little theatre better than all the gas that the manager grudged to his
scanty audiences.
It was not the fashion in those days to make "sensation" dramas of
Shakespeare's plays. There was no Hamlet with the celebrated
water-scene, and the Danish prince taking a "header" to save poor
weak-witted Ophelia. In the little Lancashire theatre it would have
been thought a terrible sin against all canons of dramatic art had
Othello or his Ancient attempted to sit down during any part of the
solemn performance. The hope of Denmark was no long-robed Norseman with
flowing flaxen hair, but an individual who wore a short, rusty black
cotton velvet garment, shaped like a child's frock and trimmed with
bugles, which dropped off and were trodden upon at intervals throughout
the performance. The simple actors held, that tragedy, to be tragedy,
must be utterly unlike anything that ever happened beneath the sun. And
Eliza Prodder patiently trod the old and beaten track, far too
good-natured, light-hearted, and easy-going a creature to attempt any
foolish interference with the crookedness of the times, which she was
not born to set right.
What can I say, then, about her performance of the impassioned
Italian girl? She wore white satin and spangles, the spangles sewn upon
the dirty hem of her dress, in the firm belief, common to all
provincial actresses, that spangles are an antidote to dirt. She was
laughing and talking in the whitewashed little green-room the very
minute before she ran on to the stage to wail for her murdered kinsman
and her banished lover. They tell us that Macready began to be
Richelieu at three o'clock in the afternoon, and that it was dangerous
to approach or to speak to him between that hour and the close of the
performance. So dangerous, indeed, that surely none but the daring and
misguided gentleman who once met the great tragedian in a dark passage,
and gave him "Good-morrow, 'Mac,' " would have had the temerity to
attempt it. But Miss Percival did not take her profession very deeply
to heart; the Lancashire salaries barely paid for the physical wear and
tear of early rehearsals and long performances; how, then, for that
mental exhaustion of the true artist who lives in the character he
represents?
The easy-going comedians with whom Eliza acted made friendly remarks
to each other on their private affairs in the intervals of the most
vengeful discourse; speculated upon the amount of money in the house in
audible undertones during the pauses of the scene; and when Hamlet
wanted Horatio down at the foot-lights to ask him if he "marked that,"
it was likely enough that the prince's confidant was up the stage
telling Polonius of the shameful way in which his landlady stole the
tea and sugar.
It was not, therefore, Miss Percival's acting that fascinated the
banker. Archibald Floyd knew that she was as bad an actress as ever
played the leading tragedy and comedy for five-and-twenty shillings a
week. He had seen Miss O'Neil in that very character, and it moved him
to a pitying smile as the factory hands applauded poor Eliza's
poison-scene. But, for all this, he fell in love with her. It was a
repetition of the old story. It was Arthur Pendennis at the little
Chatteris Theatre bewitched and bewildered by Miss Fotheringay all over
again—only that instead of a feeble, impressionable boy, it was a
sober, steady-going business-man of seven-and-forty, who had never felt
one thrill of emotion in looking on a woman's face until that
night—until that night—and from that night to him the world only held
one being, and life only had one object. He went the next evening, and
the next, and then contrived to scrape acquaintance with some of the
actors at a tavern next the theatre. They sponged upon him cruelly,
these seedy comedians, and allowed him to pay for unlimited glasses of
brandy and water, and flattered and cajoled him, and plucked out the
heart of his mystery; and then went back to Eliza Percival, and told
her that she had dropped into a good thing, for that an old chap with
no end of money had fallen over head and ears in love with her, and
that if she played her cards well, he would marry her to-morrow. They
pointed him out to her through a hole in the green curtain, sitting
almost alone in the shabby boxes, waiting for the play to begin and her
black eyes to shine upon him once more.
Eliza laughed at her conquest; it was only one among many such,
which had all ended alike—leading to nothing better than the purchase
of a box on her benefit night, or a bouquet left for her at the
stage-door. She did not know the power of first love upon a man of
seven-and-forty. Before the week was out, Archibald Floyd had made her
a solemn offer of his hand and fortune.
He had heard a great deal about her from her fellow-performers, and
had heard nothing but good. Temptations resisted; diamond bracelets
indignantly declined; graceful acts of gentle womanly charity done in
secret; independence preserved through all poverty and trial—they told
him a hundred stories of her goodness, that brought the blood to his
face with proud and generous emotion. And she herself told him the
simple history of her life—told him that she was the daughter of a
merchant-captain called Prodder; that she was born at Liverpool; that
she remembered little of her father, who was almost always at sea; nor
of a brother, three years older than herself, who quarrelled with his
father, the merchant-captain, and ran away, and was never heard of
again; nor of her mother, who died when she, Eliza, was ten years old.
The rest was told in a few words. She was taken into the family of an
aunt who kept a grocer's shop in Miss Prodder's native town. She
learned artificial flower-making, and did not take to the business. She
went often to the Liverpool theatres, and thought she would like to go
upon the stage. Being a daring and energetic young person, she left her
aunt's house one day, walked straight to the stage-manager of one of
the minor theatres, and asked him to let her appear as Lady Macbeth.
The man laughed at her, but told her that, in consideration of her fine
figure and black eyes, he would give her fifteen shillings a week to
"walk on," as he technically called the business of the ladies who
wander on to the stage, sometimes dressed as villagers, sometimes in
court costume of calico trimmed with gold, and stare vaguely at
whatever may be taking place in the scene. From "walking on" Eliza came
to play minor parts, indignantly refused by her superiors; from these
she plunged ambitiously into the tragic lead, and thus, for nine years,
pursued the even tenor of her way, until, close upon her
nine-and-twentieth birthday, Fate threw the wealthy banker across her
pathway, and in the parish church of a small town in the Potteries the
black-eyed actress exchanged the name of Prodder for that of Floyd.
She had accepted the rich man partly because, moved by a sentiment
of gratitude for the generous ardor of his affection, she was inclined
to like him better than any one else she knew, and partly in accordance
with the advice of her theatrical friends, who told her, with more
candor than elegance, that she would be a jolly fool to let such a
chance escape her; but at the time she gave her hand to Archibald
Martin Floyd she had no idea whatever of the magnitude of the fortune
he had invited her to share. He told her that he was a banker, and her
active mind immediately evoked the image of the only banker's wife she
had ever known—a portly lady, who wore silk gowns, lived in a square,
stuccoed house with green blinds, kept a cook and house-maid, and took
three box tickets for Miss Percival's benefit.
When, therefore, the doting husband loaded his handsome bride with
diamond bracelets and necklaces, and with silks and brocades that were
stiff and unmanageable from their very richness—when he carried her
straight from the Potteries to the Isle of Wight, and lodged her in
spacious apartments at the best hotel in Ryde, and flung his money here
and there as if he had carried the lamp of Aladdin in his
coat-pocket—Eliza remonstrated with her new master, fearing that his
love had driven him mad, and that this alarming extravagance was the
first outburst of insanity.
It seemed a repetition of the dear old Burleigh story when Archibald
Floyd took his wife into the long picture-gallery at Felden Woods. She
clasped her hands for frank, womanly joy, as she looked at the
magnificence about her. She compared herself to the humble bride of the
marquis, and fell on her knees, and did theatrical homage to her lord.
"Oh, Archy," she said, "it is all too good for me. I am afraid I shall
die of my grandeur, as the poor girl pined away at Burleigh House."
In the full maturity of womanly loveliness, rich in health,
freshness, and high spirits, how little could Eliza dream that she
would hold even a briefer lease of these costly splendors than the
Bride of Burleigh had done before her.
Now the reader, being acquainted with Eliza's antecedents, may
perhaps find in them some clew to the insolent ease and well-bred
audacity with which Mrs. Floyd treated the second-rate county families
who were bent upon putting her to confusion. She was an actress; for
nine years she had lived in that ideal world in which dukes and
marquises are as common as butchers and bakers in work-a-day life, in
which, indeed, a nobleman is generally a poor, mean-spirited
individual, who gets the worst of it on every hand, and is
contemptuously entreated by the audience on account of his rank. How
should she be abashed on entering the drawing-rooms of these Kentish
mansions, when for nine years she had walked nightly on to a stage to
be the focus for every eye, and to entertain her guests the evening
through? Was it likely she was to be overawed by the Lenfields, who
were coach-builders in Park Lane, or the Miss Manderlys, whose father
had made his money by a patent for starch—she, who had received King
Duncan at the gates of her castle, and had sat on her throne dispensing
condescending hospitality to the obsequious Thanes at Dunsinane? So, do
what they would, they were unable to subdue this base intruder; while,
to add to their mortification, it every day became more obvious that
Mr. and Mrs. Floyd made one of the happiest couples who had ever worn
the bonds of matrimony, and changed them into garlands of roses. If
this were a very romantic story, it would be perhaps only proper for
Eliza Floyd to pine in her gilded bower, and misapply her energies in
weeping for some abandoned lover, deserted in an evil hour of ambitious
madness. But as my story is a true one—not only true in a general
sense, but strictly true as to the leading facts which I am about to
relate—and as I could point out, in a certain county, far northward of
the lovely Kentish woods, the very house in which the events I shall
describe took place, I am bound also to be truthful here, and to set
down as a fact that the love which Eliza Floyd bore for her husband was
as pure and sincere an affection as ever man need hope to win from the
generous heart of a good woman. What share gratitude may have had in
that love I can not tell. If she lived in a handsome house, and was
waited on by attentive and deferential servants; if she ate of delicate
dishes, and drank costly wines; if she wore rich dresses and splendid
jewels, and lolled on the downy cushions of a carriage, drawn by
high-mettled horses, and driven by a coachman with powdered hair; if,
wherever she went, all outward semblance of homage was paid to her; if
she had but to utter a wish, and, swift as the stroke of some
enchanter's wand, that wish was gratified, she knew that she owed all
to her husband, Archibald Floyd; and it may be that she grew, not
unnaturally, to associate him with every advantage she enjoyed, and to
love him for the sake of these things. Such a love as this may appear a
low and despicable affection when compared to the noble sentiment
entertained by the Nancys of modern romance for the Bill Sykeses of
their choice; and no doubt Eliza Floyd ought to have felt a sovereign
contempt for the man who watched her every whim, who gratified her
every whim, and who loved and honored her as much, ci-devant
provincial actress as she was, as he could have done had she descended
the steps of the loftiest throne in Christendom to give him her hand.
She was grateful to him, she loved him, she made him perfectly
happy—so happy that the strong-hearted Scotchman was sometimes almost
panic stricken at the contemplation of his own prosperity, and would
fall down on his knees and pray that this blessing might not be taken
from him; that, if it pleased Providence to afflict him, he might be
stripped of every shilling of his wealth, and left penniless, to begin
the world anew—but with her. Alas! it was this blessing, of all
others, that he was to lose.
For a year Eliza and her husband lived this happy life at Felden
Woods. He wished to take her on the Continent, or to London for the
season; but she could not bear to leave her lovely Kentish home. She
was happier than the day was long among her gardens, and pineries, and
graperies, her dogs and horses, and her poor. To these last she seemed
an angel, descended from the skies to comfort them. There were cottages
from which the prim daughters of the second-rate county families fled,
tract in hand, discomfited and abashed by the black looks of the
half-starved inmates, but upon whose doorways the shadow of Mrs. Floyd
was as the shadow of a priest in a Catholic country—always sacred, yet
ever welcome and familiar. She had the trick of making these people
like her before she set to work to reform their evil habits. At an
early stage of her acquaintance with them, she was as blind to the dirt
and disorder of their cottages as she would have been to a shabby
carpet in the drawing-room of a poor duchess; but by and by she would
artfully hint at this and that little improvement in the ménages
of her pensioners, until, in less than a month, without having either
lectured or offended, she had worked an entire transformation. Mrs.
Floyd was frightfully artful in her dealings with these erring
peasants. Instead of telling them at once in a candid and
Christian-like manner that they were all dirty, degraded, ungrateful,
and irreligious, she diplomatized and finessed with them as if she had
been canvassing the county. She made the girls regular in their
attendance at church by means of new bonnets; she kept married men out
of the public houses by bribes of tobacco to smoke at home, and once
(oh, horror!) by the gift of a bottle of gin. She cured a dirty
chimney-piece by the present of a gaudy china vase to its proprietress,
and a slovenly hearth by means of a brass fender. She repaired a
shrewish temper with a new gown, and patched up a family breach of long
standing with a chintz waistcoat. But one brief year after her
marriage—while busy landscape-gardeners were working at the
improvements she had planned; while the steady process of reformation
was slowly but surely progressing among the grateful recipients of her
bounty; while the eager tongues of her detractors were still waging war
upon her fair fame; while Archibald Floyd rejoiced as he held a
baby-daughter in his arms—without one forewarning symptom to break the
force of the blow, the light slowly faded out of those glorious eyes,
never to shine again on this side of eternity, and Archibald Martin
Floyd was a widower.
CHAPTER II.
AURORA.
The child which Eliza Floyd left behind her, when she was so
suddenly taken away from all earthly prosperity and happiness, was
christened Aurora. The romantic-sounding name had been a fancy of poor
Eliza's; and there was no caprice of hers, however trifling, that had
not always been sacred with her adoring husband, and that was not
doubly sacred now. The actual intensity of the widower's grief was
known to no creature in this lower world. His nephews and his nephews'
wives paid him pertinacious visits of condolence; nay, one of these
nieces by marriage, a good, motherly creature, devoted to her husband,
insisted on seeing and comforting the stricken man. Heaven knows
whether her tenderness did convey any comfort to that shipwrecked soul.
She found him like a man who had suffered from a stroke of paralysis,
torpid, almost imbecile. Perhaps she took the wisest course that could
possibly be taken. She said little to him upon the subject of his
affliction, but visited him frequently, patiently sitting opposite to
him for hours at a time, he and she talking of all manner of easy
conventional topics—the state of the country, the weather, a change in
the ministry, and such subjects as were so far remote from the grief of
his life that a less careful hand than Mrs. Alexander Floyd's could
have scarcely touched upon the broken chords of that ruined instrument,
the widower's heart.
It was not until six months after Eliza's death that Mrs. Alexander
ventured to utter her name; but when she did speak of her, it was with
no solemn hesitation, but tenderly and familiarly, as if she had been
accustomed to talk of the dead. She saw at once that she had done
right. The time had come for the widower to feel relief in speaking of
the lost one; and from that hour Mrs. Alexander became a favorite with
her uncle. Years after, he told her that, even in the sullen torpor of
his grief, he had had a dim consciousness that she pitied him, and that
she was "a good woman." This good woman came that very evening into the
big room, where the banker sat by his lonely hearth, with a baby in her
arms—a pale-faced child, with great wondering black eyes, which stared
at the rich man in sombre astonishment; a solemn-faced, ugly baby,
which was to grow by and by into Aurora Floyd, the heroine of my story.
That pale, black-eyed baby became henceforth the idol of Archibald
Martin Floyd, the one object in all this wide universe for which it
seemed worth his while to endure life. From the day of his wife's death
he had abandoned all active share in the Lombard-street business, and
he had now neither occupation nor delight save in waiting upon the
prattlings and humoring the caprices of this infant daughter. His love
for her was a weakness, almost verging upon a madness. Had his nephews
been very designing men, they might perhaps have entertained some vague
ideas of that commission of lunacy for which the outraged neighbors
were so anxious. He grudged the hired nurses their offices of love
about the person of his child. He watched them furtively, fearful lest
they should be harsh with her. All the ponderous doors in the great
house at Felden Woods could not drown the feeblest murmur of that
infant voice to those ever-anxious, loving ears.
He watched her growth as a child watches an acorn it hopes to rear
to an oak. He repeated her broken baby-syllables till people grew weary
of his babble about the child. Of course the end of all this was, that,
in the common acceptation of the term, Aurora was spoiled. We do not
say a flower is spoiled because it is reared in a hot-house where no
breath of heaven can visit it too roughly; but then, certainly, the
bright exotic is trimmed and pruned by the gardener's merciless hand,
while Aurora shot whither she would, and there was none to lop the
wandering branches of that luxuriant nature. She said what she pleased;
thought, spoke, acted as she pleased; learned what she pleased; and she
grew into a bright, impetuous being, affectionate and generous-hearted
as her mother, but with some touch of native fire blended in her mould
that stamped her as original. It is the common habit of ugly babies to
grow into handsome women, and so it was with Aurora Floyd. At seventeen
she was twice as beautiful as her mother had been at nine-and-twenty,
but with much the same irregular features, lighted up by a pair of eyes
that were like the stars of heaven, and by two rows of peerlessly white
teeth. You rarely, in looking at her face, could get beyond these eyes
and teeth; for they so dazzled and blinded you that they defied you to
criticise the doubtful little nose, or the width of the smiling mouth.
What if those masses of blue-black hair were brushed away from a
forehead too low for the common standard of beauty? A phrenologist
would have told you that the head was a noble one; and a sculptor would
have added that it was set upon the throat of a Cleopatra.
Miss Floyd knew very little of her poor mother's history. There was
a picture in crayons hanging in the banker's sanctum sanctorum
which represented Eliza in the full flush of her beauty and
prosperity, but the portrait told nothing of the history of the
original, and Aurora had never heard of the merchant-captain, the poor
Liverpool lodging, the grim aunt who kept a chandler's shop, the
artificial flower-making, and the provincial stage. She had never been
told that her maternal grandfather's name was Prodder, and that her
mother had played Juliet to an audience of factory hands for the
moderate and sometimes uncertain stipend of four and twopence a night.
The county families accepted and made much of the rich banker's
heiress; but they were not slow to say that Aurora was her mother's own
daughter, and had the taint of the play-acting and horse-riding, the
spangles and the sawdust, strong in her nature. The truth of the matter
is, that before Miss Floyd emerged from the nursery she evinced a very
decided tendency to become what is called "fast." At six years of age
she rejected a doll and asked for a rocking-horse. At ten she could
converse fluently upon the subject of pointers, setters, fox-hounds,
harriers, and beagles, though she drove her governess to the verge of
despair by persistently forgetting under what Roman emperor Jerusalem
was destroyed, and who was legate to the Pope at the time of Catharine
of Aragon's divorce. At eleven she talked unreservedly of the horses in
the Lenfield stables as a pack of screws; at twelve she contributed her
half-crown to a Derby sweepstakes among her father's servants, and
triumphantly drew the winning horse; and at thirteen she rode across
country with her uncle Andrew, who was a member of the Croydon hunt. It
was not without grief that the banker watched his daughter's progress
in these doubtful accomplishments; but she was so beautiful, so frank
and fearless, so generous, affectionate, and true, that he could not
bring himself to tell her that she was not all he could desire her to
be. If he could have governed or directed that impetuous nature, he
would have had her the most refined and elegant, the most perfect and
accomplished of her sex; but he could not do this, and he was fain to
thank God for her as she was, and to indulge her every whim.
Alexander Floyd's eldest daughter, Lucy, first cousin, once removed
to Aurora, was that young lady's friend and confidante, and came now
and then from her father's villa at Fulham to spend a month at Felden
Woods. But Lucy Floyd had half a dozen brothers and sisters, and was
brought up in a very different manner from the heiress. She was a
fair-faced, blue-eyed, rosy-lipped, golden-haired little girl, who
thought Felden Woods a paradise upon earth, and Aurora more fortunate
than the Princess Royal of England, or Titania, Queen of the Fairies.
She was direfully afraid of her cousin's ponies and Newfoundland dogs,
and had a firm conviction that sudden death held his throne within a
certain radius of a horse's heels; but she loved and admired Aurora,
after the manner common to these weaker natures, and accepted Miss
Floyd's superb patronage and protection as a thing of course.
The day came when some dark but undefined cloud hovered about the
narrow home circle at Felden Woods. There was a coolness between the
banker and his beloved child. The young lady spent half her time on
horseback, scouring the shady lanes round Beckenham, attended only by
her groom—a dashing young fellow, chosen by Mr. Floyd on account of
his good looks for Aurora's especial service. She dined in her own room
after these long, lonely rides, leaving her father to eat his solitary
meal in the vast dining-room, which seemed to be fully occupied when
she sat in it, and desolately empty without her. The household at
Felden Woods long remembered one particular June evening on which the
storm burst forth between the father and daughter.
Aurora had been absent from two o'clock in the afternoon until
sunset, and the banker paced the long stone terrace with his watch in
his hand, the figures on the dial-plate barely distinguishable in the
twilight, waiting for his daughter's coming home. He had sent his
dinner away untouched; his newspapers lay uncut upon the table, and the
household spies we call servants told each other how his hand had
shaken so violently that he had spilled half a decanter of wine over
the polished mahogany in attempting to fill his glass. The housekeeper
and her satellites crept into the hall, and looked through the
half-glass doors at the anxious watcher on the terrace. The men in the
stables talked of "the row," as they called this terrible breach
between father and child; and when at last horses' hoofs were heard in
the long avenue, and Miss Floyd reined in her thorough-bred chestnut at
the foot of the terrace-steps, there was a lurking audience hidden here
and there in the evening shadow eager to hear and see.
But there was very little to gratify these prying eyes and ears.
Aurora sprang lightly to the ground before the groom could dismount to
assist her, and the chestnut, with heaving and foam-flecked sides, was
led off to the stable.
Mr. Floyd watched the groom and the two horses as they disappeared
through the great gates leading to the stable-yard, and then said very
quietly, "You don't use that animal well, Aurora. A six hours ride is
neither good for her nor for you. Your groom should have known better
than to allow it." He led the way into his study, telling his daughter
to follow him, and they were closeted together for upward of an hour.
Early the next morning Miss Floyd's governess departed from Felden
Woods, and between breakfast and luncheon the banker paid a visit to
the stables, and examined his daughter's favorite chestnut mare, a
beautiful filly, all bone and muscle, that had been trained for a
racer. The animal had strained a sinew, and walked lame. Mr. Floyd sent
for his daughter's groom, and paid and dismissed him on the spot. The
young fellow made no remonstrance, but went quietly to his quarters,
took off his livery, packed a carpet-bag, and walked away from the
house without bidding good-by to his fellow-servants, who resented the
affront, and pronounced him a surly brute, whose absence was no loss to
the household.
Three days after this, upon the 14th of June, 1856, Mr. Floyd and
his daughter left Felden Woods for Paris, where Aurora was placed at a
very expensive and exclusive Protestant finishing school, kept by the
Demoiselles Lespard, in a stately mansion entre cour et jardin
in the Rue Saint Dominique, there to complete her very imperfect
education.
For a year and two months Miss Floyd has been away at this Parisian
finishing school; it is late in the August of 1857, and again the
banker walks upon the long stone terrace in front of the narrow windows
of his red-brick mansion, this time waiting for Aurora's arrival from
Paris. The servants have expressed considerable wonder at his not
crossing the Channel to fetch his daughter, and they think the dignity
of the house somewhat lowered by Miss Floyd's travelling unattended.
"A poor, dear young thing, that knows no more of this wicked world
than a blessed baby," said the housekeeper, "all alone among a pack of
mustached Frenchmen."
Archibald Martin Floyd had grown an old man in one day—that
terrible and unexpected day of his wife's death; but even the grief of
that bereavement had scarcely seemed to affect him so strongly as the
loss of his Aurora during the fourteen months of her absence from
Felden Woods.
Perhaps it was that at sixty-five years of age he was less able to
bear even a lesser grief; but those who watched him closely declared
that he seemed as much dejected by his daughter's absence as he could
well have been by her death. Even now, that he paces up and down the
broad terrace, with the landscape stretching wide before him, and
melting vaguely away under that veil of crimson glory shed upon all
things by the sinking sun—even now that he hourly, nay, almost
momentarily, expects to clasp his only child in his arms, Archibald
Floyd seems rather nervously anxious than joyfully expectant.
He looks again and again at his watch, and pauses in his walk to
listen to Beckenham church-clock striking eight; his ears are
preternaturally alert to every sound, and give him instant warning of
carriage-wheels far off upon the wide high-road. All the agitation and
anxiety he has felt for the last week has been less than the
concentrated fever of this moment. Will it pass on, that carriage, or
stop at the lodge-gates? Surely his heart could never beat so loud save
by some wondrous magnetism of fatherly love and hope. The carriage
stops. He hears the clanking of the gates; the crimson-tinted landscape
grows dim and blurred before his eyes, and he knows no more till a pair
of impetuous arms are twined about his neck, and Aurora's face is
hidden on his shoulder.
It was a paltry hired carriage which Miss Floyd arrived in, and it
drove away as soon as she had alighted, and the small amount of luggage
she brought had been handed to the eager servants. The banker led his
child into the study, where they had held that long conference fourteen
months before. A lamp burned upon the library table, and it was to this
light that Archibald Floyd led his daughter.
A year had changed the girl to a woman—a woman with great hollow
black eyes, and pale, haggard cheeks. The course of study at the
Parisian finishing school had evidently been too hard for the spoiled
heiress.
"Aurora, Aurora," the old man cried piteously, "how ill you look!
how altered, how—"
She laid her hand lightly yet imperiously upon his lips.
"Don't speak of me," she said, "I shall recover; but you—you,
father—you too are changed."
She was as tall as her father, and, resting her hands upon his
shoulders, she looked at him long and earnestly. As she looked, the
tears welled slowly up to her eyes, which had been dry before, and
poured silently down her haggard cheeks.
"My father, my devoted father," she said, in a broken voice, "if my
heart was made of adamant I think it might break when I see the change
in this beloved face."
The old man checked her with a nervous gesture—a gesture almost of
terror.
"Not one word—not one word, Aurora," he said, hurriedly; "at least,
only one. That person—he is dead?"
"He is."
CHAPTER III.
WHAT BECAME OF THE DIAMOND BRACELET.
Aurora's aunts, uncles, and cousins were not slow to exclaim upon
the change for the worse which a twelvemonth in Paris had made in their
young kinswoman. I fear that the Demoiselles Lespard suffered
considerably in reputation among the circle round Felden Woods from
Miss Floyd's impaired good looks. She was out of spirits too, had no
appetite, slept badly, was nervous and hysterical, no longer took any
interest in her dogs and horses, and was altogether an altered
creature. Mrs. Alexander Floyd declared it was perfectly clear that
these cruel Frenchwomen had worked poor Aurora to a shadow: the girl
was not used to study, she said; she had been accustomed to exercise
and open air, and no doubt pined sadly in the close atmosphere of a
school-room.
But Aurora's was one of those impressionable natures which quickly
recover from any depressing influence. Early in September Lucy Floyd
came to Felden Woods, and found her handsome cousin almost entirely
recovered from the drudgery of the Parisian pension, but still
very loath to talk much of that seminary. She answered Lucy's eager
questions very curtly; said that she hated the Demoiselles Lespard and
the Rue Saint Dominique, and that the very memory of Paris was
disagreeable to her. Like most young ladies with black eyes and
blue-black hair, Miss Floyd was a good hater; so Lucy forbore to ask
for more information upon what was so evidently an unpleasant subject
to her cousin. Poor Lucy had been mercilessly well educated; she spoke
half a dozen languages, knew all about the natural sciences, had read
Gibbon, Niebuhr, and Arnold from the title-page to the printer's name,
and looked upon the heiress as a big brilliant dunce; so she quietly
set down Aurora's dislike to Paris to that young lady's distate for
tuition, and thought little more about it. Any other reasons for Miss
Floyd's almost shuddering horror of her Parisian associations lay far
beyond Lucy's simple power of penetration.
The fifteenth of September was Aurora's birthday, and Archibald
Floyd determined, upon this, the nineteenth anniversary of his
daughter's first appearance on this mortal scene, to give an
entertainment, whereat his country neighbors and town acquaintance
might alike behold and admire the beautiful heiress.
Mrs. Alexander came to Felden Woods to superintend the preparations
for this birthday ball. She drove Aurora and Lucy into town to order
the supper and the band, and to choose dresses and wreaths for the
young ladies. The banker's heiress was sadly out of place in a
milliner's show-room; but she had that rapid judgment as to color, and
that perfect taste in form, which bespeak the soul of an artist; and
while poor mild Lucy was giving endless trouble, and tumbling
innumerable boxes of flowers, before she could find any head-dress in
harmony with her rosy cheeks and golden hair, Aurora, after one brief
glance at the bright parterres of painted cambric, pounced upon
a crown-shaped garland of vivid scarlet berries, with drooping and
tangled leaves of dark shining green, that looked as if they had been
just plucked from a running streamlet. She watched Lucy's perplexities
with a half compassionate, half contemptuous smile.
"Look at that poor child, Aunt Lizzie," she said; "I know that she
would like to put pink and yellow against her golden hair. Why, you
silly Lucy, don't you know that yours is the beauty which really does not want adornment? A few pearls or forget-me-not blossoms, or a
crown of water lilies and a cloud of white areophane, would make you
look a sylphide; but I dare say you would like to wear amber satin and
cabbage-roses."
From the milliner's they drove to Mr. Gunter's in Berkeley Square,
at which world-renowned establishment Mrs. Alexander commanded those
preparations of turkeys preserved in jelly, hams cunningly embalmed in
rich wines and broths, and other specimens of that sublime art of
confectionery which hovers midway between sleight of hand and cookery,
and in which the Berkeley Square professor is without a rival. When
poor Thomas Babington Macaulay's New Zealander shall come to ponder
over the ruins of St. Paul's, perhaps he will visit the remains of this
humbler temple in Berkeley Square, and wonder at the ice-pails and
jelly-moulds, and refrigerators and stewpans, the hot plates, long cold
and unheeded, and all the mysterious paraphernalia of the dead art.
From the West End Mrs. Alexander drove to Charing Cross; she had a
commission to execute at Dent's—the purchase of a watch for one of her
boys, who was just off to Eton.
Aurora threw herself wearily back in the carriage while her aunt and
Lucy stopped at the watchmaker's. It was to be observed that, although
Miss Floyd had recovered much of her old brilliancy and gayety of
temper, a certain gloomy shade would sometimes steal over her
countenance when she was left to herself for a few minutes—a darkly
reflective expression, quite foreign to her face. This shadow fell upon
her beauty now as she looked out of the open window, moodily watching
the passers-by. Mrs. Alexander was a long time making her purchase, and
Aurora had sat nearly a quarter of an hour blankly staring at the
shifting figures in the crowd, when a man hurrying by was attracted by
her face at the carriage-window, and started, as if at some great
surprise. He passed on, however, and walked rapidly toward the Horse
Guards; but, before he turned the corner, came to a dead stop, stood
still for two or three minutes scratching the back of his head
reflectively with his big bare hand, and then walked slowly back toward
Mr. Dent's emporium. He was a broad-shouldered, bull-necked,
sandy-whiskered fellow, wearing a cut-away coat and a gaudy
neckerchief, and smoking a huge cigar, the rank fumes of which
struggled with a very powerful odor of rum and water recently imbibed.
This gentleman's standing in society was betrayed by the smooth head of
a bull-terrier, whose round eyes peeped out of the pocket of his
cut-away coat, and by a Blenheim spaniel carried under his arm. He was
the very last person, among all the souls between Cockspur street and
the statue of King Charles, who seemed likely to have anything to say
to Miss Aurora Floyd; nevertheless, he walked deliberately up to the
carriage, and, planting his elbows upon the door, nodded to her with
friendly familiarity.
"Well," he said, without inconveniencing himself by the removal of
the rank cigar, "how do?"
After which brief salutation he relapsed into silence, and rolled
his great brown eyes slowly here and there, in contemplative
examination of Miss Floyd and the vehicle in which she sat—even
carrying his powers of observation so far as to take particular notice
of a plethoric morocco bag lying on the back seat, and to inquire
casually whether there was "anythink wallable in the old party's
redicule."
But Aurora did not allow him long for this leisurely employment;
for, looking at him with her eyes flashing forked lightnings of womanly
fury, and her face crimson with indignation, she asked him, in a sharp,
spasmodic tone, whether he had anything to say to her.
He had a great deal to say to her; but as he put his head in at the
carriage-window and made his communication, whatever it might be, in a
rum and watery whisper, it reached no ears but those of Aurora herself.
When he had done whispering, he took a greasy, leather-covered
account-book, and a short stump of lead pencil, considerably the worse
for chewing, from his waistcoat-pocket, and wrote two or three lines
upon a leaf, which he tore out and handed to Aurora. "This is the
address," he said; "you won't forget to send?"
She shook her head, and looked away from him—looked away with an
irrepressible gesture of disgust and loathing.
"You wouldn't like to buy a spannel dawg," said the man, holding the
sleek, curly, black and tan animal up to the carriage-window, "or a
French poodle what'll balance a bit of bread on his nose while you
count ten? Hey? You should have him a bargain—say fifteen pound the
two."
"No!"
At this moment Mrs. Alexander emerged from the watchmaker's, just in
time to catch a glimpse of the man's broad shoulders as he moved
sulkily away from the carriage.
"Has that person been begging of you, Aurora?" she asked, as they
drove off.
"No. I once bought a dog of him, and he recognized me."
"And wanted you to buy one to-day?"
"Yes."
Miss Floyd sat gloomily silent during the whole of the homeward
drive, looking out of the carriage-window, and not deigning to take any
notice whatever of her aunt and cousin. I do not know whether it was in
submission to that palpable superiority of force and vitality in
Aurora's nature which seemed to set her above her fellows, or simply in
that inherent spirit of toadyism common to the best of us; but Mrs.
Alexander and her fair-haired daughter always paid mute reverence to
the banker's heiress, and were silent when it pleased her, or conversed
at her royal will. I verily believe that it was Aurora's eyes rather
than Archibald Martin Floyd's thousands that overawed all her kinsfolk;
and that if she had been a street-sweeper dressed in rags and begging
for half-pence, people would have feared her and made way for her, and
bated their breath when she was angry.
The trees in the long avenue of Felden Woods were hung with
sparkling colored lamps, to light the guests who came to Aurora's
birthday festival. The long range of windows on the ground-floor was
ablaze with light; the crash of the band burst every now and then above
the perpetual roll of carriage-wheels, and the shouted repetition of
visitors' names, and pealed across the silent woods; through the long
vista of half a dozen rooms opening one into another, the waters of a
fountain, sparkling with a hundred hues in the light, glittered amid
the dark floral wealth of a conservatory filled with exotics. Great
clusters of tropical plants were grouped in the spacious hall; festoons
of flowers hung about the vapory curtains in the arched door-ways.
Light and splendor were everywhere around; and amid all, and more
splendid than all, in the dark grandeur of her beauty, Aurora Floyd,
crowned with scarlet and robed in white, stood by her father's side.
Among the guests who arrive latest at Mr. Floyd's ball are two
officers from Windsor, who have driven across the country in a mail
phaeton. The elder of these two, and the driver of the vehicle, has
been very discontented and disagreeable throughout the journey.
"If I'd had the remotest idea of the distance, Maldon," he said,
"I'd have seen you and your Kentish banker very considerably
inconvenienced before I would have consented to victimize my horse for
the sake of this snobbish party."
"But it won't be a snobbish party," answered the young man,
impetuously. "Archibald Floyd is the best fellow in Christendom, and as
for his daughter—"
"Oh, of course, a divinity, with fifty thousand pounds for her
fortune, all of which will no doubt be very tightly settled upon
herself if she is ever allowed to marry a penniless scapegrace like
Francis Lewis Maldon, of her Majesty's 11th Hussars. However, I don't
want to stand in your way, my boy. Go in and win, and my blessing be
upon your virtuous endeavors. I can imagine the young Scotchwoman—red
hair (of course you'll call it auburn), large feet, and freckles!"
"Aurora Floyd—red hair and freckles!" The young officer laughed
aloud at the stupendous joke. "You'll see her in a quarter of an hour,
Bulstrode," he said.
Talbot Bulstrode, Captain of her Majesty's 11th Hussars, had
consented to drive his brother-officer from Windsor to Beckenham, and
to array himself in his uniform, in order to adorn therewith the
festival at Felden Woods, chiefly because, having at two-and-thirty
years of age run through all the wealth of life's excitements and
amusements, and finding himself a penniless spendthrift in this
species of coin, though well enough off for mere sordid riches, he was
too tired of himself and the world to care much whither his friends and
comrades led him. He was the eldest son of a wealthy Cornish baronet,
whose ancestor had received his title straight from the hands of
Scottish King James, when baronetcies first came into fashion; the same
fortunate ancestor being near akin to a certain noble, erratic,
unfortunate, and injured gentleman called Walter Raleigh, and by no
means too well used by the same Scottish James. Now, of all the pride
which ever swelled the breasts of mankind, the pride of Cornishmen is
perhaps the strongest; and the Bulstrode family was one of the proudest
in Cornwall. Talbot was no alien son of this haughty house; from his
very babyhood he had been the proudest of mankind. This pride had been
the saving power that had presided over his prosperous career. Other
men might have made a downhill road of that smooth pathway which wealth
and grandeur made so pleasant, but not Talbot Bulstrode. The vices and
follies of the common herd were perhaps retrievable, but vice or folly
in a Bulstrode would have left a blot upon a hitherto unblemished
escutcheon never to be erased by time or tears. That pride of birth,
which was utterly unallied to pride of wealth or station, had a certain
noble and chivalrous side, and Talbot Bulstrode was beloved by many a
parvenu whom meaner men would have insulted. In the ordinary affairs of
life he was as humble as a woman or a child; it was only when Honor was
in question that the sleeping dragon of pride which had guarded the
golden apples of his youth, purity, probity, and truth, awoke and bade
defiance to the enemy. At two-and-thirty he was still a bachelor, not
because he had never loved, but because he had never met with a woman
whose stainless purity of soul fitted her in his eyes to become the
mother of a noble race, and to rear sons who should do honor to the
name of Bulstrode. He looked for more than ordinary every-day virtue in
the woman of his choice; he demanded those grand and queenly qualities
which are rarest in woman-kind. Fearless truth, a sense of honor keen
as his own, loyalty of purpose, unselfishness, a soul untainted by the
petty baseness of daily life—all these he sought in the being he
loved; and at the first warning thrill of emotion caused by a pair of
beautiful eyes, he grew critical and captious about their owner, and
began to look for infinitesimal stains upon the shining robe of her
virginity. He would have married a beggar's daughter if she had reached
his almost impossible standard; he would have rejected the descendant
of a race of kings if she had fallen one decimal part of an inch below
it. Women feared Talbot Bulstrode; manoeuvring mothers shrank abashed
from the cold light of those watchful gray eyes; daughters to marry
blushed and trembled, and felt their pretty affectations, their
ballroom properties, drop away from them under the quiet gaze of the
young officer, till, from fearing him, the lovely flutterers grew to
shun and dislike him, and to leave Bulstrode Castle and the Bulstrode
fortune unangled for in the great matrimonial fisheries. So at
two-and-thirty Talbot walked serenely safe amid the meshes and pitfalls
of Belgravia, secure in the popular belief that Captain Bulstrode, of
the 11th Hussars, was not a marrying man. This belief was perhaps
strengthened by the fact that the Cornishman was by no means the
elegant ignoramus whose sole accomplishment consist in parting his
hair, waxing his mustaches, and smoking a meerschaum that has been
colored by his valet, and who has become the accepted type of the
military man in time of peace.
Talbot Bulstrode was fond of scientific pursuits; he neither smoked,
drank, nor gambled. He had only been to the Derby once in his life, and
on that one occasion had walked quietly away from the stand while the
great race was being run, and the white faces were turned toward the
fatal corner, and men were sick with terror and anxiety, and frenzied
with the madness of suspense. He never hunted, though he rode like
Colonel Asheton Smith. He was a perfect swordsman, and one of Mr.
Angelo's pet pupils, a favorite lounger in the gallery of that
simple-hearted, honorable-minded gentleman; but he had never handled a
billiard-cue in his life, nor had he touched a card since the days of
his boyhood, when he took a hand at long whist with his father, and
mother, and the parson of the parish, in the south drawing-room at
Bulstrode Castle. He had a peculiar aversion to all games of chance and
skill, contending that it was beneath a gentleman to employ, even for
amusement, the implements of the sharper's pitiful trade. His rooms
were as neatly kept as those of a woman. Cases of mathematical
instruments took the place of cigar-boxes; proof impressions of Raphael
adorned the walls ordinarily covered with French prints, and
water-colored sporting sketches from Ackermann's emporium. He was
familiar with every turn of expression in Descartes and Condillac, but
would have been sorely puzzled to translate the argotic locutions of
Monsieur de Kock, père. Those who spoke of him summed him up by
saying that he wasn't a bit like an officer; but there was a certain
regiment of foot, which he had commanded when the heights of Inkermann
were won, whose ranks told another story of Captain Bulstrode. He had
made an exchange into the 11th Hussars on his return from the Crimea,
whence, among other distinctions, he had brought a stiff leg, which for
a time disqualified him from dancing. It was from pure benevolence,
therefore, or from that indifference to all things which is easily
mistaken for unselfishness, that Talbot Bulstrode had consented to
accept an invitation to the ball at Felden Woods.
The banker's guests were not of that charmed circle familiar to the
Captain of Hussars; so Talbot, after a brief introduction to his host,
fell back among the crowd assembled in one of the doorways, and quietly
watched the dancers; not unobserved himself, however, for he was just
one of those people who will not pass in a crowd. Tall and
broad-chested, with a pale, whiskerless face, aquiline nose, clear,
cold gray eyes, thick mustache, and black hair, worn as closely cropped
as if he had lately emerged from Coldbath Fields or Millbank prison, he
formed a striking contrast to the yellow-whiskered young ensign who had
accompanied him. Even that stiff leg, which in others might have seemed
a blemish, added to the distinction of his appearance, and, coupled
with the glittering orders on the breast of his uniform, told of deeds
of prowess lately done. He took very little delight in the gay assembly
revolving before him to one of Charles d'Albert's waltzes. He had heard
the same music before, executed by the same band; the faces, though
unfamiliar to him, were not new: dark beauties in pink, fair beauties
in blue; tall, dashing beauties in silks, and laces, and jewels, and
splendor; modestly downcast beauties in white crape and rose-buds. They
had all been spread for him, those familiar nets of gauze and
areophane, and he had escaped them all; and the name of Bulstrode might
drop out of the history of Cornish gentry to find no record save upon
gravestones, but it would never be tarnished by an unworthy race, or
dragged through the mire of a divorce court by a guilty woman. While he
lounged against the pillar of a doorway, leaning on his cane, and
resting his lame leg, and wondering lazily whether there was anything
upon earth that repaid a man for the trouble of living, Ensign Maldon
approached him with a woman's gloved hand lying lightly on his arm, and
a divinity walking by his side. A divinity! imperiously beautiful in
white and scarlet, painfully dazzling to look upon, intoxicatingly
brilliant to behold. Captain Bulstrode had served in India, and had
once tasted a horrible spirit called bang, which made the men
who drank it half-mad; and he could not help fancying that the beauty
of this woman was like the strength of that alcoholic
preparation—barbarous, intoxicating, dangerous, and maddening.
His brother-officer presented him to this wonderful creature, and he
found that her earthly name was Aurora Floyd, and that she was the
heiress of Felden Woods.
Talbot Bulstrode recovered himself in a moment. This imperious
creature, this Cleopatra in crinoline, had a low forehead, a nose that
deviated from the line of beauty, and a wide mouth. What was she but
another trap set in white muslin, and baited with artificial flowers,
like the rest? She was to have fifty thousand pounds for her portion,
so she didn't want a rich husband; but she was a nobody, so of course
she wanted position, and had no doubt read up the Raleigh Bulstrodes in
the sublime pages of Burke. The clear gray eyes grew cold as ever,
therefore, as Talbot bowed to the heiress. Mr. Maldon found his partner
a chair close to the pillar against which Captain Bulstrode had taken
his stand; and Mrs. Alexander Floyd swooping down upon the ensign at
this very moment, with the dire intent of carrying him off to dance
with a lady who executed more of her steps upon the toes of her partner
than on the floor of the ball-room, Aurora and Talbot were left to
themselves.
Captain Bulstrode glanced downward at the banker's daughter. His
gaze lingered upon the graceful head, with its coronal of shining
scarlet berries encircling smooth masses of blue-black hair. He
expected to see the modest drooping of the eyelids peculiar to young
ladies with long lashes, but he was disappointed; for Aurora Floyd was
looking straight before her, neither at him, nor at the lights, nor the
flowers, nor the dancers, but far away into vacancy. She was so young,
prosperous, admired, and beloved, that it was difficult to account for
the dim shadow of trouble that clouded her glorious eyes.
While he was wondering what he should say to her, she lifted her
eyes to his face, and asked him the strangest question he had ever
heard from girlish lips.
"Do you know if Thunderbolt won the Leger?" she asked.
He was too much confounded to answer for a moment, and she continued
rather impatiently, "They must have heard by six o'clock this evening
in London; but I have asked half a dozen people here to-night, and no
one seems to know anything about it."
Talbot's close-cropped hair seemed lifted from his head as he
listened to this terrible address. Good heavens! what a horrible woman!
The hussar's vivid imagination pictured the heir of all the Raleigh
Bulstrodes receiving his infantine impressions from such a mother. She
would teach him to read out of the Racing Calendar; she would invent a
royal alphabet of the turf, and tell him that "D stands for Derby, old
England's great race," and "E stands for Epsom, a crack meeting-place,"
etc. He told Miss Floyd that he had never been to Doncaster in his
life, that he had never read a sporting paper, and that he knew no more
of Thunderbolt than of King Cheops.
She looked at him rather contemptuously. "Cheops wasn't much," she
said; "but he won the Liverpool Autumn Cup in Blink Bonny's year."
Talbot Bulstrode shuddered afresh; but a feeling of pity mingled
with his horror. "If I had a sister," he thought, "I would get her to
talk to this miserable girl, and bring her to a sense of her iniquity."
Aurora said no more to the Captain of Hussars, but relapsed into the
old far-away gaze into vacancy, and sat twisting a bracelet round and
round upon her finely-modelled wrist. It was a diamond bracelet, worth
a couple of hundred pounds, which had been given her that day by her
father. He would have invested all his fortune in Messrs. Hunt and
Roskell's cunning handiwork if Aurora had sighed for gems and gewgaws.
Miss Floyd's glance fell upon the glittering ornament, and she looked
at it long and earnestly, rather as if she were calculating the value
of the stones than admiring the taste of the workmanship.
While Talbot was watching her, full of wondering pity and horror, a
young man hurried up to the spot where she was seated, and reminded her
of an engagement for the quadrille that was forming. She looked at her
tablets of ivory, gold, and turquoise, and with a certain disdainful
weariness rose and took his arm. Talbot followed her receding form.
Taller than most among the throng, her queenly head was not soon lost
sight of.
"A Cleopatra with a snub nose two sizes too small for her face, and
a taste for horse-flesh!" said Talbot Bulstrode, ruminating upon the
departed divinity. "She ought to carry a betting-book instead of those
ivory tablets. How distraite she was all the time she sat here!
I dare say she has made a book for the Leger, and was calculating how
much she stands to lose. What will this poor old banker do with her?
put her into a mad-house, or get her elected a member of the jockey
club? With her black eyes and fifty thousand pounds, she might lead the
sporting world. There has been a female pope, why should there not be a
female 'Napoleon of the Turf?'"
Later, when the rustling leaves of the trees in Beckenham Woods were
shivering in that cold gray hour which precedes the advent of the dawn.
Talbot Bulstrode drove his friend away from the banker's lighted
mansion. He talked of Aurora Floyd during the whole of that long
cross-country drive. He was merciless to her follies; he ridiculed, he
abused, he sneered at and condemned her questionable taste. He bade
Francis Louis Maldon marry her at his peril, and wished him joy of such a wife. He declared that if he had such a sister he would
shoot her, unless she reformed and burnt her betting-book. He worked
himself up into a savage humor about the young lady's delinquencies,
and talked of her as if she had done him an unpardonable injury by
entertaining a taste for the turf; till at last the poor meek young
ensign plucked up a spirit, and told his superior officer that Aurora
Floyd was a very jolly girl, and a good girl, and a perfect lady, and
that if she did want to know who won the Leger, it was no business of
Captain Bulstrode's, and that he, Bulstrode, needn't make such a
howling about it.
While the two men are getting to high words about her, Aurora is
seated in her dressing-room, listening to Lucy Floyd's babble about the
ball.
"There was never such a delightful party," that young lady said;
"and did Aurora see so-and-so, and so-and-so, and so-and-so? and above
all, did she observe Captain Bulstrode, who had served all through the
Crimean war, and who walked lame, and was the son of Sir John Walter
Raleigh Bulstrode, of Bulstrode Castle, near Camelford?"
Aurora shook her head with a weary gesture. No, she hadn't noticed
any of these people. Poor Lucy's childish talk was stopped in a moment.
"You are tired, Aurora dear," she said; "how cruel I am to worry
you!"
Aurora threw her arms about her cousin's neck, and hid her face upon
Lucy's white shoulder.
"I am tired," she said, "very, very tired."
She spoke with such an utterly despairing weariness in her tone,
that her gentle cousin was alarmed by her words.
"You are not unhappy, dear Aurora?" she asked, anxiously.
"No, no, only tired. There, go, Lucy. Good-night, good-night."
She gently pushed her cousin from the room, rejected the services of
her maid, and dismissed her also. Then, tired as she was, she removed
the candle from the dressing-table to a desk on the other side of the
room, and, seating herself at this desk, unlocked it and took from one
of its inmost recesses the soiled pencil scrawl which had been given
her a week before by the man who tried to sell her a dog in Cockspur
street.
The diamond bracelet, Archibald Floyd's birthday gift to his
daughter, lay in its nest of satin and velvet upon Aurora's
dressing-table. She took the morocco case in her hand, looked for a few
moments at the jewel, and then shut the lid of the little casket with a
sharp metallic snap.
"The tears were in my father's eyes when he clapsed the bracelet on
my arm," she said, as she reseated herself at the desk. "If he could
see me now!"
She wrapped the case in a sheet of foolscap, secured the parcel in
several places with red wax and a plain seal, and directed it thus:
"J. C.,
Care of Mr. Joseph Green,
Bell Inn,
Doncaster."
Early the next morning Miss Floyd drove her aunt and cousin into
Croydon, and, leaving them at a Berlin wool-shop, went alone to the
post-office, where she registered and posted this valuable parcel.
CHAPTER IV.
AFTER THE BALL.
Two days after Aurora's birthnight festival, Talbot Bulstrode's
phaeton dashed once more into the avenue at Felden Woods. Again the
captain made a sacrifice on the shrine of friendship, and drove Francis
Maldon from Windsor to Beckenham, in order that the young cornet might
make those anxious inquiries about the health of the ladies of Mr.
Floyd's household, which, by a pleasant social fiction, are supposed to
be necessary after an evening of intermittent waltzes and quadrilles.
The junior officer was very grateful for this kindness; for Talbot,
though the best of fellows, was not much given to putting himself out
of the way for the pleasure of other people. It would have been far
pleasanter to the captain to dawdle away the day in his own rooms,
lolling over those erudite works which his brother officers described
by the generic title of "heavy reading," or, according to the popular
belief of those hare-brained young men, employed in squaring the circle
in the solitude of his chamber.
Talbot Bulstrode was altogether an inscrutable personage to his
comrades of the 11th Hussars. His black-letter folios, his polished
mahogany cases of mathematical instruments, his proof-before-letters
engravings, were the fopperies of a young Oxonian rather than an
officer who had fought and bled at Inkermann. The young men who
breakfasted with him in his rooms trembled as they read the titles of
the big books on the shelves, and stared helplessly at the grim saints
and angular angels in the pre-Raphaelite prints upon the walls. They
dared not even propose to smoke in those sacred chambers, and were
ashamed of the wet impressions of the rims of the Moselle bottles which
they left upon the mahogany cases.
It seemed natural to people to be afraid of Talbot Bulstrode, just
as little boys are frightened of a beadle, a policeman, and a
school-master, even before they have been told the attributes of these
terrible beings. The colonel of the 11th Hussars, a portly gentleman,
who rode fifteen stone, and wrote his name high in the peerage, was
frightened of Talbot. That cold gray eye struck a silent awe into the
hearts of men and women with its straight, penetrating gaze, that
always seemed to be telling them they were found out. The colonel was
afraid to tell his best stories when Talbot was at the mess-table, for
he had a dim consciousness that the captain was aware of the
discrepancies in those brilliant anecdotes, though that officer had
never implied a doubt by either look or gesture. The Irish adjutant
forgot to brag about his conquests among the fair sex; the younger men
dropped their voices when they talked to each other of the side-scenes
at Her Majesty's Theatre; and the corks flew faster, and the laughter
grew louder, when Talbot left the room.
The captain knew that he was more respected than beloved, and, like
all proud men who repel the warm feelings of others in utter despite of
themselves, he was grieved and wounded because his comrades did not
become attached to him.
"Will anybody, out of all the millions on this wide earth, ever love
me!" he thought. "No one ever has as yet—not even my father and
mother. They have been proud of me, but they have never loved me. How
many a young profligate has brought his parents' gray hairs with sorrow
to the grave, and has been beloved with the last heart-beat of those he
destroyed as I have never been in my life! Perhaps my mother would have
loved me better if I had given her more trouble; if I had scattered the
name of Bulstrode all over London upon post-obits and dishonored
acceptances; if I had been drummed out of my regiment, and had walked
down to Cornwall without shoes or stockings, to fall at her feet, and
sob out my sins and sorrows in her lap, and ask her to mortgage her
jointure for the payment of my debts. But I have never asked anything
of her, dear soul, except her love, and that she has been unable to
give me. I suppose it is because I do not know how to ask. How often
have I sat by her side at Bulstrode, talking of all sorts of
indifferent subjects, yet with a vague yearning at my heart to throw
myself upon her breast, and implore of her to love and bless her son,
but held aloof by some icy barrier that I have been powerless all my
life to break down. What woman has ever loved me? Not one. They have
tried to marry me because I shall be Sir Talbot Bulstrode of Bulstrode
Castle; but how soon they have left off angling for the prize, and
shrunk away from me chilled and disheartened! I shudder when I remember
that I shall be three-and-thirty next March, and that I have never been
beloved. I shall sell out, now the fighting is over, for I am of no use
among the fellows here; and, if any good little thing would fall in
love with me, I would marry her and take her down to Bulstrode, to my
mother and father, and turn country gentleman."
Talbot Bulstrode made this declaration in all sincerity. He wished
that some good and pure creature would fall in love with him, in order
that he might marry her. He wanted some spontaneous exhibition of
innocent feeling which might justify him in saying "I am beloved!" He
felt little capacity for loving on his own side, but he thought that he
would be grateful to any good woman who would regard him with
disinterested affection, and that he would devote his life to making
her happy.
"It would be something to feel that if I were smashed in a railway
accident, or dropped out of a balloon, some one creature in this world
would think it a lonelier place for the lack of me. I wonder whether my
children would love me? I dare say not. I should freeze their young
affections with the Latin grammar, and they would tremble as they
passed the door of my study, and hush their voices into a frightened
whisper when papa was within hearing."
Talbot Bulstrode's ideal of woman was some gentle and feminine
creature crowned with an aureole of pale auburn hair; some timid soul
with downcast eyes, fringed with golden-tinted lashes; some shrinking
being, as pale and prim as the mediæval saints in his pre-Raphaelite
engravings, spotless as her own white robes, excelling in all womanly
graces and accomplishments, but only exhibiting them in the narrow
circle of a home.
Perhaps Talbot thought that he had met with his ideal when he
entered the long drawing-room at Felden Woods with Cornet Maldon, on
the seventeenth of September, 1857.
Lucy Floyd was standing by an open piano, with her white dress and
pale golden hair bathed in a flood of autumn sunlight. That sunlit
figure came back to Talbot's memory long afterward, after a stormy
interval, in which it had been blotted away and forgotten, and the long
drawing-room stretched itself out like a picture before his eyes.
Yes, this was his ideal—this graceful girl, with the shimmering
light for ever playing upon her hair, and the modest droop in her white
eyelids. But, undemonstrative as usual, Captain Bulstrode seated
himself near the piano, after the brief ceremony of greeting, and
contemplated Lucy with grave eyes that betrayed no especial admiration.
He had not taken much notice of Lucy Floyd on the night of the ball;
indeed, Lucy was scarcely a candle-light beauty; her hair wanted the
sunshine gleaming through it to light up the golden halo about her
face, and the delicate pink of her cheeks waxed pale in the glare of
the great chandeliers.
While Captain Bulstrode was watching Lucy with that grave,
contemplative gaze, trying to find out whether she was in any way
different from other girls he had known, and whether the purity of her
delicate beauty was more than skin deep, the window opposite to him was
darkened, and Aurora Floyd stood between him and the sunshine.
The banker's daughter paused on the threshold of the open window,
holding the collar of an immense mastiff in both her hands, and looking
irresolutely into the room.
Miss Floyd hated morning callers, and she was debating within
herself whether she had been seen, or whether it might be possible to
steal away unperceived.
But the dog set up a big bark, and settled the question.
"Quiet, Bow-wow," she said; "quiet, quiet, boy."
"Yes, the dog was called Bow-wow. He was twelve years old, and
Aurora had so christened him in her seventh year, when he was a
blundering, big-headed puppy, that sprawled upon the table during the
little girl's lessons, upset ink-bottles over her copy-books, and ate
whole chapters of Pinnock's abridged histories.
The gentlemen rose at the sound of her voice, and Miss Floyd came
into the room and sat down at a little distance from the captain and
her cousin, twirling a straw hat in her hand and staring at her dog,
who seated himself resolutely by her chair, knocking double knocks of
good temper upon the carpet with his big tail.
Though she said very little, and seated herself in a careless
attitude that bespoke complete indifference to her visitors, Aurora's
beauty extinguished poor Lucy as the rising sun extinguishes the stars.
The thick plaits of her black hair made a great diadem upon her low
forehead, and crowned her an Eastern empress—an empress with a
doubtful nose, it is true, but an empress who reigned by right divine
of her eyes and hair. For do not these wonderful black eyes, which
perhaps shine upon us only once in a lifetime, in themselves constitute
a royalty?
Talbot Bulstrode turned away from his ideal to look at this
dark-haired goddess, with a coarse straw hat in her hand and a big
mastiff's head lying on her lap. Again he perceived that abstraction in
her manner which had puzzled him upon the night of the ball. She
listened to her visitors politely, and she answered them when they
spoke to her, but it seemed to Talbot as if she constrained herself to
attend to them by an effort.
"She wishes me away, I dare say," he thought, "and no doubt
considers me a 'slow party' because I don't talk to her of horses and
dogs."
The captain resumed his conversation with Lucy. He found that she
talked exactly as he had heard other young ladies talk, that she knew
all they knew, and had been to the places they had visited. The ground
they went over was very old indeed, but Lucy traversed it with charming
propriety.
"She is a good little thing," Talbot thought, "and would make an
admirable wife for a country gentleman. I wish she would fall in love
with me."
Lucy told him of some excursion in Switzerland, where she had been
during the preceding autumn with her father and mother.
"And your cousin," he asked, "was she with you?"
"No; Aurora was at school in Paris with the Demoiselles Lespard."
"Lespard—Lespard!" he repeated; "a Protestant pension in the
Faubourg Saint Germain? Why, a cousin of mine is being educated
there—a Miss Trevyllian. She has been there for three or four years.
Do you remember Constance Trevyllian at the Demoiselles Lespard, Miss
Floyd?" said Talbot, addressing himself to Aurora.
"Constance Trevyllian? Yes, I remember her," answered the banker's
daughter.
She said nothing more, and for a few moments there was rather an
awkward pause.
"Miss Trevyllian is my cousin," said the captain.
"Indeed!"
"I hope that you were very good friends."
"Oh, yes."
She bent over her dog, caressing his big head, and not even looking
up as she spoke of Miss Trevyllian. It seemed as if the subject was
utterly indifferent to her, and she disdained even to affect an
interest in it.
Talbot Bulstrode bit his lip with offended pride. "I suppose this
purse-proud heiress looks down upon the Trevyllians of Tredethlin," he
thought, "because they can boast of nothing better than a few hundred
acres of barren moorland, some exhausted tin mines, and a pedigree that
dates from the days of King Arthur."
Archibald Floyd came into the drawing-room while the officers were
seated there, and bade them welcome to Felden Woods.
"A long drive, gentlemen," said he; "your horses will want a rest.
Of course you will dine with us. We shall have a full moon tonight, and
you'll have it as light as day for your drive back."
Talbot looked at Francis Lewis Maldon, who was sitting staring at
Aurora with vacant, open-mouthed admiration. The young officer knew
that the heiress and her fifty thousand pounds were not for him; but it
was scarcely the less pleasant to look at her, and wish that, like
Captain Bulstrode, he had been the eldest son of a rich baronet.
The invitation was accepted by Mr. Maldon as cordially as it had
been given, and with less than his usual stiffness of manner on the
part of Talbot.
The luncheon-bell rang while they were talking, and the little party
adjourned to the dining-room, where they found Mrs. Alexander Floyd
sitting at the bottom of the table. Talbot sat next to Lucy, with Mr.
Maldon opposite to them, while Aurora took her place beside her father.
The old man was attentive to his guests, but the shallowest observer
could have scarcely failed to notice his watchfulness of Aurora. It was
ever present in his careworn face, that tender, anxious glance which
turned to her at every pause in the conversation, and could scarcely
withdraw itself from her for the common courtesies of life. If she
spoke, he listened—listened as if every careless, half-disdainful word
concealed a deeper meaning, which it was his task to discern and
unravel. If she was silent, he watched her still more closely, seeking
perhaps to penetrate that gloomy veil which sometimes spread itself
over her handsome face.
Talbot Bulstrode was not so absorbed by his conversation with Lucy
and Mrs. Alexander as to overlook this peculiarity in the father's
manner toward his only child. He saw, too, that when Aurora addressed
the banker, it was no longer with that listless indifference, half
weariness, half disdain, which seemed natural to her on other
occasions. The eager watchfulness of Archibald Floyd was in some
measure reflected in his daughter; by fits and starts, it is true, for
she generally sank back into that moody abstraction which Captain
Bulstrode had observed on the night of the ball; but still it was
there, the same feeling as her father's, though less constant and
intense—a watchful, anxious, half-sorrowful affection, which could
scarcely exist except under abnormal circumstances. Talbot Bulstrode
was vexed to find himself wondering about this, and growing every
moment less and less attentive to Lucy's simple talk.
"What does it mean?" he thought; "has she fallen in love with some
man whom her father has forbidden her to marry, and is the old man
trying to atone for his severity? That's scarcely likely. A woman with
a head and throat like hers could scarcely fail to be
ambitious—ambitious and revengeful, rather than over-susceptible of
any tender passion. Did she lose half her fortune upon that race she
talked to me about? I'll ask her presently. Perhaps they have taken
away her betting-book, or lamed her favorite horse, or shot some pet
dog, to cure him of distemper. She is a spoiled child, of course, this
heiress, and I dare say her father would try to get a copy of the moon
made for her if she cried for that planet."
After luncheon, the banker took his guests into the gardens that
stretched far away upon two sides of the house—the gardens which poor
Eliza Floyd had helped to plan nineteen years before.
Talbot Bulstrode walked rather stiffly from his Crimean wound, but
Mrs. Alexander and her daughter suited their pace to his, while Aurora
walked before them with her father and Mr. Maldon, and with the mastiff
close at her side.
"Your cousin is rather proud, is she not?" Talbot asked Lucy, after
they had been talking of Aurora.
"Aurora proud! oh no, indeed! perhaps, if she has any fault at all
(for she is the dearest girl that ever lived), it is that she has not
sufficient pride—I mean with regard to servants, and that sort of
people. She would as soon talk to one of those gardeners as to you or
me; and you would see no difference in her manner, except that perhaps
it would be a little more cordial to them than to us. The poor people
round Felden idolize her."
"Aurora takes after her mother," said Mrs. Alexander; "she is the
living image of poor Eliza Floyd."
"Was Mrs. Floyd a countrywoman of her husband's?" Talbot asked. He
was wondering how Aurora came to have those great, brilliant black
eyes, and so much of the south in her beauty.
"No; my uncle's wife belonged to a Lancashire family."
A Lancashire family! If Talbot Raleigh Bulstrode could have known
that the family name was Prodder; that one member of the haughty house
had employed his youth in the pleasing occupations of a cabin-boy,
making thick coffee and toasting greasy herrings for the matutinal meal
of a surly captain, and receiving more corporal correction from the
sturdy toe of his master's boot than sterling copper coin of the
realm—if he could have known that the great aunt of this disdainful
creature, walking before him in all the majesty of her beauty, had once
kept a chandler's shop in an obscure street in Liverpool, and, for
aught any one but the banker knew, kept it still! But this was a
knowledge which had wisely been kept even from Aurora herself, who knew
little, except that, despite of having been born with that allegorical
silver spoon in her mouth, she was poorer than other girls, inasmuch as
she was motherless.
Mrs. Alexander, Lucy, and the captain overtook the others upon a
rustic bridge, where Talbot stopped to rest. Aurora was leaning over
the rough wooden balustrade, looking lazily at the water.
"Did your favorite win the race, Miss Floyd?" he asked, as he
watched the effect of her profile against the sunlight; not a very
beautiful profile certainly, but for the long black eyelashes, and the
radiance under them, which their darkest shadows could never hide.
"Which favorite?" she said.
"The horse you spoke to me about the other night—Thunderbolt; did
he win?"
"No."
"I am very sorry to hear it."
Aurora looked up at him, reddening angrily. "Why so?" she asked.
"Because I thought you were interested in his success."
As Talbot said this, he observed, for the first time, that Archibald
Floyd was near enough to hear their conversation, and, furthermore,
that he was regarding his daughter with even more than his usual
watchfulness.
"Do not talk to me of racing; it annoys papa," Aurora said to the
captain, dropping her voice. Talbot bowed. "I was right, then," he
thought; "the turf is the skeleton. I dare say Miss Floyd has been
doing her best to drag her father's name into the Gazette, and yet he
evidently loves her to distraction; while I—" There was something so
very pharisaical in the speech that Captain Bulstrode would not even
finish it mentally. He was thinking, "This girl, who, perhaps, has been
the cause of nights of sleepless anxiety and days of devouring care, is
tenderly beloved by her father, while I, who am a model to all the
elder sons of England, have never been loved in my life."
At half-past six the great bell at Felden Woods rang a clamorous
peal that went shivering above the trees, to tell the country-side that
the family were going to dress for dinner; and another peal at seven to
tell the villagers round Beckenham and West Wickham that Maister Floyd
and his household were going to dine; but not altogether an empty or
discordant peal, for it told the hungry poor of broken victuals and
rich and delicate meats to be had almost for asking in the servants'
offices—shreds of fricandeaux and patches of dainty preparations,
quarters of chickens and carcasses of pheasants, which would have gone
to fatten the pigs for Christmas but for Archibald Floyd's strict
commands that all should be given to those who chose to come for it.
Mr. Floyd and his visitors did not leave the gardens till after the
ladies had retired to dress. The dinner-party was very animated, for
Alexander Floyd drove down from the city to join his wife and daughter,
bringing with him the noisy boy who was just going to Eton, and who was
passionately attached to his cousin Aurora; and whether it was owing to
the influence of this young gentleman, or to that fitfulness which
seemed a part of her nature, Talbot Bulstrode could not discover, but
certain it was that the dark cloud melted away from Miss Floyd's face,
and she abandoned herself to the joyousness of the hour with a radiant
grace that reminded her father of the night when Eliza Percival played
Lady Teazel for the last time, and took her farewell of the stage in
the little Lancashire theatre.
It needed but this change in his daughter to make Archibald Floyd
thoroughly happy. Aurora's smiles seemed to shed a revivifying
influence upon the whole circle. The ice melted away, for the sun had
broken out, and the winter was gone at last. Talbot Bulstrode
bewildered his brain by trying to discover why it was that this woman
was such a peerless and fascinating creature. Why it was that, argue as
he would against the fact, he was nevertheless allowing himself to be
bewitched by this black-eyed siren—freely drinking of that cup of bang which she presented to him, and rapidly becoming intoxicated.
"I could almost fall in love with my fair-haired ideal," he thought,
"but I can not help admiring this extraordinary girl. She is like Mrs.
Nisbett in her zenith of fame and beauty; she is like Cleopatra sailing
down the Cydnus; she is like Nell Gwynne selling oranges; she is like
Lola Montez giving battle to the Bavarian students; she is like
Charlotte Corday with the knife in her hand, standing behind the friend
of the people in his bath; she is like everything that is beautiful,
and strange, and wicked, and unwomanly, and bewitching; and she is just
the sort of creature that many a fool would fall in love with."
He put the length of the room between himself and the enchantress,
and took his seat by the grand piano, at which Lucy Floyd was playing
slow harmonious symphonies of Beethoven. The drawing-room at Felden
Woods was so long that, seated by this piano, Captain Bulstrode seemed
to look back at the merry group about the heiress as he might have
looked at a scene on the stage from the back of the boxes. He almost
wished for an opera-glass as he watched Aurora's graceful gestures and
the play of her sparkling eyes; and then, turning to the piano, he
listened to the drowsy music, and contemplated Lucy's face,
marvellously fair in the light of that full moon of which Archibald
Floyd had spoken, the glory of which, streaming in from an open window,
put out the dim wax candles on the piano.
All that Aurora's beauty most lacked was richly possessed by Lucy.
Delicacy of outline, perfection of feature, purity of tint, all were
there; but, while one face dazzled you by its shining splendor, the
other impressed you only with a feeble sense of its charms, slow to
come, and quick to pass away. There are so many Lucys, but so few
Auroras; and while you never could be critical with the one, you were
merciless in your scrutiny of the other. Talbot Bulstrode was attracted
to Lucy by a vague notion that she was just the good and timid creature
who was destined to make him happy; but he looked at her as calmly as
if she had been a statue, and was as fully aware of her defects as a
sculptor who criticises the work of a rival.
But she was exactly the sort of woman to make a good wife. She had
been educated to that end by a careful mother. Purity and goodness had
watched over her and hemmed her in from the cradle. She had never seen
unseemly sights, or heard unseemly sounds. She was as ignorant as a
baby of all the vices and horrors of this big world. She was ladylike,
accomplished, well-informed; and if there were a great many others of
precisely the same type of graceful womanhood, it was certainly the
highest type, and the holiest, and the best.
Later in the evening, when Captain Bulstrode's phaeton was brought
round to the flight of steps in front of the great doors, the little
party assembled on the terrace to see the two officers depart, and the
banker told his guests how he hoped this visit to Felden would be the
beginning of a lasting acquaintance.
"I am going to take Aurora and my niece to Brighton for a month or
so," he said, as he shook hands with the captain, "but on our return
you must let us see you as often as possible."
Talbot bowed, and stammered his thanks for the banker's cordiality.
Aurora and her cousin, Percy Floyd, the young Etonian, had gone down
the steps, and were admiring Captain Bulstrode's thorough-bred bays,
and the captain was not a little distracted by the picture the group
made in the moonlight.
He never forgot that picture. Aurora, with her coronet of plaits
dead black against the purple air, and her silk dress shimmering in the
uncertain light, the delicate head of the bay horse visible above her
shoulder, and her ringed white hands caressing the animal's slender
ears, while the purblind old mastiff, vaguely jealous, whined
complainingly at her side.
How marvellous is the sympathy which exists between some people and
the brute creation! I think that horses and dogs understood every word
that Aurora said to them—that they worshipped her from the dim depths
of their inarticulate souls, and would have willingly gone to death to
do her service. Talbot observed all this with an uneasy sense of
bewilderment.
"I wonder whether these creatures are wiser than we?" he thought;
"do they recognize some higher attributes in this girl than we can
perceive, and worship their sublime presence? If this terrible woman,
with her unfeminine tastes and mysterious propensities, were mean, or
cowardly, or false, or impure, I do not think that mastiff would love
her as he does; I do not think my thorough-breds would let her hands
meddle with their bridles; the dog would snarl, and the horses would
bite, as such animals used to do in those remote old days when they
recognized witchcraft and evil spirits, and were convulsed by the
presence of the uncanny. I dare say this Miss Floyd is a good,
generous-hearted creature—the sort of person fast men would call a
glorious girl—but as well-read in the Racing Calendar and Ruff's Guide as other ladies in Miss Yonge's novels. I'm really
sorry for her."
CHAPTER V.
JOHN MELLISH.
The house which the banker hired at Brighton for the month of
October was perched high up on the East Cliff, towering loftily above
the wind-driven waves; the rugged coast of Dieppe was dimly visible
from the upper windows in the clear autumn mornings, and the Chain Pier
looked like a strip of ribbon below the cliff—a pleasanter situation,
to my mind, than those level terraces toward the west, from the windows
of which the sea appears of small extent, and the horizon within half a
mile or so of the Parade.
Before Mr. Floyd took his daughter and her cousin to Brighton, he
entered into an arrangement which he thought, no doubt, a very great
evidence of his wisdom; this was the engagement of a lady, who was to
be a compound governess, companion, and chaperon to Aurora, who, as her
aunt said, was sadly in need of some accomplished and watchful person,
whose care it would be to train and prune those exuberant branches of
her nature which had been suffered to grow as they would from her
infancy. The beautiful shrub was no longer to trail its wild stems
along the ground, or shoot upward to the blue skies at its own sweet
will; it was to be trimmed, and clipped, and fastened primly to the
stony wall of society with cruel nails and galling strips of cloth. In
other words, an advertisement was inserted in the Times
newspaper, setting forth that a lady by birth and education was
required as finishing governess and companion in the household of a
gentleman to whom salary was no object, provided the aforesaid lady was
perfect mistress of all the accomplishments under the sun, and was
altogether such an exceptional and extraordinary being as could only
exist in the advertising columns of a popular journal.
But if the world had been filled with exceptional beings, Mr. Floyd
could scarcely have received more answers to his advertisement than
came pelting in upon the unhappy little postmaster at Beckenham. The
man had serious thoughts of hiring a cart in which to convey the
letters to Felden. If the banker had advertised for a wife, and had
stated the amount of his income, he could scarcely have had more
answers. It seemed as if the female population of London, with one
accord, was seized with the desire to improve the mind and form the
manners of the daughter of the gentleman to whom terms were no object.
Officers' widows, clergymen's widows, lawyers' and merchants' widows,
daughters of gentlemen of high family but reduced means, orphan
daughters of all sorts of noble and distinguished people, declared
themselves each and every one to be the person who, out of all living
creatures upon this earth, was best adapted for the post. Mrs.
Alexander Floyd selected six letters, threw the rest into the
waste-paper basket, ordered the banker's carriage, and drove into town
to see the six writers thereof. She was a practical and energetic
woman, and she put the six applicants through their facings so severely
that when she returned to Mr. Floyd it was to announce that only one of
them was good for anything, and that she was coming down to Felden
Woods the next day.
The chosen lady was the widow of an ensign who had died within six
months of his marriage, and about an hour and a half before he would
have succeeded to some enormous property, the particulars of which were
never rightly understood by the friends of his unfortunate relict. But,
vague as the story night be, it was quite clear enough to establish
Mrs. Walter Powell in life as a disappointed woman. She was a woman
with straight light hair, and a lady-like droop of the head—a woman
who had left school to marry, and after six months wedded life, had
gone back to the same school as instructress of the junior pupils—a
woman whose whole existence had been spent in teaching and being
taught; who had exercised in her earlier years a species of
hand-to-mouth tuition, teaching in the morning that which she learned
over night; who had never lost an opportunity of improving herself; who
had grown mechanically proficient as a musician and an artist, who had
a certain parrot-like skill in foreign languages, who had read all the
books incumbent upon her to read, and who knew all things imperative
for her to know, and who, beyond all this, and outside the boundary of
the school-room wall, was ignorant, and soulless, and low-minded, and
vulgar. Aurora swallowed the bitter pill as best she might, and
accepted Mrs. Powell as the person chartered for her improvement—a
kind of ballast to be flung into the wandering bark, to steady its
erratic course, and keep it off rocks and quicksands.
"I must put up with her, Lucy, I suppose," she said, "and I must
consent to be improved and formed by the poor, faded creature. I wonder
whether she will be like Miss Drummond, who used to let me off from my
lesson and read novels while I ran wild in the gardens and stables. I
can put up with her, Lucy, as long as I have you with me; but I think I
should go mad if I were to be chained up alone with that grim,
pale-faced watch-dog."
Mr. Floyd and his family drove from Felden to Brighton in the
banker's roomy travelling carriage, with Aurora's maid in the rumble, a
pile of imperials upon the roof, and Mrs. Powell, with her young
charges, in the interior of the vehicle. Mrs. Alexander had gone back
to Fulham, having done her duty, as she considered, in securing a
protectress for Aurora; but Lucy was to stay with her cousin at
Brighton, and to ride with her on the downs. The saddle-horses had gone
down the day before with Aurora's groom, a gray-haired and rather surly
old fellow who had served Archibald Floyd for thirty years; and the
mastiff called Bow-wow travelled in the carriage with his mistress.
About a week after the arrival at Brighton, Aurora and her cousin
were walking together on the West Cliff, when a gentleman with a stiff
leg rose from a bench upon which he had been seated listening to the
band, and slowly advanced to them. Lucy dropped her eyelids with a
faint blush, but Aurora held out her hand in answer to Captain
Bulstrode's salute.
"I thought I should be sure to meet you down here, Miss Floyd," he
said. "I only came this morning, and I was going to call at Folthorpe's
for your papa's address. Is he quite well?"
"Quite—yes, that is—pretty well." A shadow stole over her face as
she spoke. It was a wonderful face for fitful lights and shades. "But
we did not expect to see you at Brighton, Captain Bulstrode; we thought
your regiment was still quartered at Windsor."
"Yes, my regiment—that is, the Eleventh is still at Windsor; but I
have sold out."
"Sold out!" Both Aurora and her cousin opened their eyes at this
intelligence.
"Yes; I was tired of the army. It's dull work now the fighting is
all over. I might have exchanged and gone to India, certainly," he
added, as if in answer to some argument of his own; "but I'm getting
middle-aged, and I am tired of roaming about the world."
"I should like to go to India," said Aurora, looking seaward as she
spoke.
"You, Aurora! but why?" exclaimed Lucy.
"Because I hate England."
"I thought it was France you disliked?"
"I hate them both. What is the use of this big world if we are to
stop for ever in one place, chained to one set of ideas, fettered to
one narrow circle of people, seeing and hearing of the persons we hate
for ever and ever, and unable to get away from the odious sound of
their names? I should like to turn female missionary, and go to the
centre of Africa with Dr. Livingstone and his family—and I would go if
it was n't for papa."
Poor Lucy stared at her cousin in helpless amazement. Talbot
Bulstrode found himself falling back into that state of bewilderment in
which this girl always threw him. What did she mean, this heiress of
nineteen years of age, by her fits of despondency and outbursts of
bitterness? Was it not perhaps, after all, only an affectation of
singularity?
Aurora looked at him with her brightest smile while he was asking
himself this question. "You will come and see papa?" she said.
Captain Bulstrode declared that he desired no greater happiness than
to pay his respects to Mr. Floyd, in token whereof he walked with the
young ladies toward the East Cliff.
From that morning the officer became a constant visitor at the
banker's. He played chess with Lucy, accompanied her on the piano when
she sang, assisted her with valuable hints when she painted in
water-colors, put in lights here, and glimpses of sky there, deepened
autumnal browns, and intensified horizon purples, and made himself
altogether useful to the young lady, who was, as we know, accomplished
in all lady-like arts. Mrs. Powell, seated in one of the windows of the
pleasant drawing-room, shed the benignant light of her faded
countenance and pale blue eyes upon the two young people, and
represented all the proprieties in her own person. Aurora, when the
weather prevented her riding, occupied herself more restlessly than
profitably by taking up books and tossing them down, pulling Bow-wow's
ears, staring out of the windows, drawing caricatures of the
promenaders on the cliff, and dragging out a wonderful little watch,
with a bunch of dangling inexplicable golden absurdities, to see what
o'clock it was.
Talbot Bulstrode, while leaning over Lucy's piano or drawing-board,
or pondering about the next move of his queen, had ample leisure to
watch the movements of Miss Floyd, and to be shocked at the purposeless
manner in which that young lady spent the rainy mornings. Sometimes he
saw her poring over Bell's Life, much to the horror of Mrs.
Walter Powell, who had a vague idea of the iniquitous proceedings
recited in that terrible journal, but who was afraid to stretch her
authority so far as to forbid its perusal.
Mrs. Powell looked with silent approbation upon the growing
familiarity between gentle Lucy Floyd and the captain. She had feared
at first that Talbot was an admirer of Aurora's; but the manner of the
two soon dispelled her alarm. Nothing could be more cordial than Miss
Floyd's treatment of the officer; but she displayed the same
indifference to him that she did to everything else except her dog and
her father. Was it possible that wellnigh perfect face and those
haughty graces had no charm for the banker's daughter? Could it be that
she could spend hour after hour in the society of the handsomest and
most aristocratic man she had ever met, and yet be as heart-whole as
when the acquaintance began? There was one person in the little party
who was for ever asking that question, and never able to answer it to
her own satisfaction, and that person was Lucy Floyd. Poor Lucy Floyd,
who was engaged, night and day, in mentally playing that old German
game which Faust and Margaret played together with the full-blown rose
in the garden—"He loves me—loves me not!"
Mrs. Walter Powell's shallow-sighted blue eyes might behold in Lucy
Captain Bulstrode's attraction to the East Cliff, but Lucy herself knew
better—bitterly, cruelly better.
"Captain Bulstrode's attentions to Miss Lucy Floyd were most
evident," Mrs. Powell said one day when the captain left, after a long
morning's music, and singing, and chess. How Lucy hated the prim
phrase! None knew so well as she the value of those "attentions." They
had been at Brighton six weeks, and for the last five the captain had
been with them nearly every morning. He had ridden with them on the
downs, and driven with them to the Dike, and lounged beside them
listening to the band, and stood behind them in their box at the pretty
little theatre, and crushed with them into the Pavilion to hear Grisi,
and Mario, and Alboni, and poor Bosio. He had attended them through the
whole round of Brighton amusements, and had never seemed weary of their
companionship. But for all this, Lucy knew what the last leaf upon the
rose would tell her when the many petals should be plucked away, and
the poor stem be left bare. She knew how often he forgot to turn over
the leaf in the Beethoven sonatas, how often he put streaks of green
into a horizon that should have been purple, and touched up the trees
in her foreground with rose-pink, and suffered himself to be
ignominiously checkmated from sheer inattention, and gave her
wandering, random answers when she spoke to him. She knew how restless
he was when Aurora read Bell's Life, and how the very crackle of
the newspaper made him wince with nervous pain. She knew how tender he
was of the purblind mastiff, how eager to be friends with him, how
almost sycophantic in his attentions to the big, stately animal. Lucy
knew, in short, that which Talbot as yet did not know himself—she knew
that he was fast falling head over heels in love with her cousin, and
she had, at the same time, a vague idea that he would much rather have
fallen in love with herself, and that he was blindly struggling with
the growing passion.
It was so; he was falling in love with Aurora. The more he protested
against her, the more determinedly he exaggerated her follies, and
argued with himself upon the folly of loving her, so much the more
surely did he love her. The very battle he was fighting kept her for
ever in his mind, until he grew the veriest slave of the lovely vision
which he only evoked in order to endeavor to exorcise.
"How could he take her down to Bulstrode, and introduce her to his
father and mother?" he thought; and at the thought she appeared to him
illuminating the old Cornish mansion by the radiance of her beauty,
fascinating his father, bewitching his mother, riding across the
moorland on her thorough-bred mare, and driving all the parish mad with
admiration of her.
He felt that his visits to Mr. Floyd's house were fast compromising
him in the eyes of its inmates. Sometimes he felt himself bound in
honor to make Lucy an offer of his hand; sometimes he argued that no
one had any right to consider his attentions more particular to one
than to the other of the young ladies. If he had known of that weary
game which Lucy was for ever mentally playing with the imaginary rose,
I am sure he would not have lost an hour in proposing to her; but Mrs.
Alexander's daughter had been far too well educated to betray one
emotion of her heart, and she bore her girlish agonies, and concealed
her hourly tortures, with the quiet patience common to these simple,
womanly martyrs. She knew that the last leaf must soon be plucked, and
the sweet pain of uncertainty be for ever ended.
Heaven knows how long Talbot Bulstrode might have done battle with
his growing passion had it not been for an event which put an end to
his indecision, and made him desperate. This event was the appearance
of a rival.
He was walking with Aurora and Lucy upon the West Cliff one
afternoon in November, when a mail phaeton and pair suddenly drew up
against the railings that separated them from the road, and a big man,
with huge masses of Scotch plaid twisted about his waist and shoulders,
sprang out of the vehicle, splashing the mud upon his legs, and rushed
up to Talbot, taking off his hat as he approached, and bowing
apologetically to the ladies.
"Why, Bulstrode," he said, "who on earth would have thought of
seeing you here? I heard you were in India, man; but what have you done
to your leg?"
He was so breathless with hurry and excitement that he was utterly
indifferent to punctuation, and it seemed as much as he could do to
keep silence while Talbot introduced him to the ladies as Mr. Mellish,
an old friend and school-fellow. The stranger stared with such
open-mouthed admiration at Miss Floyd's black eyes that the captain
turned round upon him almost savagely as he asked what had brought him to Brighton.
"The hunting-season, my boy. Tired of Yorkshire; know every field,
ditch, hedge, pond, sunk fence, and scrap of timber in the three
Ridings. I'm staying at the Bedford; I've got my stud with me—give
you a mount to-morrow morning if you like. Harriers meet at
eleven—Dike Road. I've a gray that'll suit you to a nicety—carry my
weight, and as easy to sit as your arm-chair."
Talbot hated his friend for talking of horses; he felt a jealous
terror of him. This, perhaps, was the sort of man whose society would
be agreeable to Aurora—this big, empty-headed Yorkshireman, with his
babble about his stud and hunting-appointments. But, turning sharply
round to scrutinize Miss Floyd, he was gratified to find that young
lady looking vacantly upon the gathering mists upon the sea, and
apparently unconscious of Mr. John Mellish, of Mellish Park, Yorkshire.
This John Mellish was, as I have said, a big man, looking even
bigger than he was by reason of about eight yards length of thick
shepherd's plaid twisted scientifically about his shoulders. He was a
man of thirty years of age at least, but having withal such a boyish
exuberance in his manner, such a youthful and innocent joyousness in
his face, that he might have been a youngster of eighteen just let
loose from some public academy of the muscular Christianity school. I
think the Rev. Charles Kingsley would have delighted in this big,
hearty, broad-chested young Englishman, with brown hair brushed away
from an open forehead, and a thick, brown mustache, bordering a mouth
for ever ready to expand into a laugh. Such a laugh, too! such a hearty
and sonorous peal, that the people on the Parade turned round to look
at the owner of those sturdy lungs, and smiled good-naturedly for very
sympathy with his honest merriment.
Talbot Bulstrode would have given a hundred pounds to get rid of the
noisy Yorkshireman. What business had he at Brighton? Was n't the
biggest county in England big enough to hold him, that he must needs
bring his North-country bluster to Sussex for the annoyance of Talbot's
friends?
Captain Bulstrode was not any better pleased when, strolling a
little farther on, the party met with Archibald Floyd, who had come out
to look for his daughter. The old man begged to be introduced to Mr.
Mellish, and invited the honest Yorkshireman to dine at the East Cliff
that very evening, much to the aggravation of Talbot, who fell sulkily
back, and allowed John to make the acquaintance of the ladies. The
familiar brute ingratiated himself into their good graces in about ten
minutes, and by the time they reached the banker's house was more at
his case with Aurora than the heir of Bulstrode after two months
acquaintance. He accompanied them to the door-step, shook hands with
the ladies and Mr. Floyd, patted the mastiff Bow-wow, gave Talbot a
playful sledge hammer-like slap upon the shoulder, and ran back to the
Bedford to dress for dinner. His spirits were so high that he knocked
over little boys and tumbled against fashionable young men, who drew
themselves up in stiff amazement as the big fellow dashed past them. He
sang a scrap of a hunting-song as he ran up the great staircase to his
eyry at the Bedford, and chattered to his valet as he dressed. He
seemed a creature especially created to be prosperous—to be the owner
and dispenser of wealth, the distributor of good things. People who
were strangers to him ran after him and served him on speculation,
knowing instinctively that they would get an ample reward for their
trouble. Waiters in a coffee-room deserted other tables to attend upon
that at which he was seated. Box-keepers would leave parties of six
shivering in the dreary corridors while they found a seat for John
Mellish. Mendicants picked him out from the crowd in a busy
thoroughfare, and hung about him, and would not be driven away without
a dole from the pocket of his roomy waistcoat. He was always spending
his money for the convenience of other people. He had an army of old
servants at Mellish Park, who adored him, and tyrannized over him after
the manner of their kind. His stables were crowded with horses that
were lame, or wall-eyed, or otherwise disqualified for service, but
that lived on his bounty like a set of jolly equine paupers, and
consumed as much corn as would have supplied a racing-stud. He was
perpetually paying for things he neither ordered nor had, and was for
ever being cheated by the dear honest creatures about him, who, for all
they did their best to ruin him, would have gone through typical fire
and water to serve him, and would have clung to him, and worked for
him, and supported him out of those very savings for which they had
robbed him, when the ruin came. If "Muster John" had a headache, every
creature in that disorderly household was unhappy and uneasy till the
ailment was cured; every lad in the stables, every servant-maid in the
house, was eager that his or her remedy should be tried for his
restoration. If you had said at Mellish Park that John's fair face and
broad shoulders were not the highest forms of manly beauty and grace,
you would have been set down as a creature devoid of all taste and
judgment. To the mind of that household, John Mellish in "pink" and
pipe-clayed tops was more beautiful than the Apollo Belvidere whose
bronze image in little adorned a niche in the hall. If you had told
them that fourteen-stone weight was not indispensable to manly
perfection, or that it was possible there were more lofty
accomplishments than driving unicorns, or shooting forty-seven head of
game in a morning, or pulling the bay mare's shoulder into joint that
time she got a sprain in the hunting-field, or vanquishing Joe
Millings, the East Riding smasher, without so much as losing breath,
those simple-hearted Yorkshire servants would have fairly laughed in
your face. Talbot Bulstrode complained that everybody respected him,
and nobody loved him. John Mellish might have uttered the reverse of
this complaint, had he been so minded. Who could help loving the
honest, generous squire, whose house and purse were open to all the
country-side? Who could feel any chilling amount of respect for the
friendly and familiar master who sat upon the table in the big kitchen
at Mellish Park, with his dogs and servants round him, and gave them
the history of the day's adventures in the hunting-field, till the old
blind fox-hound at his feet lifted his big head and set up a feeble
music? No; John Mellish was well content to be beloved, and never
questioned the quality of the affection bestowed upon him. To him it
was all the purest virgin gold; and you might have talked to him for
twelve hours at a sitting without convincing him that men and women
were vile and mercenary creatures, and that if his servants, and his
tenantry, and the poor about his estate, loved him, it was for the sake
of the temporal benefits they received of him. He was as unsuspicious
as a child, who believes that the fairies in a pantomime are fairies
for ever and ever, and that the harlequin is born in patches and a
mask. He was as open to flattery as a school-girl who distributes the
contents of her hamper among a circle of toadies. When people told him
he was a fine fellow, he believed them, and agreed with them, and
thought that the world was altogether a hearty, honest place, and that
everybody was a fine fellow. Never having an arrière pensée
himself, he looked for none in the words of other people, but thought
that every one blurted out their real opinions, and offended or pleased
their fellows as frankly and blunderingly as himself. If he had been a
vicious young man, he would no doubt have gone altogether to the bad,
and fallen among thieves; but, being blessed with a nature that was
inherently pure and innocent, his greatest follies were no worse than
those of a big school-boy who errs from very exuberance of spirit. He
had lost his mother in the first year of his infancy, and his father
had died some time before his majority; so there had been none to
restrain his actions, and it was something at thirty years of age to be
able to look back upon a stainless boyhood and youth, which might have
been befouled with the slime of the gutters, and infected with the odor
of villanous haunts? Had he not reason to be proud of this?
Is there anything, after all, so grand as a pure and unsullied
life—a fair picture, with no ugly shadows lurking in the background—a
smooth poem, with no crooked, halting line to mar the verse—a noble
book, with no unholy page—a simple story, such as our children may
read? Can any greatness be greater? can any nobility be more truly
noble? When a whole nation mourned with one voice but a few weeks
since; when we drew down our blinds, and shut out the dull light of the
December day, and listened sadly to the far booming of the guns; when
the poorest put aside their work-a-day troubles to weep for a widowed
queen and orphaned children in a desolate palace; when rough
omnibus-drivers forgot to blaspheme at each other, and tied decent
scraps of crape upon their whips, and went sorrowfully about their
common business, thinking of that great sorrow at Windsor, the words
that rose simultaneously to every lip dwelt most upon the spotless
character of him who was lost—the tender husband, the watchful father,
the kindly master, the liberal patron, the temperate adviser, the
stainless gentleman.
It is many years since England mourned for another royal personage
who was called a "gentleman"—a gentleman who played practical jokes,
and held infamous orgies, and persecuted a wretched foreign woman,
whose chief sin and misfortune it was to be his wife—a gentleman who
cut out his own nether garments, and left the companion of his gayest
revels, the genius whose brightness had flung a spurious lustre upon
the dreary saturnalia of vice, to die destitute and despairing. Surely
there is some hope that we have changed for the better within the last
thirty years, inasmuch as we attach a new meaning to-day to this simple
title of "gentleman." I take some pride, therefore, in the two young
men of whom I write, for the simple reason that I have no dark patches
to gloss over in the history of either of them. I may fail in making
you like them, but I can promise that you shall have no cause to be
ashamed of them. Talbot Bulstrode may offend you with his sulky pride,
John Mellish may simply impress you as a blundering, countrified
ignoramus, but neither of them shall ever shock you by an ugly word or
an unholy thought.
CHAPTER VI.
REJECTED AND ACCEPTED.
The dinner-party at Mr. Floyd's was a very merry one; and when John
Mellish and Talbot Bulstrode left the East Cliff to walk westward at
eleven o'clock at night, the Yorkshireman told his friend that he had
never enjoyed himself so much in his life. This declaration must,
however, be taken with some reserve, for it was one which John was in
the habit of making about three times a week; but he really had been
very happy in the society of the banker's family, and, what was more,
he was ready to adore Aurora Floyd without any further preparation
whatever.
A few bright smiles and sparkling glances, a little animated
conversation about the hunting-field and the race-course, combined with
a few glasses of those effervescent wines which Archibald Floyd
imported from the fair Moselle country, had been quite enough to turn
the head of John Mellish, and to cause him to hold wildly forth in the
moonlight upon the merits of the beautiful heiress.
"I verily believe I shall die a bachelor, Talbot," he said, "unless
I can get that girl to marry me. I've only known her half a dozen
hours, and I'm head over heels in love with her already. What is it
that has knocked me over like this, Bulstrode? I've seen other girls
with black eyes and hair, and she knows no more of horses than half the
women in Yorkshire; so it is n't that. What is it, then, hey?"
He came to a full stop against a lamp-post, and stared fiercely at
his friend as he asked this question.
Talbot gnashed his teeth in silence.
It was no use battling with his fate, then, he thought; the
fascination of this woman had the same effect upon others as upon
himself; and while he was arguing with, and protesting against, his
passion, some brainless fellow, like this Mellish, would step in and
win the prize.
He wished his friend good-night upon the steps of the Old Ship
Hotel, and walked straight to his room, where he sat with his window
open to the mild November night, staring out at the moonlit sea. He
determined to propose to Aurora Floyd before twelve o'clock the next
day.
Why should he hesitate?
He had asked himself that question a hundred times before, and had
always been unable to answer it; and yet he had hesitated. He could not
dispossess himself of a vague idea that there was some mystery in this
girl's life; some secret known only to herself and her father; some one
spot upon the history of the past which cast a shadow on the present.
And yet, how could that be? How could that be, he asked himself, when
her whole life only amounted to nineteen years, and he had heard the
history of those years over and over again? How often he had artfully
led Lucy to tell him the simple story of her cousin's girlhood—the
governesses and masters that had come and gone at Felden Woods—the
ponies and dogs, and puppies and kittens, and petted foals; the little
scarlet riding-habit that had been made for the heiress when she rode
after the hounds with her cousin Andrew Floyd. The worst blots that the
officer could discover in those early years were a few broken china
vases, and a great deal of ink spilled over badly-written French
exercises; and, after being educated at home until she was nearly
eighteen, Aurora had been transferred to a Parisian finishing
school—and that was all. Her life had been the every-day life of other
girls of her own position, and she differed from them only in being a
great deal more fascinating, and a little more wilful, than the
majority.
Talbot laughed at himself for his doubts and hesitations. "What a
suspicious brute I must be," he said, "when I imagine I have fallen
upon the clew to some mystery simply because there is a mournful
tenderness in the old man's voice when he speaks to his only child! If
I were sixty-seven years of age, and had such a daughter as Aurora,
would there not always be a shuddering terror mingled with my love—a
horrible dread that something would happen to take her away from me? I
will propose to Miss Floyd to-morrow."
Had Talbot been thoroughly candid with himself, he would perhaps
have added, "Or John Mellish will make her an offer the day after."
Captain Bulstrode presented himself at the house on the East Cliff
some time before noon on the next day, but he found Mr. Mellish on the
door-step talking to Miss Floyd's groom and inspecting the horses,
which were waiting for the young ladies; for the young ladies were
going to ride, and John Mellish was going to ride with them.
"But if you'll join us, Bulstrode," the Yorkshireman said,
good-naturedly, "you can ride the gray I spoke of yesterday.—Saunders
shall go back and fetch him."
Talbot rejected this offer rather sulkily. "I've my own horses here,
thank you," he answered. "But if you'll let your groom ride down to the
stables and tell my man to bring them up, I shall be obliged to you."
After which condescending request Captain Bulstrode turned his back
upon his friend, crossed the road, and, folding his arms upon the
railings, stared resolutely at the sea. But in five minutes more the
ladies appeared upon the door-step, and Talbot, turning at the sound of
their voices, was fain to cross the road once more for the chance of
taking Aurora's foot in his hand as she sprang into her saddle; but
John Mellish was before him again, and Miss Floyd's mare was curveting
under the touch of her right hand before the captain could interfere.
He allowed the groom to attend to Lucy, and, mounting as quickly as his
stiff leg would allow him, he prepared to take his place by Aurora's
side. Again he was too late; Miss Floyd had cantered down the hill
attended by Mellish, and it was impossible for Talbot to leave poor
Lucy, who was a timid horsewoman.
The captain never admired Lucy so little as on horseback. His pale
saint with the halo of golden hair seemed to him sadly out of place in
a side-saddle. He looked back at the day of his morning visit to
Felden, and remembered how he had admired her, and how exactly she
corresponded with his ideal, and how determined he was to be bewitched
with her rather than by Aurora. "If she had fallen in love with me," he
thought, "I would have snapped my fingers at the black-browed heiress,
and married this fair-haired angel out of hand. I meant to do that when
I sold my commission. It was not for Aurora's sake I left the army, it
was not Aurora whom I followed down here. Which did I follow? What did
I follow, I wonder? My destiny, I suppose, which is leading me through
such a witch's dance as I never thought to tread at the sober age of
three-and-thirty. If Lucy had only loved me, it might have been all
different."
He was so angry with himself that he was half inclined to be angry
with poor Lucy for not extracting him from the snares of Aurora. If he
could have read that innocent heart as he rode in sulky silence across
the stunted turf on the wide downs—if he could have known the slow,
sick pain in that gentle breast, as the quiet girl by his side lifted
her blue eyes every now and then to steal a glance at his hard profile
and moody brow—if he could have read her secret later, when, talking
of Aurora, he for the first time clearly betrayed the mystery of his
own heart—if he could have known how the landscape grew dim before her
eyes, and how the brown moorland reeled beneath her horse's hoofs until
they seemed going down, down, down into some fathomless depth of sorrow
and despair! But he knew nothing of this, and he thought Lucy Floyd a
pretty, inanimate girl, who would no doubt be delighted to wear a
becoming dress as bridesmaid at her cousin's wedding.
There was a dinner-party that evening upon the East Cliff, at which
both John Mellish and Talbot were to assist, and the captain savagely
determined to bring matters to an issue before the night was out.
Talbot Raleigh Bulstrode would have been very angry with you had you
watched him too closely that evening as he fastened the golden
solitaire in his narrow cravat before his looking-glass in the
bow-window at the Old Ship. He was ashamed of himself for being
causelessly savage with his valet, whom he dismissed abruptly before he
began to dress, and had not the courage to call the man back again when
his own hot hands refused to do their office. He spilled half a
bottleful of perfume upon his varnished boots, and smeared his face
with a terrible waxy compound which promised to lisser sans graisser
his mustache. He broke one of the crystal boxes in his dressing-case,
and put the bits of broken glass in his waistcoat-pocket from sheer
absence of mind. He underwent semi-strangulation with the unbending
circular collar in which, as a gentleman, it was his duty to invest
himself; and he could have beaten the ivory backs of his brushes upon
his head in blind execration of that short, stubborn black hair, which
only curled at the other ends; and, when at last he emerged from
his room, it was with a spiteful sensation that every waiter in the
place knew his secret, and had a perfect knowledge of every emotion in
his breast, and that the very Newfoundland dog lying on the door-step
had an inkling of the truth, as he lifted up his big head to look at
the captain, and then dropped it again with a contemptuously lazy yawn.
Captain Bulstrode offered a handful of broken glass to the man who
drove him to the East Cliff, and then confusedly substituted about
fifteen shillings worth of silver coin for that abnormal species of
payment. There must have been two or three earthquakes and an eclipse
or so going on in some part of the globe, he thought, for this jog-trot
planet seemed all tumult and confusion to Talbot Bulstrode. The world
was all Brighton, and Brighton was all blue moonlight, and
steel-colored sea, and glancing, dazzling gas-light, and hare-soup, and
cod and oysters, and Aurora Floyd—yes, Aurora Floyd, who wore a white
silk dress, and a thick circlet of dull gold upon her hair, who looked
more like Cleopatra to-night than ever, and who suffered Mr. John
Mellish to take her down to dinner. How Talbot hated the Yorkshireman's
big fair face, and blue eyes, and white teeth, as he watched the two
young people across a phalanx of glass and silver, and flowers and wax
candles, and pickles, and other Fortnum and Mason ware! Here was a
golden opportunity lost, thought the discontented captain, forgetful
that he could scarcely have proposed to Miss Floyd at the dinner-table,
amid the jingle of glasses and popping of corks, and with a big
powdered footman charging at him with a side-dish or a sauce-tureen
while he put the fatal question. The desired moment came a few hours
afterward, and Talbot had no longer any excuse for delay.
The November evening was mild, and the three windows in the
drawing-room were open from floor to ceiling. It was pleasant to look
out from the hot gas-light upon that wide sweep of moonlit ocean, with
a white sail glimmering here and there against the purple night.
Captain Bulstrode sat near one of the open windows, watching that
tranquil scene, with, I fear, very little appreciation of its beauty.
He was wishing that the people would drop off and leave him alone with
Aurora. It was close upon eleven o'clock, and high time they went. John
Mellish would of course insist upon waiting for Talbot; this was what a
man had to endure on account of some old school-boy acquaintance. All
Rugby might turn up against him in a day or two, and dispute with him
for Aurora's smiles. But John Mellish was engaged in a very animated
conversation with Archibald Floyd, having contrived, with consummate
artifice, to ingratiate himself in the old man's favor, and, the
visitors having one by one dropped off, Aurora, with a listless yawn
that she took little pains to conceal, strolled out into the broad iron
balcony. Lucy was sitting at a table at the other end of the room,
looking at a book of beauty. Oh, my poor Lucy! how much did you see of
the Honorable Miss Brownsmith's high forehead and Roman nose? Did not
that young lady's handsome face stare up at you dimly through a
blinding mist of tears that you were a great deal too well educated to
shed? The chance had come at last. If life had been a Haymarket comedy,
and the entrances and exits arranged by Mr. Buckstone himself, it could
have fallen out no better than this. Talbot Bulstrode followed Aurora
on to the balcony; John Mellish went on with his story about the
Beverly fox-hounds; and Lucy, holding her breath at the other end of
the room, knew as well what was going to happen as the captain himself.
Is not life altogether a long comedy, with Fate for the
stage-manager, and Passion, Inclination, Love, Hate, Revenge, Ambition,
and Avarice, by turns, in the prompter's box? A tiresome comedy
sometimes, with dreary, talkee, talkee front scenes which come to
nothing, but only serve to make the audience more impatient as they
wait while the stage is set and the great people change their dresses;
or a "sensation" comedy, with unlooked-for tableaux and unexpected dénoûments; but a comedy to the end of the chapter, for the sorrows
which seem tragic to us are very funny when seen from the other side of
the foot-lights; and our friends in the pit are as much amused with our
trumpery griefs as the Haymarket habitués when Mr. Box finds his
gridiron empty, or Mr. Cox misses his rasher. What can be funnier than
other people's anguish? Why do we enjoy Mr. Maddison Morton's farces,
and laugh till the tears run down our cheeks at the comedian who enacts
them? Because there is scarcely a farce upon the British stage which is
not, from the rising to the dropping of the curtain, a record of human
anguish and undeserved misery. Yes, undeserved and unnecessary
torture—there is the special charm of the entertainment. If the man
who was weak enough to send his wife to Camberwell had crushed a
baby behind a chest of drawers, his sufferings would n't be half so
delightful to an intellectual audience. If the gentleman who became
embroiled with his laundress had murdered the young lady in the
green boots, where would be the fun of that old Adelphi farce in which
poor Wright was wont to delight us? And so it is with our friends on
the other side of the foot-lights, who enjoy our troubles all the more
because we have not always deserved them, and whose sorrows we shall
gloat over by and by, when the bell for the next piece begins, and it
is their turn to go on and act.
Talbot Bulstrode went out on to the balcony, and the earth stood
still for ten minutes or so, and every steel-blue star in the sky
glared watchfully down upon the young man in this the supreme crisis of
his life.
Aurora was leaning against a slender iron pilaster, looking aslant
into the town, and across the town into the sea. She was wrapped in an
opera cloak; no stiff, embroidered, young ladified garment, but a
voluminous drapery of soft scarlet woollen stuff, such as Semiramide
herself might have worn. "She looks like Semiramide," Talbot thought.
"How did this Scotch banker and his Lancashire wife come to have an
Assyrian for their daughter?"
He began brilliantly, this young man, as lovers generally do.
"I am afraid you must have fatigued yourself this evening, Miss
Floyd," he remarked.
Aurora stifled a yawn as she answered him. "I am rather tired," she
said.
It was n't very encouraging. How was he to begin an eloquent speech,
when she might fall asleep in the middle of it? But he did; he dashed
at once into the heart of his subject, and he told her how he loved
her; how he had done battle with this passion, which had been too
strong for him; how he loved her as he never thought to love any
creature upon this earth; and how he cast himself before her in all
humility, to take his sentence of life or death from her dear lips.
She was silent for some moments, her profile sharply distinct to him
in the moonlight, and those dear lips trembling visibly. Then, with a
half-averted face, and in words that seemed to come slowly and
painfully from a stifled throat, she gave him his answer.
That answer was a rejection!
Not a young lady's No, which means yes to-morrow, or which means
perhaps that you have not been on your knees in a passion of despair,
like Lord Edward Fitz Morkysh in Miss Oderose's last novel. Nothing of
this kind; but a calm negative, carefully and tersely worded, as if she
feared to mislead him by so much as one syllable that could leave a
loop-hole through which hope might creep into his heart. He was
rejected. For a moment it was quite as much as he could do to believe
it. He was inclined to imagine that the signification of certain words
had suddenly changed, or that he had been in the habit of mistaking
them all his life, rather than that those words meant this hard fact,
namely, that he, Talbot Raleigh Bulstrode, of Bulstrode Castle, and of
Saxon extraction, had been rejected by the daughter of a Lombard-street
banker.
He paused—for an hour and a half or so, as it seemed to him—in
order to collect himself before he spoke again.
"May I—venture to inquire," he said—how horribly commonplace the
phrase seemed; he could have used no worse had he been inquiring for
furnished lodgings—"may I ask if any prior attachment—to one more
worthy—"
"Oh no, no, no!"
The answer came upon him so suddenly that it almost startled him as
much as her rejection.
"And yet your decision is irrevocable?"
"Quite irrevocable."
"Forgive me if I am intrusive; but—but Mr. Floyd may perhaps have
formed some higher views."
He was interrupted by a stifled sob as she clasped her hands over
her averted face.
"Higher views!" she said; "poor, dear old man, no, no, indeed."
"It is scarcely strange that I bore you with these questions. It is
so hard to think that, meeting you with your affections disengaged, I
have yet been utterly unable to win one shadow of regard upon which I
might build a hope for the future."
Poor Talbot! Talbot, the splitter of metaphysical straws and chopper
of logic, talking of building hopes on shadows with a lover's delirious
stupidity.
"It is so hard to resign every thought of your ever coming to alter
your decision of tonight, Aurora"—he lingered on her name for a
moment, first because it was so sweet to say it, and, secondly, in the
hope that she would speak—"it is so hard to remember the fabric of
happiness I had dared to build, and to lay it down here to-night for
ever."
Talbot quite forgot that, up to the time of the arrival of John
Mellish, he had been perpetually arguing against his passion, and had
declared to himself over and over again that he would be a consummmate
fool if he was ever beguiled into making Aurora his wife. He reversed
the parable of the fox; for he had been inclined to make faces at the
grapes while he fancied them within his reach, and, now that they were
removed from his grasp, he thought that such delicious fruit had never
grown to tempt mankind.
"If—if," he said, "my fate had been happier, I know how proud my
father, poor old Sir John, would have been of his eldest son's choice."
How ashamed he felt of the meanness of this speech! The artful
sentence had been constructed in order to remind Aurora whom she was
refusing. He was trying to bribe her with the baronetcy which was to be
his in due time. But she made no answer to the pitiful appeal. Talbot
was almost choked with mortification. "I see—I see," he said, "that it
is hopeless. Good-night, Miss Floyd."
She did not even turn to look at him as he left the balcony; but,
with her red drapery wrapped tightly round her, stood shivering in the
moonlight, with the silent tears slowly stealing down her cheeks.
"Higher views!" she cried bitterly, repeating a phrase that Talbot
used—"higher views! God help him!"
"I must wish you good-night and good-by at the same time," Captain
Bulstrode said as he shook hands with Lucy.
"Good-by?"
"Yes; I leave Brighton early to-morrow."
"So suddenly?"
"Why not exactly suddenly. I always meant to travel this winter. Can
I do anything for you—at Cairo?"
He was so pale, and cold, and wretched-looking that she almost
pitied him in spite of the wild joy growing up in her heart. Aurora had
refused him—it was perfectly clear—refused him! The soft blue
eyes filled with tears at the thought that a demigod should have
endured such humiliation. Talbot pressed her hand gently in his own
clammy palm. He could read pity in that tender look, but possessed no
lexicon by which he could translate its deeper meaning.
"You will wish your uncle good-by for me, Lucy," he said. He called
her Lucy for the first time; but what did it matter now? His great
affliction set him apart from his fellowmen, and gave him dismal
privileges. "Good-night, Lucy; good-night and good-by. I—I—shall hope
to see you again in a year or two."
The pavement of the East Cliff seemed so much air beneath Talbot
Bulstrode's boots as he strode back to the Old Ship; for it is peculiar
to us, in our moments of supreme trouble or joy, to lose all
consciousness of the earth we tread, and to float upon the atmosphere
of sublime egotism.
But the captain did not leave Brighton the next day on the first
stage of his Egyptian journey. He staid at the fashionable
watering-place; but he resolutely abjured the neighborhood of the East
Cliff, and, the day being wet, took a pleasant walk to Shoreham through
the rain; and Shoreham being such a pretty place, he was, no doubt,
much enlivened by that exercise.
Returning through the fog at about four o'clock, the captain met Mr.
John Mellish close against the turnpike outside Cliftonville.
The two men stared aghast at each other.
"Why, where on earth are you going?" asked Talbot.
"Back to Yorkshire by the first train that leaves Brighton."
"But this is n't the way to the station!"
"No; but they're putting the horses in my portmanteau, and my shirts
are going by the Leeds cattle-train, and—"
Talbot Bulstrode burst into a loud laugh, a harsh and bitter
cachinnation, but affording wondrous relief to that gentleman's
over-charged breast.
"John Mellish," he said, "you have been proposing to Aurora Floyd."
The Yorkshireman turned scarlet. "It—it—was n't honorable of her
to tell you," he stammered.
"Miss Floyd has never breathed a word to me upon the subject. I've
just come from Shoreham, and you've only lately left the East Cliff.
You've proposed, and you've been rejected."
"I have," roared John; "and it's doosed hard, when I promised her
she should keep a racing-stud if she liked, and enter as many colts as
she pleased for the Derby, and give her own orders to the trainer, and
I'd never interfere; and—and—Mellish Park is one of the finest places
in the county; and I'd have won her a bit of blue ribbon to tie up her
bonny black hair."
"That old Frenchman was right," muttered Captain Bulstrode; "there
is a great satisfaction in the misfortunes of others. If I go to my
dentist, I like to find another wretch in the waiting-room; and I like
to have my tooth extracted first, and to see him glare enviously at me
as I come out of the torture-chamber, knowing that my troubles are
over, while his are to come. Good-by, John Mellish, and God bless you.
You're not such a bad fellow, after all."
Talbot felt almost cheerful as he walked back to the Ship, and he
took a mutton cutlet and tomato sauce, and a pint of Moselle for his
dinner; and the food and wine warmed him; and, not having slept a wink
on the previous night, he fell into a heavy indigestible slumber, with
his head hanging over the sofa-cushion, and dreamed that he was at
Grand Cairo (or at a place which would have been that city had it not
been now and then Bulstrode Castle, and occasionally chambers in the
Albany), and that Aurora Floyd was with him, clad in imperial purple,
with hieroglyphics on the hem of her robe, and wearing a clown's jacket
of white satin and scarlet spots, such as he had once seen foremost in
a great race. Captain Bulstrode arose early the next morning, with the
full intention of departing from Sussex by the 8.45 express; but
suddenly remembering that he had but poorly acknowledged Archibald
Floyd's cordiality, he determined on sacrificing his inclinations on
the shrine of courtesy, and calling once more at the East Cliff to take
leave of the banker. Having once resolved upon this line of action, the
captain would fain have hurried that moment to Mr. Floyd's house; but,
finding that it was only half-past seven, he was compelled to restrain
his impatience and await a more seasonable hour. Could he go at nine?
Scarcely. At ten? Yes, surely, as he could then leave by the eleven
o'clock train. He sent his breakfast away untouched, and sat looking at
his watch in a mad hurry for the time to pass, yet growing hot and
uncomfortable as the hour drew near.
At a quarter to ten he put on his hat and left the hotel. Mr. Floyd
was at home, the servant told him—up stairs in the little study, he
thought. Talbot waited for no more. "You need not announce me," he
said; "I know where to find your master."
The study was on the same floor as the drawing-room, and close
against the drawing-room door Talbot paused for a moment. The door was
open; the room empty—no, not empty: Aurora Floyd was there, seated
with her back toward him, and her head leaning on the cushions of her
chair. He stopped for another moment to admire the back view of that
small head, with its crown of lustrous raven hair, then took a step or
two in the direction of the banker's study, then stopped again, then
turned back, went into the drawing-room, and shut the door behind him.
She did not stir as he approached her, nor answer when he stammered
her name. Her face was as white as the face of a dead woman, and her
nerveless hands hung over the cushions of the arm-chair. A newspaper
was lying at her feet. She had quietly swooned away sitting there by
herself, with no one by to restore her to consciousness.
Talbot flung some flowers from a vase on the table, and dashed the
water over Aurora's forehead; then, wheeling her chair close to the
open window, he set her with her face to the wind. In two or three
moments she began to shiver violently, and soon afterward opened her
eyes and looked at him; as she did so, she put her hands to her head,
as if trying to remember something. "Talbot!" she said, "Talbot!"
She called him by his Christian name, she who five-and-thirty hours
before had coldly forbidden him to hope.
"Aurora," he cried, "Aurora, I thought I came here to wish your
father good-by; but I deceived myself. I came to ask you once more, and
once for all, if your decision of the night before last was
irrevocable?"
"Heaven knows I thought it was when I uttered it."
"But it was not?"
"Do you wish me to revoke it?"
"Do I wish? do I—"
"Because, if you really do, I will revoke it: for you are a brave
and honorable man, Captain Bulstrode, and I love you very dearly."
Heaven knows into what rhapsodies he might have fallen, but she put
up her hand, as much as to say, "Forbear to-day, if you love me," and
hurried from the room. He had accepted the cup of bang which the
siren had offered, and had drained the very dregs thereof, and was
drunken. He dropped into the chair in which Aurora had sat, and,
absent-minded in his joyful intoxication, picked up the newspaper that
had lain at her feet. He shuddered in spite of himself as he looked at
the title of the journal; it was Bell's Life—a dirty copy,
crumpled, and beer-stained, and emitting rank odors of inferior
tobacco. It was directed to Miss Floyd, in such sprawling penmanship as
might have disgraced the pot-boy of a sporting public house:
"MISS FLOID,
fell dun wodes,
kent."
The newspaper had been redirected to Aurora by the housekeeper at
Felden. Talbot ran his eye eagerly over the front page; it was almost
entirely filled with advertisements (and such advertisements!), but in
one column there was an account headed "FRIGHTFUL ACCIDENT IN GERMANY:
AN ENGLISH JOCKEY KILLED."
Captain Bulstrode never knew why he read of this accident. It was in
no way interesting to him, being an account of a steeple-chase in
Prussia, in which a heavy English rider and a crack French horse had
been killed. There was a great deal of regret expressed for the loss of
the horse, and none for the man who had ridden him, who, the reporter
stated, was very little known in sporting-circles; but in a paragraph
lower down was added this information, evidently procured at the last
moment: "The jockey's name was Conyers."
CHAPTER VII.
AURORA'S STRANGE PENSIONER.
Archibald Floyd received the news of his daughter's choice with
evident pride and satisfaction. It seemed as if some heavy burden had
been taken away, as if some cruel shadow had been lifted from the lives
of father and daughter.
The banker took his family back to Felden Woods, with Talbot
Bulstrode in his train; and the chintz rooms—pretty, cheerful
chambers, with bow-windows that looked across the well-kept stable-yard
into long glades of oak and beech—were prepared for the ex-Hussar, who
was to spend his Christmas at Felden.
Mrs. Alexander and her husband were established with their family in
the western wing; Mr. and Mrs. Andrew were located at the eastern
angle; for it was the hospitable custom of the old banker to summon his
kinsfolk about him early in December, and to keep them with him till
the bells of romantic Beckenham church had heralded in the New Year.
Lucy Floyd's cheeks had lost much of their delicate color when she
returned to Felden and it was pronounced by all who observed the change
that the air of East Cliff, and the autumn winds drifting across the
bleak downs, had been too much for the young lady's strength.
Aurora seemed to have burst forth into some new and more glorious
beauty since the morning upon which she had accepted the hand of Talbot
Bulstrode. There was a proud defiance in her manner, which became her
better than gentleness becomes far lovelier women. There was a haughty insouciance about this young lady which gave new brilliancy to her
great black eyes, and new music to her joyous laugh. She was like some
beautiful, noisy, boisterous water-fall, for ever dancing, rushing,
sparkling, scintillating, and utterly defying you to do anything but
admire it. Talbot Bulstrode, having once abandoned himself to the spell
of the siren, made no farther struggle, but fairly fell into the
pitfalls of her eyes, and was entangled in the meshy net-work of her
blue-black hair. The greater the tension of the bowstring, the stronger
the rebound thereof; and Talbot Bulstrode was as weak to give way at
last as he had long been powerful to resist. I must write his story in
the commonest words. He could not help it! He loved her; not because he
thought her better, or wiser, or lovelier, or more suited to him than
many other women—indeed, he had grave doubts upon every one of these
points—but because it was his destiny, and he loved her.
What is that hard word which M. Victor Hugo puts into the mouth of
the priest in The Hunchback of Notre Dame as an excuse for the
darkness of his sin? Anakthe!It was his fate. So he wrote to his
mother, and told her that he had chosen a wife who was to sit in the
halls of Bulstrode, and whose name was to be interwoven with the
chronicles of the house; told her, moreover, that Miss Floyd was a
banker's daughter, beautiful and fascinating, with big black eyes, and
fifty thousand pounds for her dowry. Lady Raleigh Bulstrode answered
her son's letter upon a quarter of a quire of note-paper, filled with
fearful motherly prayers and suggestions; anxious hopes that he had
chosen wisely; questionings as to the opinions and religious principles
of the young lady—much, indeed, that Talbot would have been sorely
puzzled to answer. Inclosed in this was a letter to Aurora, a womanly
and tender epistle, in which pride was tempered with love, and which
brought big tears welling up to Miss Floyd's eyes, until Lady
Bulstrode's firm penmanship grew blotted and blurred beneath the
reader's vision.
And whither went poor slaughtered John Mellish? He returned to
Mellish Park, carrying with him his dogs, and horses, and grooms, and
phaeton, and other paraphernalia; but his grief—having unluckily come
upon him after the racing season—was too much for him, and he fled
away from the roomy old mansion, with its pleasant surroundings of park
and woodland: for Aurora Floyd was not for him, and it was all flat,
stale, and unprofitable. So he went to Paris, or Parry, as he
called that imperial city, and established himself in the biggest
chambers at Meurice's, and went backward and forward between that
establishment and Galignani's ten times a day in quest of the English
papers. He dined drearily at Véfour's, the Trois Frères, and the Café
de Paris. His big voice was heard at every expensive dining-place in
Paris, ordering "Toos killyar de mellyour: vous savez;" but he
sent the daintiest dishes away untasted, and would sit for a quarter of
an hour counting the toothpicks in the tiny blue vases, and thinking of
Aurora. He rode dismally in the Bois de Boulogne, and sat shivering in cafés chantants, listening to songs that always seemed set to the
same melody. He haunted the circuses, and was wellnigh in love with a
fair manége rider, who had black eyes, and reminded him of
Aurora; till, upon buying the most powerful opera-glass that the Rue de
Rivoli could afford, he discovered that the lady's face was an inch
deep in a certain whitewash called blanc rosati, and that the
chief glory of her eyes were the rings of Indian ink which surrounded
them. He could have dashed that double-barrelled truth-revealer to the
ground, and trodden the lenses to powder with his heel, in his passion
of despair; better to have been for ever deceived, to have gone on
believing that woman to be like Aurora, and to have gone to that circus
every night until his hair grew white, but not with age, and until he
pined away and died.
The party at Felden Woods was a very joyous one. The voices of
children made the house pleasant; noisy lads from Eton and Westminster
clambered about the balustrades of the staircases, and played
battledoor and shuttlecock upon the long stone terrace. These young
people were all cousins to Aurora Floyd, and loved the banker's
daughter with a childish worship, which mild Lucy could never inspire.
It was pleasant to Talbot Bulstrode to see that, wherever his future
wife trod, love and admiration waited upon her footsteps. He was not
singular in his passion for this glorious creature, and it could be,
after all, no such terrible folly to love one who was beloved by all
who knew her. So the proud Cornishman was happy, and gave himself up to
his happiness without farther protest.
Did Aurora love him? Did she make him due return for the passionate
devotion, the blind adoration? She admired and esteemed him; she was
proud of him—proud of that very pride in his nature which made him so
different to herself, and she was too impulsive and truthful a creature
to keep this sentiment a secret from her lover. She revealed, too, a
constant desire to please her betrothed husband, suppressing, at least,
all outward token of the tastes that were so unpleasant to him. No more
copies of Bell's Life littered the ladies' morning-room at
Felden; and when Andrew Floyd asked Aurora to ride to meet with him,
his cousin refused the offer, which would once have been so welcome.
Instead of following the Croydon hounds, Miss Floyd was content to
drive Talbot and Lucy in a basket carriage through the frost-bespangled
country-side. Lucy was always the companion and confidante of the
lovers; it was hard for her to hear their happy talk of the bright
future stretching far away before them—stretching down, down the
shadowy aisles of Time, to an escutcheoned tomb at Bulstrode, where
husband and wife would lie down, full of years and honors, in the days
to come. It was hard to have to help them to plan a thousand schemes of
pleasure, in which—Heaven pity her!—she was to join; but she bore her
cross meekly, this pale Elaine of modern days, and she never told
Talbot Bulstrode that she had gone mad and loved him, and was fain to
die.
Talbot and Aurora were both concerned to see the pale cheeks of
their gentle companion; but everybody was ready to ascribe them to a
cold, or a cough, or constitutional debility, or some other bodily
evil, which was to be cured by drugs and boluses; and no one for a
moment imagined that anything could possibly be amiss with a young lady
who lived in a luxurious house, went shopping in a carriage and pair,
and had more pocket-money than she cared to spend. But the lily maid of
Astolat lived in a lordly castle, and had doubtless ample pocket-money
to buy gorgeous silks for her embroidery, and had little on earth to
wish for, and nothing to do, whereby she fell sick for love of Sir
Lancelot, and pined and died.
Surely the secret of many sorrows lies in this. How many a grief has
been bred of idleness and leisure! How many a Spartan youth has nursed
a bosom-devouring fox for very lack of better employment! Do the
gentlemen who write the leaders in our daily journals ever die of
grief? Do the barristers whose names appear in almost every case
reported in those journals go mad for love unrequited? Did the LADY
WITH THE LAMP cherish any foolish passion in those days and nights of
ceaseless toil, in those long watches of patient devotion far away in
the East? Do the curates of over-crowded parishes, the chaplains of
jails and convict-ships, the great medical attendants in the wards of
hospitals—do they make for themselves the griefs that kill? Surely
not. With the busiest of us there may be some holy moments, some
sacred hour snatched from the noise and confusion of the revolving
wheel of Life's machinery, and offered up as a sacrifice to sorrow and
care; but the interval is brief, and the great wheel rolls on, and we
have no time to pine or die.
So Lucy Floyd, having nothing better to do, nursed and made much of
her hopeless passion. She set up an altar for the skeleton, and
worshipped at the shrine of her grief; and when people told her of her
pale face, and the family doctor wondered at the failure of his quinine
mixture, perhaps she nourished a vague hope that before the spring-time
came back again, bringing with it the wedding-day of Talbot and Aurora,
she would have escaped from all this demonstrative love and happiness,
and be at rest.
Aurora answered Lady Raleigh Bulstrode's letter with an epistle
expressive of such gratitude and humility, such earnest hope of winning
the love of Talbot's mother, mingled with a dim fearfulness of never
being worthy of that affection, as won the Cornish lady's regard for
her future daughter. It was difficult to associate the impetuous girl
with that letter, and Lady Bulstrode made an image of the writer that
very much differed from the fearless and dashing original. She wrote
Aurora a second letter, more affectionately worded than the first, and
promised the motherless girl a daughter's welcome at Bulstrode.
"Will she ever let me call her 'mother,' Talbot?" Aurora asked, as
she read Lady Bulstrode's second letter to her lover. "She is very
proud, is she not—proud of your ancient descent. My father comes from
a Glasgow mercantile family, and I do not even know anything about my
mother's relations."
Talbot answered her with a grave smile.
"She will accept you for your native worth, dearest Aurora," he
said, "and will ask no foolish questions about the pedigree of such a
man as Archibald Floyd—a man whom the proudest aristocrat in England
might be glad to call his father-in-law. She will reverence my Aurora's
transparent soul and candid nature, and will bless me for the choice I
have made."
"I shall love her very dearly if she will only let me. Should I have
ever cared about horse-racing, and read sporting papers, if I could
have called a good woman 'mother?'"
She seemed to ask this question rather of herself than of Talbot.
Complete as was Archibald Floyd's satisfaction at his daughter's
disposal of her heart, the old man could not calmly contemplate a
separation from this idolized daughter; so Aurora told Talbot that she
could never take up her abode in Cornwall during her father's lifetime;
and it was finally arranged that the young couple were to spend half
the year in London, and the other half at Felden Woods. What need had
the lonely widower of that roomy mansion, with its long picture-gallery
and snug suites of apartments, each of them large enough to accommodate
a small family? What need had one solitary old man of that retinue of
servants, the costly stud in the stables, the new-fangled vehicles in
the coach-houses, the hot-house flowers, the pines, and grapes, and
peaches, cultivated by three Scottish gardeners? What need had he of
these things? He lived principally in the study, in which he had once
had a stormy interview with his only child; the study in which hung the
crayon portrait of Eliza Floyd; the room which contained an
old-fashioned desk he had bought for a guinea in his boyhood, and in
which there were certain letters written by a hand that was dead, some
tresses of purple-black hair cut from the head of a corpse, and a
pasteboard ticket, printed at a little town in Lancashire, calling upon
the friends and patrons of Miss Eliza Percival to come to the theatre,
for her especial benefit, upon the night of August 20, 1837.
It was decided, therefore, that Felden Woods was to be the country
residence of Talbot and Aurora till such time as the young man should
succeed to the baronetcy and Bulstrode Castle, and be required to live
upon his estate. In the meantime the ex-Hussar was to go into
Parliament, if the electors of a certain little borough in Cornwall,
which had always sent a Bulstrode to Westminster, should be pleased to
return him.
The marriage was to take place early in May, and the honeymoon was
to be spent in Switzerland and at Bulstrode Castle. Mrs. Walter Powell
thought that her doom was sealed, and that she would have to quit those
pleasant pastures after the wedding-day; but Aurora speedily set the
mind of the ensign's widow at rest by telling her that as she, Miss
Floyd, was utterly ignorant of housekeeping, she would be happy to
retain her services after marriage as guide and adviser in such matters.
The poor about Beckenham were not forgotten in Aurora Floyd's
morning drives with Lucy and Talbot. Parcels of grocery and bottles of
wine often lurked beneath the crimson-lined leopard-skin carriage-rug;
and it was no uncommon thing for Talbot to find himself making a
footstool of a huge loaf of bread. The poor were very hungry in that
bright December weather, and had all manner of complaints, which,
however otherwise dissimilar, were all to be benefited by one especial
treatment, namely, half-sovereigns, old brown sherry, French brandy,
and gunpowder tea. Whether the daughter was dying of consumption, or
the father laid up with the rheumatics, or the husband in a raging
fever, or the youngest boy recovering from a fall into a copper of
boiling water, the above-named remedies seemed alike necessary, and
were far more popular than the chicken-broths and cooling fever-drinks,
prepared by the Felden cook. It pleased Talbot to see his betrothed
dispensing good things to the eager recipients of her bounty. It
pleased him to think how even his mother must have admired this
high-spirited girl, content to sit down in close cottage chambers and
talk to rheumatic old women. Lucy distributed little parcels of tracts
prepared by Mrs. Alexander, and flannel garments made by her own white
hands; but Aurora gave the half-sovereigns and the old sherry; and I'm
afraid these simple cottagers liked the heiress best, although they
were wise enough and just enough to know that each lady gave according
to her means.
It was in returning from a round of these charitable visits that an
adventure befell the little party which was by no means pleasing to
Captain Bulstrode.
Aurora had driven farther than usual, and it was striking four as
her ponies dashed past Beckenham church and down the hill toward Felden
Woods. The afternoon was cold and cheerless; light flakes of snow
drifted across the hard road, and hung here and there upon the leafless
hedges, and there was that inky blackness in the sky which presages a
heavy fall. The woman at the lodge ran out with her apron over her head
to open the gates as Miss Floyd's ponies approached, and at the same
moment a man rose from a bank by the road-side, and came close up to
the little carriage.
He was a broad-shouldered, stout-built fellow, wearing a shabby
velveteen cut-away coat, slashed about with abnormal pockets, and white
and greasy at the seams and elbows. His chin was muffled in two or
three yards of dirty woollen comforter, after the fashion of his kind;
and the band of his low-crowned felt hat was ornamented with a short
clay pipe, colored of a respectable blackness. A dingy white dog, with
a brass collar, bow legs, a short nose, bloodshot eyes, one ear, a
hanging jaw, and a generally supercilious expression of countenance,
rose from the bank at the same moment with his master, and growled
ominously at the elegant vehicle and the mastiff Bow-wow trotting by
its side.
The stranger was the same individual who had accosted Miss Floyd in
Cockspur street three months before.
I do not know whether Miss Floyd recognized this person; but I know
that she touched her ponies' ears with the whip, and the spirited
animals had dashed past the man, and through the gates of Felden, when
he sprang forward, caught at their heads, and stopped the light basket
carriage, which rocked under the force of his strong hand.
Talbot Bulstrode leaped from the vehicle, heedless of his stiff leg,
and caught the man by the collar.
"Let go that bridle!" he cried, lifting his cane; "how dare you stop
this lady's ponies?"
"Because I wanted to speak to her, that's why. Let go my coat, will
yer?"
The dog made at Talbot's legs, but the young man whirled round his
cane and inflicted such a chastisement upon the snub nose of that
animal as sent him into temporary retirement, howling dismally.
"You are an insolent scoundrel, and I've a good mind to—"
"You'd be hinserlent, p'raps, if yer was hungry," answered the man,
with a pitiful whine, which was meant to be conciliating. "Such weather
as this here's all very well for young swells such as you, as has your
dawgs, and guns, and 'untin'; but the winter's tryin' to a poor man's
temper when he's industrious and willin', and can't get a stroke of
honest work to do, or a mouthful of vittals. I only want to speak to
the young lady: she knows me well enough."
"Which young lady?"
"Miss Floyd—the heiress."
They were standing a little way from the pony carriage. Aurora had
risen from her seat and flung the reins to Lucy; she was looking toward
the two men, pale and breathless, doubtless terrified for the result of
the encounter.
Talbot released the man's collar, and went back to Miss Floyd.
"Do you know this person, Aurora?" he asked.
"Yes."
"He is one of your old pensioners, I suppose?"
"He is; do not say anything more to him, Talbot. His manner is
rough, but he means no harm. Stop with Lucy while I speak to him."
Rapid and impetuous in all her movements, she sprang from the
carriage, and joined the man beneath the bare branches of the trees
before Talbot could remonstrate.
The dog, which had crawled slowly back to his master's side, fawned
upon her as she approached, and was driven away by a fierce growl from
Bow-wow, who was little likely to brook any such vulgar rivalry.
The man removed his felt hat, and tugged ceremoniously at a tuft of
sandyish hair which ornamented his low forehead.
"You might have spoken to a cove without all this here row, Miss
Floyd," he said, in an injured tone.
Aurora looked at him indignantly.
"Why did you stop me here?" she said; "why could n't you write to
me?"
"Because writin's never so much good as speakin', and because such
young ladies as you are uncommon difficult to get at. How did I know
that your pa might n't have put his hand upon my letter, and there'd
have been a pretty to do; though I dessay, as for that, if I was to go
up to the house, and ask the old gent for a trifle, he would n't be
back'ard in givin' it. I dessay he'd be good for a fi-pun note, or a
tenner, if it came to that."
Aurora's eyes flashed sparks of fire as she turned upon the speaker.
"If ever you dare to annoy my father, you shall pay dearly for it,
Matthew Harrison," she said; "not that I fear anything you can
say, but I will not have him annoyed—I will not have him tormented. He
has borne enough, and suffered enough, Heaven knows, without that. I
will not have him harassed, and his best and tenderest feelings made a
market of by such as you. I will not!"
She stamped her foot upon the frosty ground as she spoke. Talbot
Bulstrode saw and wondered at the gesture. He had half a mind to leave
the carriage and join Aurora and her petitioner; but the ponies were
restless, and he knew it would not do to abandon the reins to poor
timid Lucy.
"You need n't take on so, Miss Floyd," answered the man, whom Aurora
had addressed as Matthew Harrison; "I'm sure I want to make things
pleasant to all parties. All I ask is, that you'll act a little liberal
to a cove wot's come down in the world since you see him last. Lord,
wot a world it is for ups and downs! If it had been the summer season,
I'd have had no needs to worrit you; but what's the good of standin' at
the top of Regent street such weather as this with tarrier pups and
such likes? Old ladies has no eyes for dawgs in the winter; and even
the gents as cares for rat-catchin' is gettin' uncommon scarce. There
ain't nothink doin' on the turf whereby a chap can make an honest
penny, nor won't be, come the Craven Meetin'. I'd never have come anigh
you, miss, if I had n't been hard up, and I know you'll act liberal."
"Act liberally!" cried Aurora; "good Heavens! if every guinea I
have, or ever hope to have, could blot out the business that you trade
upon, I'd open my hands and let the money run through them as freely as
so much water."
"It was only good-natured of me to send you that 'ere paper, though,
miss, eh?" said Mr. Matthew Harrison, plucking a dry twig from the tree
nearest him, and chewing it for his delectation.
Aurora and the man had walked slowly onward as they spoke, and were
by this time at some distance from the pony carriage.
Talbot Bulstrode was in a fever of restless impatience.
"Do you know this pensioner of your cousin's, Lucy?" he asked.
"No, I can't remember his face. I don't think he belongs to
Beckenham."
"Why, if I had n't have sent you that 'ere Life, you would
n't have know'd, would you, now?" said the man.
"No, no, perhaps not," answered Aurora. She had taken her
porte-monnaie from her pocket, and Mr. Harrison was furtively regarding
the little morocco receptacle with glistening eyes.
"You don't ask me about any of the particulars?" he said.
"No. What should I care to know of them?"
"No, certainly," answered the man, suppressing a chuckle; "you know
enough, if it comes to that; and if you wanted to know any more, I
could n't tell you, for them few lines in the paper is all I could ever
get hold of about the business. But I always said it, and I always
will, if a man as rides up'ard of eleven stone—"
It seemed as if he were in a fair way of rambling on for ever so
long if Aurora had not checked him by an impatient frown. Perhaps he
stopped all the more readily as she opened her purse at the same
moment, and he caught sight of the glittering sovereigns lurking
between leaves of crimson silk. He had no very acute sense of color;
but I am sure that he thought gold and crimson made a pleasing
contrast, as he looked at the yellow coin in Miss Floyd's
porte-monnaie. She poured the sovereigns into her own gloved palm, and
then dropped the golden shower into Mr. Harrison's hands, which were
hollowed into a species of horny basin for the reception of her bounty.
The great trunk of an oak screened them from the observation of Talbot
and Lucy as Aurora gave the man the money.
"You have no claim upon me," she said, stopping him abruptly, as he
began a declaration of his gratitude, "and I protest against your
making a market of any past events which have come under your
knowledge. Remember, once and for ever, that I am not afraid of you;
and that if I consent to assist you, it is because I will not have my
father annoyed. Let me have the address of some place where a letter
may always find you—you can put it into an envelope and direct it to
me here—and from time to time I promise to send you a moderate
remittance, sufficient to enable you to lead an honest life, if you or
any of your set are capable of doing so; but I repeat, if I give you
this money as a bribe, it is only for my father's sake."
The man muttered some expression of thanks, looking at Aurora
earnestly; but there was a stern shadow upon that dark face that
forbade any hope of conciliation. She was turning from him, followed by
the mastiff, when the bandy-legged dog ran forward, whining, and
raising himself upon his hind legs to lick her hand.
The expression of her face underwent an immediate change. She shrank
from the dog, and he looked at her for a moment with a dim uncertainty
in his bloodshot eyes; then, as conviction stole upon the brute mind,
he burst into a joyous bark, frisking and capering about Miss Floyd's
silk dress, and imprinting dusty impressions of his fore paws upon the
rich fabric.
"The pore hanimal knows yer, miss," said the man, deprecatingly;
"you was never 'aughty to 'im."
The mastiff Bow-wow made as if he would have torn up every inch of
ground in Felden Woods at this juncture; but Aurora quieted him with a
look.
"Poor Boxer!" she said, "poor Boxer! so you know me, Boxer!"
"Lord, miss, there's no knowin' the faithfulness of them animals."
"Poor Boxer! I think I should like to have you. Would you sell him,
Harrison?"
The man shook his head.
"No, miss," he answered, "thank you kindly; there a'n't much in the
way of dawgs as I'd refuse to make a bargain about. If you wanted a
mute spaniel, or a Russian setter, or a Hile of Skye, I'd get him for
you and welcome, and ask you nothin' for my trouble; but this here
bull-terrier's father, mother, and wife, and fambly to me, and there
a'n't money enough in your pa's bank to buy him, miss."
"Well, well," said Aurora, relentingly, "I know how faithful he is.
Send me the address, and don't come to Felden again."
She returned to the carriage, and, taking the reins from Talbot's
hand, gave the restless ponies their head; the vehicle dashed past Mr.
Matthew Harrison, who stood hat in hand, with his dog between his legs,
until the party had gone by. Miss Floyd stole a glance at her lover's
face, and saw that Captain Bulstrode's countenance wore its darkest
expression. The officer kept sulky silence till they reached the house,
when he handed the two ladies from the carriage, and followed them
across the hall. Aurora was on the lowest step of the broad staircase
before he spoke.
"Aurora," he said, "one word before you go up stairs."
She turned and looked at him a little defiantly; she was still very
pale, and the fire with which her eyes had flashed upon Mr. Matthew
Harrison, dog-fancier and rat-catcher, had not yet died out of those
dark orbs. Talbot Bulstrode opened the door of a long chamber under the
picture-gallery—half billiard-room, half library, and almost the
pleasantest apartment in the house—and stood aside for Aurora to pass
him.
The young lady crossed the threshold as proudly as Marie Antoinette
going to face her plebeian accusers. The room was empty.
Miss Floyd seated herself in a low easy-chair by one of the two
great fireplaces, and looked straight at the blaze.
"I want to ask you about that man, Aurora," Captain Bulstrode said,
leaning over a prie-dieu chair, and playing nervously with the
carved arabesques of the walnut-wood frame-work.
"About which man?"
This might have been prevarication in some; from Aurora it was
simply defiance, as Talbot knew.
"The man who spoke to you on the avenue just now. Who is he, and
what was his business with you?" Here Captain Bulstrode fairly broke
down. He loved her, reader, he loved her, remember, and he was a
coward, a coward under the influence of that most cowardly of all
passions, LOVE—the passion that could leave a stain upon a Nelson's
name; the passion which might have made a dastard of the bravest of the
three hundred at Thermopylæ, or the six hundred at Balaklava. He loved
her, this unhappy young man, and he began to stammer, and hesitate, and
apologize, shivering under the angry light in her wonderful eyes.
"Believe me, Aurora, that I would not for the world play the spy upon
your actions, or dictate to you the objects of your bounty. No, Aurora,
not if my right to do so were stronger than it is, and I were twenty
times your husband; but that man, that disreputable-looking fellow who
spoke to you just now—I don't think he is the sort of person you ought
to assist."
"I dare say not," she said; "I have no doubt I assist many people
who ought by rights to die in a workhouse or drop on the high-road;
but, you see, if I stopped to question their deserts, they might die of
starvation while I was making my inquiries; so perhaps it's better to
throw away a few shillings upon some unhappy creature who is wicked
enough to be hungry, and not good enough to deserve to have anything
given him to eat."
There was a recklessness about this speech that jarred upon Talbot,
but he could not very well take objection to it; besides, it was
leading away from the subject upon which he was so eager to be
satisfied.
"But that man, Aurora, who is he?"
"A dog-fancier."
Talbot shuddered.
"I thought he was something horrible," he murmured; "but what, in
Heaven's name, could he want of you, Aurora?"
"What most of my petitioners want," she answered; "whether it's the
curate of a new chapel with mediæval decorations, who wants to rival
our Lady of Bons-Secours upon one of the hills about Norwood; or a
laundress who has burnt a week's washing, and wants the means to make
it good; or a lady of fashion, who is about to inaugurate a home for
the children of indigent lucifer-match sellers; or a lecturer upon
political economy, or Shelley and Byron, or Charles Dickens and the
modern humorists, who is going to hold forth at Croydon; they all want
the same thing—money! If I tell the curate that my principles are
evangelical, and that I can't pray sincerely if there are candlesticks
on the altar, he is not the less glad of my hundred pounds. If I inform
the lady of fashion that I have peculiar opinions about the orphans of
lucifer-match sellers, and cherish a theory of my own against the
education of the masses, she will shrug her shoulders deprecatingly,
but will take care to let me know that any donation Miss Floyd may be
pleased to afford will be equally acceptable. If I told them that I had
committed half a dozen murders, or that I had a silver statue of the
winner of last year's Derby erected on an altar in my dressing-room,
and did daily and nightly homage to it, they would take my money and
thank me kindly for it, as that man did just now."
"But one word, Aurora—does the man belong to this neighborhood?"
"No."
"How, then, did you come to know him?"
She looked at him for a moment steadily, unflinchingly, with a
thoughtful expression in that ever-changing countenance—looked as if
she were mentally debating some point. Then, rising suddenly, she
gathered her shawl about her and walked toward the door. She paused
upon the threshold and said,
"This cross-questioning is scarcely pleasant, Captain Bulstrode. If
I choose to give a five pound note to any person who may ask me for it,
I expect full license to do so, and I will not submit to be called to
account for my actions—even by you."
"Aurora!"
The tenderly reproachful tone struck her to the heart.
"You may believe, Talbot," she said, "you must surely believe that I
know too well the value of your love to imperil it by word or deed—you
must believe this."
CHAPTER VIII.
POOR JOHN MELLISH COMES BACK AGAIN.
John Mellish grew weary of the great City of Paris. Better love, and
contentment, and a crust in a mansarde, than stalled oxen or
other costly food in the loftiest saloons au premier, and with
the most obsequious waiters to do us homage, and repress so much as a
smile at our insular idiom. He grew heartily weary of the Rue de
Rivoli, the gilded railings of the Tuileries gardens, and the leafless
trees behind them. He was weary of the Place de la Concorde, and the
Champs Elysées, and the rattle of the hoofs of the troop about his
imperial highness's carriage when Napoleon the Third or the baby prince
took his airing. The plot was yet a hatching which was to come so soon
to a climax in the Rue Lepelletier. He was tired of the broad
boulevards, and the theatres, and the cafés, and the glove-shops—tired
of staring at the jewellers' windows in the Rue de la Paix, picturing
to himself the face of Aurora Floyd under the diamond and emerald
tiaras displayed therein. He had serious thoughts at times of buying a
stove and a basket of charcoal, and asphyxiating himself quietly in the
great gilded saloon at Meurice's. What was the use of his money, or his
dogs, or his horses, or his broad acres? All these put together would
not purchase Aurora Floyd. What was the good of life, if it came to
that, since the banker's daughter refused to share it with him?
Remember that this big, blue-eyed, curly-haired John Mellish had been
from his cradle a spoiled child—spoiled by poor relations and
parasites, servants and toadies, from the first hour to the thirtieth
year of his existence—and it seemed such a very hard thing that this
beautiful woman should be denied to him. Had he been an Eastern
potentate, he would have sent for his vizier, and would have had that
official bowstrung before his eyes, and so made an end of it; but,
being merely a Yorkshire gentleman and land-owner, he had no more to do
but to bear his burden quietly. As if he had ever borne anything
quietly! He flung half the weight of his grief upon his valet, until
that functionary dreaded the sound of Miss Floyd's name, and told a
fellow-servant in confidence that his master "made such a howling about
that young woman as he offered marriage to at Brighton that there was
no bearing him." The end of it all was, that one night John Mellish
gave sudden orders for the striking of his tents, and early the next
morning departed for the Great Northern Railway, leaving only the ashes
of his fires behind him.
It was only natural to suppose that Mr. Mellish would have gone
straight to his country residence, where there was much business to be
done by him: foals to be entered for coming races, trainers and
stable-boys to be settled with, the planning and laying down of a
proposed tan-gallop to be carried out, and a racing-stud awaiting the
eye of the master. But, instead of going from the Dover Railway Station
to the Great Northern Hotel, eating his dinner, and starting for
Doncaster by the express, Mr. Mellish drove to the Gloucester
Coffee-house, and there took up his quarters, for the purpose, as he
said, of seeing the Cattle-show. He made a melancholy pretence of
driving to Baker street in a Hansom cab, and roamed hither and thither
for a quarter of an hour, staring dismally into the pens, and then fled
away precipitately from the Yorkshire gentlemen-farmers, who gave him
hearty greeting. He left the Gloucester the next morning in a dog-cart,
and drove straight to Beckenham. Archibald Floyd, who knew nothing of
this young Yorkshireman's declaration and rejection, had given him a
hearty invitation to Felden Woods. Why should n't he go there? Only to
make a morning call upon the hospitable banker; not to see Aurora; only
to take a few long respirations of the air she breathed before he went
back to Yorkshire.
Of course he knew nothing of Talbot Bulstrode's happiness, and it
had been one of the chief consolations of his exile to remember that
that gentleman had put forth in the same vessel, and had been
shipwrecked along with him.
He was ushered into the billiard-room, where he found Aurora Floyd
seated at a little table near the fire, making a pencil copy of a
proof-engraving of one of Rosa Bonheur's pictures, while Talbot
Bulstrode sat by her side preparing her pencils.
We feel instinctively that the man who cuts lead-pencils, or holds a
skein of silk upon his outstretched hands, or carries lap-dogs,
opera-cloaks, camp-stools, or parasols, is "engaged." Even John Mellish
had learned enough to know this. He breathed a sigh so loud as to be
heard by Lucy and her mother, seated by the other fireplace—a sigh
that was on the verge of a groan—and then held out his hand to Miss
Floyd. Not to Talbot Bulstrode. He had vague memories of Roman legends
floating in his brain, legends of superhuman generosity and classic
self-abnegation, but he could not have shaken hands with that
dark-haired young Cornishman, though the tenure of the Mellish estate
had hung upon the sacrifice. He could not do it. He seated himself a
few paces from Aurora and her lover, twisting his hat about in his
hot, nervous hands until the brim was wellnigh limp, and was powerless
to utter one sentence, even so much as some poor pitiful remark about
the weather.
He was a great spoiled baby of thirty years of age; and I am afraid
that, if the stern truth must be told, he saw Aurora Floyd across a
mist, that blurred and distorted the bright face before his eyes. Lucy
Floyd came to his relief by carrying him off to introduce him to her
mother, and kind-hearted Mrs. Alexander was delighted with his frank,
fair English face. He had the good fortune to stand with his back to
the light, so that neither of the ladies detected that foolish mist in
his blue eyes.
Archibald Floyd would not hear of his visitor's returning to town
either that night or the next day.
"You must spend Christmas with us," he said, "and see the New Year
in before you go back to Yorkshire. I have all my children about me at
this season, and it is the only time that Felden seems like an old
man's home. Your friend Bulstrode stops with us" (Mellish winced as he
received this intelligence), "and I shan't think it friendly if you
refuse to join our party."
What a pitiful coward this John Mellish must have been to accept the
banker's invitation, and send the Newton Pagnell back to the
Gloucester, and suffer himself to be led away by Mr. Floyd's own man to
a pleasant chamber a few doors from the chintz rooms occupied by
Talbot! But I have said before that love is a cowardly passion. It is
like the toothache; the bravest and strongest succumb to it, and howl
aloud under the torture. I don't suppose the Iron Duke would have been
ashamed to own that he objected to having his teeth out. I have heard
of a great fighting man who could take punishment better than any other
of the genii of the ring, but who fainted away at the first grip of the
dentist's forceps. John Mellish consented to stay at Felden, and he
went between the lights into Talbot's dressing-room to expostulate with
the captain upon his treachery.
Talbot did his best to console his doleful visitant.
"There are more women than one in the world," he said, after John
had unbosomed himself of his grief—he did n't think this, the
hypocrite, though he said it—"there are more women than one, my dear
Mellish, and many very charming and estimable girls, who would be glad
to win the affections of such a fellow as you."
"I hate estimable girls," said Mr. Mellish; "bother my affections,
nobody will ever win my affections; but I love her, I love that
beautiful black-eyed creature down stairs, who looks at you with two
flashes of lightning, and rides so well; I love her, Bulstrode, and you
told me that she'd refused you, and that you were going to leave
Brighton by the eight o'clock express, and you did n't, and you sneaked
back and made her a second offer, and she accepted you, and, damme, it
was n't fair play."
Having said which, Mr. Mellish flung himself upon a chair, which
creaked under his weight, and fell to poking the fire furiously.
It was hard for poor Talbot to have to excuse himself for having won
Aurora's hand. He could not very well remind John Mellish that if Miss
Floyd had accepted him, it was perhaps because she preferred him to the
honest Yorkshireman. To John the matter never presented itself in this
light. The spoiled child had been cheated out of that toy above all
other toys, upon the possession of which he had set his foolish heart.
It was as if he had bidden for some crack horse at Tattersall's, in
fair and open competition with a friend, who had gone back after the
sale to outbid him in some underhand fashion. He could not understand
that there had been no dishonesty in Talbot's conduct, and he was
highly indignant when that gentleman ventured to hint to him that
perhaps, on the whole, it would have been wiser to have kept away from
Felden Woods.
Talbot Bulstrode had avoided any further allusion to Mr. Matthew
Harrison, the dog-fancier, and this, the first dispute between the
lovers, had ended in the triumph of Aurora.
Miss Floyd was not a little embarrassed by the presence of John
Mellish, who roamed disconsolately about the big rooms, seating himself
ever and anon at one of the tables to peer into the lenses of a
stereoscope, or to take up some gorgeously bound volume and drop it on
the carpet in gloomy absence of mind, and who sighed heavily when
spoken to, and was altogether far from pleasant company. Aurora's warm
heart was touched by the piteous spectacle of this rejected lover, and
she sought him out once or twice, and talked to him about his
racing-stud, and asked him how he liked the hunting in Surrey; but John
changed from red to white, and from hot to cold, when she spoke to him,
and fled away from her with a scared and ghastly aspect, which would
have been grotesque had it not been so painfully real.
But by and by John found a more pitiful listener to his sorrows than
ever Talbot Bulstrode had been, and this gentle and compassionate
listener was no other than Lucy Floyd, to whom the big Yorkshireman
turned in his trouble. Did he know, or did he guess, by some wondrous
clairvoyance, that her griefs bore a common likeness to his own, and
that she was just the one person, of all others, at Felden Woods to be
pitiful to him and patient with him? He was by no means proud, this
transparent, boyish, babyish good fellow. Two days after his arrival at
Felden he told all to poor Lucy.
"I suppose you know, Miss Floyd," he said, "that your cousin
rejected me? Yes, of course you do; I believe she rejected Bulstrode
about the same time; but some men have n't a ha'porth of pride; I must
say I think the captain acted like a sneak."
A sneak! Her idol, her adored, her demigod, her dark-haired and
gray-eyed divinity, to be spoken of thus! She turned upon Mr. Mellish
with her fair cheeks flushed into a pale glow of anger, and told him
that Talbot had a right to do what he had done, and that whatever
Talbot did was right.
Like most men whose reflective faculties are entirely undeveloped,
John Mellish was blessed with a sufficiently rapid perception—a
perception sharpened just then by that peculiar sympathetic prescience,
that marvellous clairvoyance of which I have spoken; and in those few
indignant words, and that angry flush, he read poor Lucy's secret; she
loved Talbot Bulstrode as he loved Aurora—hopelessly.
How he admired this fragile girl, who was frightened of horses and
dogs, and who shivered if a breath of the winter air blew across the
heated hall, and who yet bore her burden with this quiet, uncomplaining
patience; while he, who weighed fourteen stone, and could ride forty
miles across country with the bitterest blasts of December blowing on
his face, was powerless to endure his affliction. It comforted him to
watch Lucy, and to read in these faint signs and tokens, which had
escaped even a mother's eye, the sad history of her unrequited
affection.
Poor John was too good-natured and unselfish to hold out for ever in
the dreary fortress of despair which he had built up for his
habitation; and on Christmas eve, when there were certain rejoicings at
Felden, held in especial honor of the younger visitors, he gave way,
and joined in their merriment, and was more boyish than the youngest of
them, burning his fingers with blazing raisins, suffering his eyes to
be bandaged at the will of noisy little players at blind-man's-buff,
undergoing ignominious penalties in their games of forfeits, performing
alternately innkeepers, sheriff's officers, policemen, clergymen, and
justices in the acted charades, lifting the little ones who wanted to
see "de top of de Kitmat-tee" in his sturdy arms, and making himself
otherwise agreeable and useful to young people of from three to fifteen
years of age, until at last, under the influence of all this juvenile
gayety, and perhaps two or three glasses of Moselle, he boldly kissed
Aurora Floyd beneath the branch of mistletoe hanging, "for this night
only," in the great hall at Felden Woods.
And having done this, Mr. Mellish fairly lost his wits, and was "off
his head" for the rest of the evening, making speeches to the little
ones at the supper-table, and proposing Mr. Archibald Floyd and the
commercial interests of Great Britain with three times three; leading
the chorus of those tiny treble voices with his own sonorous bass, and
weeping freely—he never quite knew why—behind his table-napkin. It
was through an atmosphere of tears, and sparkling wines, and gas, and
hot-house flowers, that he saw Aurora Floyd, looking—ah! how lovely,
in those simple robes of white which so much became her, and with a
garland of artificial holly round her head. The spiked leaves and the
scarlet berries formed themselves into a crown—I think, indeed, that a
cheese-plate would have been transformed into a diadem if Miss Floyd
has been pleased to put it on her head—and she looked like the genius
of Christmas: something bright and beautiful—too beautiful to come
more than once a year.
When the clocks were striking 2 A. M., long after the little ones
had been carried away muffled up in opera-cloaks, terribly sleepy, and
I'm afraid, in some instances, under the influence of strong
drink—when the elder guests had all retired to rest, and the lights,
with a few exceptions, were fled, the garlands dead, and all but Talbot
and John Mellish departed, the two young men walked up and down the
long billiard-room, in the red glow of the two declining fires, and
talked to each other confidentially. It was the morning of Christmas
day, and it would have been strange to be unfriendly at such a time.
"If you'd fallen in love with the other one, Bulstrode," said John,
clasping his old school-fellow by the hand, and staring at him
pathetically, "I could have looked upon you as a brother; she's better
suited to you, twenty thousand times better adapted to you than her
cousin, and you ought to have married her—in common courtesy—I mean
to say as an honorable—having very much compromised yourself by your
attentions—Mrs. Whatshername—the companion—Mrs. Powell—said so—you
ought to have married her."
"Married her! Married whom?" cried Talbot, rather savagely, shaking
off his friend's hot grasp, and allowing Mr. Mellish to sway backward
upon the heels of his varnished boots in rather an alarming manner.
"Who do you mean?"
"The sweetest girl in Christendom—except one," exclaimed John,
clasping his hot hands and elevating his dim blue eyes to the ceiling;
"the loveliest girl in Christendom, except one—Lucy Floyd."
"Lucy Floyd!"
"Yes, Lucy; the sweetest girl in—"
"Who says that I ought to marry Lucy Floyd?"
"She says so—no, no, I don't mean that; I mean," said Mr. Mellish,
sinking his voice to a solemn whisper, "I mean that Lucy Floyd loves
you! She did n't tell me so—oh, no, bless your soul! she never uttered
a word upon the subject; but she loves you. Yes," continued John,
pushing his friend away from him with both hands, and staring at him as
if mentally taking his pattern for a suit of clothes, "that girl loves
you, and has loved you all along. I am not a fool, and I give you my
word and honor that Lucy Floyd loves you."
"Not a fool!" cried Talbot; "you're worse than a fool, John
Mellish—you're drunk!"
He turned upon his heel contemptuously, and, taking a candle from a
table near the door, lighted it, and strode out of the room,
John stood rubbing his hands through his curly hair, and staring
helplessly after the captain.
"This is the reward a fellow gets for doing a generous thing," he
said, as he thrust his own candle into the burning coals, ignoring any
easier mode of lighting it. "It's hard, but I suppose it's human
nature."
Talbot Bulstrode went to bed in a very bad humor. Could it be true
that Lucy loved him? Could this chattering Yorkshireman have discovered
a secret which had escaped the captain's penetration? He remembered
how, only a short time before, he had wished that this fair-haired girl
might fall in love with him, and now all was trouble and confusion.
Guinevere was lady of his heart, and poor Elaine was sadly in the way.
Mr. Tennyson's wondrous book had not been given to the world in the
year fifty-seven, or no doubt poor Talbot would have compared himself
to the knight whose "honor rooted in dishonor stood." Had he been
dishonorable? Had he compromised himself by his attentions to Lucy? Had
he deceived that fair and gentle creature? The down pillows in the
chintz chamber gave no rest to his weary head that night; and when he
fell asleep in the late daybreak, it was to dream of horrible dreams,
and to see in a vision Aurora Floyd standing on the brink of a clear
pool of water in a woody recess at Felden, and pointing down through
its crystal surface to the corpse of Lucy, lying pale and still amid
lilies and clustering aquatic plants, whose long tendrils entwined
themselves with the fair golden hair.
He heard the splash of the water in that terrible dream, and awoke,
to find his valet breaking the ice in his bath in the adjoining room.
His perplexities about poor Lucy vanished in the broad daylight, and he
laughed at a trouble which must have grown out of his own vanity. What
was he, that young ladies should fall in love with him? What a weak
fool he must have been to have believed for one moment in the drunken
babble of John Mellish! So he dismissed the image of Aurora's cousin
from his mind, and had eyes, ears, and thought only for Aurora herself,
who drove him to Beckenham church in her basket carriage, and sat by
his side in the banker's great square pew.
Alas! I fear he heard very little of the sermon that was preached
that day; but, for all that, I declare that he was a good and devout
man; a man whom God had blessed with the gift of earnest belief; a man
who took all blessings from the hand of God reverently, almost
fearfully; and as he bowed his head at the end of that Christmas
service of rejoicing and thanksgiving, he thanked Heaven for his
overflowing cup of gladness, and prayed that he might become worthy of
so much happiness.
He had a vague fear that he was too happy—too much bound up heart
and soul in the dark-eyed woman by his side. If she were to die! If she
were to be false to him! He turned sick and dizzy at the thought; and
even in that sacred temple the Devil whispered to him that there were
still pools, loaded pistols, and other certain remedies for such
calamities as those, so wicked as well as cowardly a passion is this
terrible fever, Love!
The day was bright and clear, the light snow whitening the ground;
every line of hedge-top and tree cut sharply out against the cold blue
of the winter sky. The banker proposed that they should send home the
carriages, and walk down the hill to Felden; so Talbot Bulstrode
offered Aurora his arm, only too glad of the chance of a tête-à-tête
with his betrothed.
John Mellish walked with Archibald Floyd, with whom the Yorkshireman
was an especial favorite; and Lucy was lost amid a group of brothers,
sisters, cousins, aunts, and uncles.
"We were so busy all yesterday with the little people," said Talbot,
"that I forgot to tell you, Aurora, that I had had a letter from my
mother."
Miss Floyd looked up at him with her brightest glance. She was
always pleased to hear anything about Lady Bulstrode.
"Of course there is very little news in the letter," added Talbot,
"for there is rarely much to tell at Bulstrode. And yet—yes—there is
one piece of news which concerns yourself."
"Which concerns me?"
"Yes. You remember my cousin, Constance Trevyllian?"
"Yes—"
"She has returned from Paris, her education finished at last, and
she, I believe, all-accomplished, and has gone to spend Christmas at
Bulstrode. Good Heavens, Aurora, what is the matter?"
Nothing very much, apparently. Her face had grown as white as a
sheet of letter-paper, but the hand upon his arm did not tremble.
Perhaps, had he taken especial notice of it, he would have found it
preternaturally still.
"Aurora, what is the matter?"
"Nothing. Why do you ask?"
"Your face is as pale as—"
"It is the cold, I suppose," she said, shivering. "Tell me about
your cousin, this Miss Trevyllian; when did she go to Bulstrode Castle?"
"She was to arrive the day before yesterday. My mother was expecting
her when she wrote."
"Is she a favorite of Lady Bulstrode?"
"No very especial favorite. My mother likes her well enough; but
Constance is rather a frivolous girl."
"The day before yesterday," said Aurora; "Miss Trevyllian was to
arrive the day before yesterday. The letters from Cornwall are
delivered at Felden early in the afternoon, are they not?"
"Yes, dear."
"You will have a letter from your mother to-day, Talbot?"
"A letter to-day! oh, no, Aurora, she never writes two days running;
seldom more than once a week."
Miss Floyd did not make any answer to this, nor did her face regain
its natural hue during the whole of the homeward walk. She was very
silent, only replying in the briefest manner to Talbot's inquiries.
"I am sure that you are ill, Aurora," he said, as they ascended the
terrace-steps.
"I am ill."
"But, dearest, what is it? Let me tell Mrs. Alexander, or Mrs.
Powell. Let me go back to Beckenham for the doctor."
She looked at him with a mournful earnestness in her eyes.
"My foolish Talbot," she said, "do you remember what Macbeth said to
his doctor? There are diseases that can not be ministered to. Let
me alone; you will know soon enough—you will know very soon, I dare
say."
"But, Aurora, what do you mean by this? What can there be upon your
mind?"
"Ah! what indeed! Let me alone, let me alone, Captain Bulstrode."
He had caught her hand, but she broke from him, and ran up the
staircase in the direction of her own apartments.
Talbot hurried to Lucy with a pale, frightened face.
"Your cousin is ill, Lucy," he said; "go to her, for Heaven's sake,
and see what is wrong."
Lucy obeyed immediately; but she found the door of Miss Floyd's room
locked against her; and when she called to Aurora and implored to be
admitted, that young lady cried out,
"Go away, Lucy Floyd; go away, and leave me to myself, unless you
want to drive me mad!"
CHAPTER IX.
HOW TALBOT BULSTRODE SPENT HIS
CHRISTMAS.
There was no more happiness for Talbot Bulstrode that day. He
wandered from room to room till he was as weary of that exercise as the
young lady in Monk Lewis's Castle Spectre; he roamed forlornly
hither and thither, hoping to find Aurora, now in the billiard-room,
now in the drawing-room. He loitered in the hall upon the shallow
pretence of looking at barometers and thermometers, in order to listen
for the opening and shutting of Aurora's door. All the doors at Felden
Woods were perpetually opening and shutting that afternoon, as it
seemed to Talbot Bulstrode. He had no excuse for passing the doors of
Miss Floyd's apartments, for his own rooms lay at the opposite angle of
the house; but he lingered on the broad staircase, looking at the
furniture-pictures upon the walls, and not seeing one line in these
Wardour-street productions. He had hoped that Aurora would appear at
luncheon; but that dismal meal had been eaten without her; and the
merry laughter and pleasant talk of the family assembly had sounded far
away to Talbot's ears—far away across some wide ocean of doubt and
confusion.
He passed the afternoon in this wretched manner, unobserved by any
one but Lucy, who watched him furtively from her distant seat, as he
roamed in and out of the drawing-room. Ah! how many a man is watched by
loving eyes whose light he never sees! how many a man is cared for by a
tender heart whose secret he never learns! A little after dusk, Talbot
Bulstrode went to his room to dress. It was some time before the bell
would ring; but he would dress early, he thought, so as to make sure of
being in the drawing-room when Aurora came down.
He took no light with him, for there were always wax candles upon
the chimney-piece in his room.
It was almost dark in that pleasant chintz chamber, for the fire had
been lately replenished, and there was no blaze; but he could just
distinguish a white patch upon the green cloth cover of the
writing-table. The white patch was a letter. He stirred the black mass
of coal in the grate, and a bright flame went dancing up the chimney,
making the room as light as day. He took the letter in one hand, while
he lighted one of the candles on the chimney-piece with the other. The
letter was from his mother. Aurora Floyd had told him that he would
receive such a letter. What did it all mean? The gay flowers and birds
upon the papered walls spun round him as he tore open the envelope. I
firmly believe that we have a semi-supernatural prescience of the
coming of all misfortune; a prophetic instinct, which tells us that
such a letter, or such a messenger, carries evil tidings. Talbot
Bulstrode had that prescience as he unfolded the paper in his hands.
The horrible trouble was before him—a brooding shadow, with a veiled
face, ghastly and undefined; but it was there.
"MY DEAR TALBOT—I know the letter I am about to write will distress
and perplex you; but my duty lies not the less plainly before me. I
fear that your heart is much involved in your engagement to Miss
Floyd." The evil tidings concerned Aurora, then; the brooding shadow
was slowly lifting its dark veil, and the face of her he loved best on
earth appeared behind it. "But I know," continued that pitiless letter,
"that the sense of honor is the strongest part of your nature, and
that, however you may have loved this girl" (O God, she spoke of his
love in the past!) "you will not suffer yourself to be entrapped into a
false position through any weakness of affection. There is some mystery
about the life of Aurora Floyd."
This sentence was at the bottom of the first page; and, before
Talbot Bulstrode's shaking hand could turn the leaf, every doubt, every
fear, every presentiment he had ever felt flashed back upon him with
preternatural distinctness.
"Constance Trevyllian came here yesterday; and you may imagine that
in the course of the evening you were spoken of, and your engagement
discussed."
A curse upon their frivolous women's gossip! Talbot crushed the
letter in his hand, and was about to fling it from him; but, no, it must be read. The shadow of doubt must be faced, and wrestled with,
and vanquished, or there was no more peace upon this earth for him. He
went on reading the letter.
"I told Constance that Miss Floyd had been educated in the Rue St.
Dominique, and asked if she remembered her. 'What!' she said, 'is it
the Miss Floyd whom there was such a fuss about? the Miss Floyd who ran
away from school?' And then she told me, Talbot, that a Miss Floyd was
brought to the Demoiselles Lespard by her father last June twelvemonth,
and that less than a fortnight after arriving at the school she
disappeared; her disappearance, of course, causing a great sensation
and an immense deal of talk among the other pupils, as it was said she
had run away. The matter was hushed up as much as possible; but
you know that girls will talk, and from what Constance tells me, I
imagine that very unpleasant things were said about Miss Floyd. Now you
say that the banker's daughter only returned to Felden Woods in
September last. Where was she in the interval?"
He read no more. One glance told him that the rest of the letter
consisted of motherly cautions and admonitions as to how he was to act
in this perplexing business.
He thrust the crumpled paper into his bosom, and dropped into a
chair by the hearth.
It was so, then! There was a mystery in the life of this woman. The
doubts and suspicious, the undefined fears and perplexities, which had
held him back at the first, and caused him to wrestle against his love,
had not been unfounded. There was good reason for them all, ample
reason for them, as there is for every instinct which Providence puts
into our hearts. A black wall rose up round about him, and shut him for
ever from the woman he loved; this woman whom he loved so far from
wisely, so fearfully well; this woman, for whom he had thanked God in
the church only a few hours before. And she was to have been his
wife—the mother of his children perhaps. He clasped his cold hands
over his face, and sobbed aloud. Do not despise him for those drops of
anguish: they were the virgin tears of his manhood. Never since infancy
had his eyes been wet before. God forbid that such tears as those
should be shed more than once in a lifetime. The agony of that moment
was not to be lived through twice. The hoarse sobs rent and tore his
breast as if his flesh had been hacked by a rusty sword; and, when he
took his wet hands from his face, he wondered that they were not red,
for it seemed to him as if he had been weeping blood. What should he do?
Go to Aurora, and ask her the meaning of that letter? Yes; the
course was plain enough. A tumult of hope rushed back upon him, and
swept away his terror. Why was he so ready to doubt her? What a pitiful
coward he was to suspect her—to suspect this girl, whose transparent
soul had been so freely unveiled to him; whose every accent was truth!
For, in his intercourse with Aurora, the quality which he had learned
most to reverence in her nature was its sublime candor. He almost
laughed at the recollection of his mother's solemn letter. It was so
like these simple country people, whose lives had been bounded by the
narrow limits of a Cornish village—it was so like them to make
mountains out of the veriest mole-hills. What was there so wonderful in
that which had occurred? The spoiled child, the wilful heiress, had
grown tired of a foreign school, and had run away. Her father, not
wishing the girlish escapade to be known, had placed her somewhere
else, and had kept her folly a secret. What was there from first to
last in the whole affair that was not perfectly natural and probable,
the exceptional circumstances of the case duly considered?
He could fancy Aurora, with her cheeks in a flame, and her eyes
flashing lightning, flinging a page of blotted exercises into the face
of her French master, and running out of the school-room amid a tumult
of ejaculatory babble. The beautiful, impetuous creature! There is
nothing a man can not admire in the woman he loves, and Talbot was half
inclined to admire Aurora for having run away from school.
The first dinner-bell had rung during Captain Bulstrode's agony; so
the corridors and rooms were deserted when he went to look for Aurora,
with his mother's letter in his breast.
She was not in the billiard-room nor the drawing-room, but he found
her at last in a little inner chamber at the end of the house, with a
bay-window looking out over the park. The room was dimly lighted by a
shaded lamp, and Miss Floyd was seated in the uncurtained window, with
her elbow resting on a cushioned ledge, looking out at the steel-cold
wintry sky and the whitened landscape. She was dressed in black, her
face, neck, and arms gleaming marble-white against the sombre hue of
her dress, and her attitude was as still as that of a statue.
She neither stirred nor looked round when Talbot entered the room.
"My dear Aurora," he said, "I have been looking for you everywhere."
She shivered at the sound of his voice.
"You wanted to see me?"
"Yes, dearest. I want you to explain something to me. A foolish
business enough, no doubt, my darling, and, of course, very easily
explained; but, as your future husband, I have a right to ask for an
explanation; and I know, I know, Aurora, that you will give it in all
candor."
She did not speak, although Talbot paused for some moments, awaiting
her answer. He could only see her profile, dimly lighted by the wintry
sky. He could not see the mute pain, the white anguish in that youthful
face.
"I have had a letter from my mother, and there is something in that
letter which I wish you to explain. Shall I read it to you, dearest?"
His voice faltered upon the endearing expression, and he remembered
afterward that it was the last time he had ever addressed her with a
lover's tenderness. The day came when she had need of his compassion,
and when he gave it freely; but that moment sounded the death-knell of
Love. In that moment the gulf yawned, and the cliffs were rent asunder.
"Shall I read you the letter, Aurora?"
"If you please."
He took the crumpled epistle from his bosom, and, bending over the
lamp, read it aloud to Aurora. He fully expected at every sentence that
she would interrupt him with some eager explanation; but she was silent
until he had finished, and even then she did not speak.
"Aurora, Aurora, is this true?"
"Perfectly true."
"But why did you run away from the Rue St. Dominique?"
"I can not tell you."
"And where were you between the month of June in the year fifty-six
and last September?"
"I can not tell you, Talbot Bulstrode. This is my secret, which I
can not tell you."
"You can not tell me! There is upward of a year missing from your
life, and you can not tell me, your betrothed husband, what you did
with that year?"
"I can not."
"Then, Aurora Floyd, you can never be my wife."
He thought that she would turn upon him, sublime in her indignation
and fury, and that the explanation he longed for would burst from her
lips in a passionate torrent of angry words; but she rose from her
chair, and, tottering toward him, fell upon her knees at his feet. No
other action could have struck such terror to his heart. It seemed to
him a confession of guilt. But what guilt? what guilt? What was the
dark secret of this young creature's brief life?
"Talbot Bulstrode," she said in a tremulous voice, which cut him to
the soul, "Talbot Bulstrode, Heaven knows how often I have foreseen and
dreaded this hour. Had I not been a coward, I should have anticipated
this explanation. But I thought—I thought the occasion might never
come, or that, when it did come, you would be generous—and—trust me.
If you can trust me, Talbot—if you can believe that this secret is not
utterly shameful—"
"Not utterly shameful!" he cried. "O God, Aurora, that I should ever
hear you talk like this! Do you think there are any degrees in these
things? There must be no secret between my wife and me; and the
day that a secret, or the shadow of one, arises between us, must see us
part for ever. Rise from your knees, Aurora; you are killing me with
this shame and humiliation. Rise from your knees; and if we are to part
this moment, tell me, tell me, for pity's sake, that I have no need to
despise myself for having loved you with an intensity which has
scarcely been manly."
She did not obey him, but sank lower in her half kneeling, half
crouching attitude, her face buried in her hands, and only the coils of
her black hair visible to Captain Bulstrode.
"I was motherless from my cradle, Talbot," she said, in a half
stifled voice. "Have pity upon me."
"Pity!" echoed the captain; "pity! Why do you not ask me for
justice? One question, Aurora Floyd, one more question, perhaps the
last I ever may ask of you—Does your father know why you left that
school, and where you were during that twelvemonth?"
"He does."
"Thank God, at least, for that! Tell me, Aurora, then, only tell me
this, and I will believe your simple word as I would the oath of
another woman—tell me if he approved of your motive in leaving that
school—if he approved of the manner in which your life was spent
during that twelvemonth. If you can say yes, Aurora, there shall be no
more questions between us, and I can make you, without fear, my loved
and honored wife."
"I can not," she answered. "I am only nineteen, but within the two
last years of my life I have done enough to break my father's heart—to
break the heart of the dearest father that ever breathed the breath of
life."
"Then all is over between us. God forgive you, Aurora Floyd; but, by
your own confession, you are no fit wife for an honorable man. I shut
my mind against all foul suspicions; but the past life of my wife must
be a white, unblemished page, which all the world may be free to read."
He walked toward the door, and then, returning, assisted the
wretched girl to rise, and led her back to her seat by the window,
courteously, as if she had been his partner at a ball. Their hands met
with as icy a touch as the hands of two corpses. Ah! how much there was
of death in that touch! How much had died between those two within the
last few hours—hope, confidence, security, love, happiness, all that
makes life worth the holding.
Talbot Bulstrode paused upon the threshold of the little chamber,
and spoke once more.
"I shall have left Felden in half an hour, Miss Floyd," he said; "it
will be better to allow your father to suppose that the disagreement
between us has arisen from something of a trifling nature, and that my
dismissal has come from you. I shall write to Mr. Floyd from London,
and, if you please, I will so word my letter as to lead him to think
this."
"You are very good," she answered. "Yes, I would rather that he
should think that. It may spare him pain. Heaven knows I have cause to
be grateful for anything that will do that."
Talbot bowed, and left the room, closing the door behind him. The
closing of that door had a dismal sound to his ear. He thought of some
frail young creature abandoned by her sister-nuns in a living tomb. He
thought that he would rather have left Aurora lying rigidly beautiful
in her coffin than as he was leaving her to-day.
The jangling, jarring sound of the second dinner-bell clanged out as
he went from the semi-obscurity of the corridor into the glaring
gas-light of the billiard-room. He met Lucy Floyd coming toward him in
her rustling silk dinner-dress, with fringes, and laces, and ribbons,
and jewels fluttering and sparkling about her, and he almost hated her
for looking so bright and radiant, remembering, as he did, the ghastly
face of the stricken creature he had just left. We are apt to be
horribly unjust in the hour of supreme trouble, and I fear that if any
one had had the temerity to ask Talbot Bulstrode's opinion of Lucy
Floyd just at that moment, the captain would have declared her to be a
mass of frivolity and affectation. If you discover the worthlessness of
the only woman you love upon earth, you will perhaps be apt to feel
maliciously disposed toward the many estimable people about you. You
are savagely inclined when you remember that they for whom you care
nothing are so good, while she on whom you set your soul is so wicked.
The vessel which you freighted with every hope of your heart has gone
down, and you are angry at the very sight of those other ships riding
so gallantly before the breeze. Lucy recoiled at the aspect of the
young man's face.
"What is it?" she asked; "what has happened, Captain Bulstrode?"
"Nothing; I have received a letter from Cornwall which obliges me
to—"
His hollow voice died away into a hoarse whisper before he could
finish the sentence.
"Lady Bulstrode—or Sir John—is ill, perhaps?" hazarded Lucy.
Talbot pointed to his white lips and shook his head. The gesture
might mean anything. He could not speak. The hall was full of visitors
and children going into dinner. The little people were to dine with
their seniors that day, as an especial treat and privilege of the
season. The door of the dining-room was open, and Talbot saw the gray
head of Archibald Floyd dimly visible at the end of a long vista of
lights, and silver, and glass, and evergreens. The old man had his
nephews and nieces, and their children grouped about him, but the place
at his right hand, the place Aurora was meant to fill, was vacant.
Captain Bulstrode turned away from that gayly-lighted scene and ran up
the staircase to his room, where he found his servant waiting with his
master's clothes laid out, wondering why he had not come to dress.
The man fell back at the sight of Talbot's face, ghastly in the
light of the wax candles on the dressing-table.
"I am going away, Philman," said the captain, speaking very fast,
and in a thick, indistinct voice. "I am going down to Cornwall by the
express to-night, if I can get to town in time to catch the train. Pack
my clothes and come after me. You can join me at the Paddington
Station. I shall walk up to Beckenham, and take the first train for
town. Here, give this to the servants for me, will you?"
He took a confused heap of gold and silver from his pocket, and
dropped it into the man's hand.
"Nothing wrong at Bulstrode, I hope, sir?" said the servant. "Is Sir
John ill?"
"No, no; I've had a letter from my mother—I—you'll find me at the
Great Western."
He snatched up his hat, and was hurrying from the room; but the man
followed him with his great-coat.
"You'll catch your death, sir, on such a night as this," the servant
said, in a tone of respectful remonstrance.
The banker was standing at the door of the dining-room when Talbot
crossed the hall. He was telling a servant to look for his daughter.
"We are all waiting for Miss Floyd," the old man said; "we can not
begin dinner without Miss Floyd."
Unobserved in the confusion, Talbot opened the great door softly,
and let himself out into the cold winter's night. The long terrace was
all ablaze with the lights in the high, narrow windows, as upon the
night when he had first come to Felden; and before him lay the park,
the trees bare and leafless, the ground white with a thin coating of
snow, the sky above gray and starless—a cold and desolate expanse, in
dreary contrast with the warmth and brightness behind. All this was
typical of the crisis of his life. He was leaving warm love and hope
for cold resignation or icy despair. He went down the terrace-steps,
across the trim garden-walks, and out into that wide, mysterious park.
The long avenue was ghostly in the gray light, the tracery of the
interlacing branches above his head making black shadows, that
flickered to and fro upon the whitened ground beneath his feet. He
walked for a quarter of a mile before he looked back at the lighted
windows behind him. He did not turn until a wind in the avenue had
brought him to a spot from which he could see the dimly-lighted
bay-window of the room in which he had left Aurora. He stood for some
time looking at this feeble glimmer, and thinking—thinking of all he
had lost, or all he had perhaps escaped—thinking of what his life was
to be henceforth without that woman—thinking that he would rather have
been the poorest ploughboy in Beckenham parish than the heir of
Bulstrode, if he could have taken the girl he loved to his heart, and
believed in her truth.
CHAPTER X.
FIGHTING THE BATTLE.
The new year began in sadness at Felden Woods, for it found
Archibald Floyd watching in the sick-room of his only daughter.
Aurora had taken her place at the long dinner-table upon the night
of Talbot's departure, and, except for being perhaps a little more
vivacious and brilliant than usual, her manner had in no way changed
after that terrible interview in the bay-windowed room. She had talked
to John Mellish, and had played and sung to her younger cousins; she
had stood behind her father, looking over his cards through all the
fluctuating fortunes of a rubber of long whist; and the next morning
her maid had found her in a raging fever, with burning cheeks and
bloodshot eyes, her long purple-black hair all tumbled and tossed about
the pillows, and her dry hands scorching to the touch. The telegraph
brought two grave London physicians to Felden before noon, and the
house was clear of visitors by night-fall, only Mrs. Alexander and Lucy
remaining to assist in nursing the invalid. The West-End doctors said
very little. This fever was as other fevers to them. The young lady had
caught a cold, perhaps; she had been imprudent, as these young people
will be, and had received some sudden chill. She had very likely
overheated herself with dancing, or had sat in a draught, or eaten an
ice. There was no immediate danger to be apprehended. The patient had a
superb constitution; there was wonderful vitality in the system; and,
with careful treatment she would soon come round. Careful treatment
meant a two-guinea visit every day from each of these learned
gentlemen, though, perhaps, had they given utterance to their inmost
thoughts, they would have owned that, for all they could tell to the
contrary, Aurora Floyd wanted nothing but to be let alone, and left in
a darkened chamber to fight out the battle by herself. But the banker
would have had all Saville Row summoned to the sick-bed of his child,
if he could by such a measure have saved her a moment's pain; and he
implored the two physicians to come to Felden twice a day if necessary,
and to call in other physicians if they had the least fear for their
patient. Aurora was delirious; but she revealed very little in that
delirium. I do not quite believe that people often make the pretty,
sentimental, consecutive confessions under the influence of fever which
are so freely attributed to them by the writers of romances. We rave
about foolish things in those cruel moments of feverish madness. We are
wretched because there is a man with a white hat on in the room, or a
black cat upon the counterpane, or spiders crawling about the
bed-curtains, or a coal-heaver who will put a sack of coals on
our chest. Our delirious fancies are like our dreams, and have very
little connection with the sorrows or joys which make up the sum of our
lives.
So Aurora Floyd talked of horses and dogs, and masters and
governesses; of childish troubles that had afflicted her years before,
and of girlish pleasures, which, in her normal state of mind, had been
utterly forgotten. She seldom recognized Lucy or Mrs. Alexander,
mistaking them for all kinds of unlikely people; but she never entirely
forgot her father, and, indeed, always seemed to be conscious of his
presence, and was perpetually appealing to him, imploring him to
forgive her for some act of childish disobedience committed in those
departed years of which she talked so much.
John Mellish had taken up his abode at the Grayhound Inn, in Croydon
High street, and drove every day to Felden Woods, leaving his phaeton
at the park-gates, and walking up to the house to make his inquiries.
The servants took notice of the Yorkshireman's pale face, and set him
down at once as "sweet" upon their young lady. They liked him a great
deal better than Captain Bulstrode, who had been too "'igh" and
"'aughty" for them. John flung his half-sovereigns right and left when
he came to the hushed mansion in which Aurora lay, with loving friends
about her. He held the footman who answered the door by the
button-hole, and would have gladly paid the man half a crown a minute
for his time while he asked anxious questions about Miss Floyd's
health. Mr. Mellish was warmly sympathized with, therefore, in the
servants' hall at Felden. His man had informed the banker's household
how he was the best master in England, and how Mellish Park was a
species of terrestrial paradise, maintained for the benefit of
trustworthy retainers; and Mr. Floyd's servants expressed a wish that
their young lady might get well, and marry the "fair one," as they
called John. They came to the conclusion that there had been what they
called "a split" between Miss Floyd and the captain, and that he had
gone off in a huff, which was like his impudence, seeing that their
young lady would have hundreds of thousands of pounds by and by, and
was good enough for a duke, instead of a beggarly officer.
Talbot's letter to Mr. Floyd reached Felden Woods on the 27th of
December, but it lay for some time unopened upon the library table.
Archibald had scarcely heeded his intended son-in-law's disappearance
in his anxiety about Aurora. When he did open the letter, Captain
Bulstrode's words were almost meaningless to him, though he was just
able to gather that the engagement had been broken—by his daughter's
wish, as Talbot seemed to infer.
The banker's reply to this communication was very brief; he wrote:
"MY DEAR SIR—Your letter arrived here some days since, but has only
been opened by me this morning. I have laid it aside, to be replied to,
D.V., at a future time. At present I am unable to attend to anything.
My daughter is seriously ill. "Yours obediently, "ARCHIBALD FLOYD."
"Seriously ill!" Talbot Bulstrode sat for nearly an hour with the
banker's letter in his hand, looking at these two words. How much or
how little might the sentence mean? At one moment, remembering
Archibald Floyd's devotion to his daughter, he thought that this
serious illness was doubtless some very trifling business—some
feminine nervous attack, common to young ladies upon any hitch in their
love-affairs; but five minutes afterward he fancied that those words
had an awful meaning—that Aurora was dying—dying of the shame and
anguish of that interview in the little chamber at Felden.
Heaven above! what had he done? Had he murdered this beautiful
creature, whom he loved a million times better than himself? Had he
killed her with those impalpable weapons, those sharp and cruel words
which he had spoken on the 25th of December? He acted the scene over
again and again, until the sense of outraged honor, then so strong upon
him, seemed to grow dim and confused, and he began almost to wonder why
he had quarrelled with Aurora. What if, after all, this secret involved
only some school-girl's folly? No; the crouching figure and ghastly
face gave the lie to that hope. The secret, whatever it might be, was a
matter of life and death to Aurora Floyd. He dared not try to guess
what it was. He tried to close his mind against the surmises that would
arise to him. In the first days that succeeded that terrible Christmas
he determined to leave England. He would try to get some government
appointment that would take him away to the other end of the world,
where he could never hear Aurora's name—never be enlightened as to the
mystery that had separated them. But now, now that she was ill—in
danger, perhaps—how could he leave the country? How could he go away
to some place where he might one day open the English newspapers and
see her name among the list of deaths?
Talbot was a dreary guest at Bulstrode Castle. His mother and his
cousin Constance respected his pale face, and held themselves aloof
from him in fear and trembling; but his father asked what the deuce was
the matter with the boy, that he looked so chapfallen, and why he
didn't take his gun and go out on the moors, and get an appetite for
his dinner like a Christian, instead of moping in his own rooms all day
long, biting his fingers' ends.
Once, and once only, did Lady Bulstrode allude to Aurora Floyd.
"You asked Miss Floyd for an explanation, I suppose, Talbot?" she
said.
"Yes, mother."
"And the result—"
"Was the termination of our engagement. I had rather you would not
speak to me of this subject again, if you please, mother."
Talbot took his gun, and went out upon the moors, as his father
advised; but it was not to slaughter the last of the pheasants, but to
think in peace of Aurora Floyd, that the young man went out. The
low-lying clouds upon the moorlands seemed to shut him in like
prison-walls. How many miles of desolate country lay between the dark
expanse on which he stood and the red-brick mansion at Felden! how many
leafless hedge-rows! how many frozen streams! It was only a day's
journey, certainly, by the Great Western; but there was something cruel
in the knowledge that half the length of England lay between the
Kentish woods and that far angle of the British Isles upon which Castle
Bulstrode reared its weather-beaten walls. The wail of mourning voices
might be loud in Kent, and not a whisper of death reach the listening
ears in Cornwall. How he envied the lowest servant at Felden, who knew
day by day and hour by hour of the progress of the battle between Death
and Aurora Floyd! And yet, after all, what was she to him? What did it
matter to him if she were well or ill? The grave could never separate
them more utterly than they had been separated from the very moment in
which he discovered that she was not worthy to be his wife. He had done
her no wrong; he had given her a full and fair opportunity of clearing
herself from the doubtful shadow on her name, and she had been unable
to do so. Nay, more, she had given him every reason to suppose, by her
manner, that the shadow was even a darker one than he had feared. Was
he to blame, then? Was it his fault if she were ill? Were his days to
be misery, and his nights a burden, because of her? He struck the stock
of his gun violently upon the ground at the thought, and thrust the
ramrod down the barrel, and loaded his fowling-piece furiously with
nothing; and then, casting himself at full length upon the stunted
turf, lay there till the early dusk closed in about him, and the soft
evening dew saturated his shooting-coat, and he was in a fair way to be
stricken with rheumatic fever.
I might fill chapters with the foolish sufferings of this young man;
but I fear he must have become very wearisome to my afflicted
readers—to those, at least, who have never suffered from this fever.
The sharper the disease, the shorter its continuance; so Talbot will be
better by and by, and will look back at his old self, and laugh at his
old agonies. Surely this inconstancy of ours is the worst of all—this
fickleness, by reason of which we cast off our former selves with no
more compunction than we feel in flinging off a worn-out garment. Our
poor, threadbare selves, the shadows of what we were! With what
sublime, patronizing pity, with what scornful compassion, we look back
upon the helpless dead and gone creatures, and wonder that anything so
foolish could have been allowed to cumber the earth! Shall I feel the
same contempt ten years hence for myself as I am to-day as I feel
to-day for myself as I was ten years ago? Will the loves and
aspirations, the beliefs and desires of to-day, appear as pitiful then
as the dead loves and dreams of the by-gone decade? Shall I look back
in pitying wonder, and think what a fool that young man was, although
there was something candid and innocent in his very stupidity, after
all? Who can wonder that the last visit to Paris killed Voltaire? Fancy
the octogenarian looking round the national theatre, and seeing
himself, through an endless vista of dim years, a young man again,
paying his court to a "goat-faced cardinal," and being beaten by De
Rohan's lackeys in broad daylight.
Have you ever visited some still country town after a lapse of
years, and wondered, oh, fast-living reader, to find the people you
knew in your last visit still alive and thriving, with hair unbleached
as yet, although you have lived and suffered whole centuries since
then? Surely Providence gives us this sublimely egotistical sense of
Time as a set-off against the brevity of our lives! I might make this
book a companion in bulk to the Catalogue of the British Museum if I
were to tell all that Talbot Bulstrode felt and suffered in the month
of January, 1858—if I were to anatomize the doubts, and confessions,
and self-contradictions, the mental resolutions, made one moment to be
broken the next. I refrain, therefore, and will set down nothing but
the fact that, on a certain Sunday, midway in the month, the captain,
sitting in the family pew at Bulstrode church, directly facing the
monument of Admiral Hartley Bulstrode, who fought and died in the days
of Queen Elizabeth, registered a silent oath that, as he was a
gentleman and a Christian, he would henceforth abstain from holding any
voluntary communication with Aurora Floyd. But for this vow he must
have broken down, and yielded to his yearning fear and love, and gone
to Felden Woods to throw himself, blind and unquestioning, at the feet
of the sick woman.
The tender green of the earliest leaflets was breaking out in bright
patches upon the hedge-rows round Felden Woods; the ashbuds were no
longer black upon the front of March, and pale violets and primroses
made exquisite tracery in the shady nooks beneath the oaks and beeches;
all nature was rejoicing in the mild April weather when Aurora Floyd
lifted her dark eyes to her father's face with something of their old
look and familiar light. The battle had been a long and severe one, but
it was wellnigh over now, the physicians said; defeated Death drew back
for a while, to wait a better opportunity for making his fatal spring;
and the feeble victor was to be carried down stairs to sit in the
drawing-room for the first time since the night of December the 25th.
John Mellish, happening to be at Felden that day, was allowed the
supreme privilege of carrying the fragile burden in his strong arms
from the door of the sick-chamber to the great sofa by the fire in the
drawing-room, attended by a procession of happy people bearing shawls
and pillows, vinaigrettes and scent-bottles, and other invalid
paraphernalia. Every creature at Felden was devoted to this adored
convalescent. Archibald Floyd lived only to minister to her; gentle
Lucy waited on her night and day, fearful to trust the service to
menial hands: Mrs. Powell, like some pale and quiet shadow, lurked amid
the bed-curtains, soft of foot and watchful of eye, invaluable in the
sick-chamber, as the doctors said. Throughout her illness, Aurora had
never mentioned the name of Talbot Bulstrode. Not even when the fever
was at its worst, and the brain most distraught, had that familiar name
escaped her lips. Other names, strange to Lucy, had been repeated by
her again and again: the names of places and horses, and slangy
technicalities of the turf, had interlarded the poor girl's brain-sick
babble; but, whatever were her feelings with regard to Talbot, no word
had revealed their depth or sadness. Yet I do not think that my poor,
dark-eyed heroine was utterly feelingless upon this point. When they
first spoke of carrying her down stairs, Mrs. Powell and Lucy proposed
the little bay-windowed chamber, which was small and snug, and had a
southern aspect, as the fittest place for the invalid; but Aurora cried
out, shuddering, that she would never enter that hateful chamber again.
As soon as ever she was strong enough to bear the fatigue of the
journey, it was considered advisable to remove her from Felden, and
Leamington was suggested by the doctors as the best place for the
change—a mild climate and a pretty inland retreat, a hushed and quiet
town, peculiarly adapted to invalids, being almost deserted by other
visitors after the hunting-season.
Shakespeare's birthday had come and gone, and the high festivals at
Stratford were over, when Archibald Floyd took his pale daughter to
Leamington. A furnished cottage had been engaged for them a mile and a
half out of the town; a pretty place, half villa, half farmhouse, with
walls of white plaster, checkered with beams of black wood, and
wellnigh buried in a luxuriant and trimly-kept flower-garden; a
pleasant place, forming one of a little cluster of rustic buildings
crowded about a gray old church in a nook of the roadway, where two or
three green lanes met, and went branching off between overhanging
hedges; a most retired spot, yet clamorous with that noise which is of
all others cheerful and joyous—the hubbub of farm-yards, the cackle of
poultry, the cooing of pigeons, the monotonous lowing of lazy cattle,
and the squabbling grunt of quarrelsome pigs. Archibald could not have
brought his daughter to a better place. The checkered farm-house seemed
a haven of rest to this poor, weary girl of nineteen. It was so
pleasant to lie wrapped in shawls, on a chintz-covered sofa, in the
open window, listening to the rustic noises in the straw-littered yard
upon the other side of the hedge, with her faithful Bow-wow's big fore
paws resting on the cushions at her feet. The sounds in the farm-yard
were pleasanter to Aurora than the monotonous inflections of Mrs.
Powell's voice; but as that lady considered it a part of her duty to
read aloud for the invalid's delectation, Miss Floyd was too
good-natured to own how tired she was of Marmion and Childe
Harold, Evangeline and The Queen of the May, and how she
would have preferred, in her present state of mind, to listen to a
lively dispute between a brood of ducks round the pond in the
farm-yard, or a trifling discussion in the pig-sty, to the sublimest
lines ever penned by poet, living or dead. The poor girl had suffered
very much, and there was a certain sensuous, lazy pleasure in this slow
recovery, this gradual return to strength. Her own nature revived in
unison with the bright revival of the genial summer weather. As the
trees in the garden put forth new strength and beauty, so the glorious
vitality of her constitution returned with much of its wonted power.
The bitter blows had left their scars behind them, but they had not
killed her after all. They had not utterly changed her even, for
glimpses of the old Aurora appeared day by day in the pale
convalescent; and Archibald Floyd, whose life was at best but a
reflected existence, felt his hopes revive as he looked at his
daughter. Lucy and her mother had gone back to the villa at Fulham, and
to their own family duties; so the Leamington party consisted only of
Aurora and her father, and that pale shadow of propriety, the ensign's
light-haired widow. But they were not long without a visitor. John
Mellish, artfully taking the banker at a disadvantage in some moment of
flurry and confusion at Felden Woods, had extorted from him an
invitation to Leamington, and a fortnight after their arrival he
presented his stalwart form and fair face at the low, wooden gates of
the checkered cottage. Aurora laughed (for the first time since her
illness) as she saw that faithful adorer come, carpet-bag in hand,
through the labyrinth of grass and flower-beds toward the open window
at which she and her father sat; and Archibald seeing that first gleam
of gayety in the beloved face, could have hugged John Mellish for being
the cause of it. He would have embraced a street-tumbler, or the low
comedian of a booth at a fair, or a troop of performing dogs and
monkeys, or anything upon earth that could win a smile from his sick
child. Like the Eastern potentate in the fairy tale, who always offers
half his kingdom and his daughter's hand to any one who can cure the
princess of her bilious headache, or extract her carious tooth,
Archibald would have opened a banker's account in Lombard street, with
a fabulous sum to start with, for any one who could give pleasure to
this black-eyed girl, now smiling, for the first time in that year, at
sight of the big, fair-faced Yorkshireman coming to pay his foolish
worship at her shrine.
It was not to be supposed that Mr. Floyd had felt no wonder as to
the cause of the rupture of his daughter's engagement to Talbot
Bulstrode. The anguish and terror endured by him during her long
illness had left no room for any other thought; but since the passing
away of the danger he had pondered not a little upon the abrupt rupture
between the lovers. He ventured once, in the first week of their stay
at Leamington, to speak to her upon the subject, asking why it was she
had dismissed the captain. Now if there was one thing more hateful than
another to Aurora Floyd, it was a lie. I do not say that she had never
told one in the course of her life. There are some acts of folly which
carry falsehood and dissimulation at their heels as certainly as the
shadows which follow us when we walk toward the evening sun; and we
very rarely swerve from the severe boundary-line of right without being
dragged ever so much farther than we calculated upon across the border.
Alas! my heroine is not faultless. She would take her shoes off to give
them to the bare-footed poor; she would take the heart from her breast,
if she could by so doing heal the wounds she has inflicted upon the
loving heart of her father. But a shadow of mad folly has blotted her
motherless youth, and she has a terrible harvest to reap from that
lightly-sown seed, and a cruel expiation to make for that unforgotten
wrong. Yet her natural disposition is all truth and candor; and there
are many young ladies, whose lives have been as primly ruled and
ordered as the fair pleasure-gardens of a Tyburnian Square, who could
tell a falsehood with a great deal better grace than Aurora Floyd. So,
when her father asked her why she had dismissed Talbot
Bulstrode, she made no answer to that question, but simply told him
that the quarrel had been a very painful one, and that she hoped never
to hear the captain's name again, although at the same time she assured
Mr. Floyd that her lover's conduct had been in nowise unbecoming a
gentleman and a man of honor. Archibald implicitly obeyed his daughter
in this matter, and, the name of Talbot Bulstrode never being spoken,
it seemed as if the young man had dropped out of their lives, or as if
he had never had any part in the destiny of Aurora Floyd. Heaven knows
what Aurora herself felt and suffered in the quiet of her low-roofed,
white-curtained little chamber, with the soft May moonlight stealing in
at the casement windows, and creeping in wan radiance about the walls.
Heaven only knows the bitterness of the silent battle. Her vitality
made her strong to suffer; her vivid imagination intensified every
throb of pain. In a dull and torpid soul grief is a slow anguish; but
with her it was a fierce and tempestuous emotion, in which past and
future seemed rolled together with the present to make a concentrated
agony. But, by an all-wise dispensation, the stormy sorrow wears itself
out by reason of its very violence, while the dull woe drags its slow
length sometimes through weary years, becoming at last ingrafted in the
very nature of the patient sufferer, as some diseases become part of
our constitutions. Aurora was fortunate in being permitted to fight her
battle in silence, and to suffer unquestioned. If the dark hollow rings
about her eyes told of sleepless nights, Archibald Floyd forbore to
torment her with anxious speeches and trite consolations. The
clairvoyance of love told him that it was better to let her alone. So
the trouble hanging over the little circle was neither seen nor spoken
of. Aurora kept her skeleton in some quiet corner, and no one saw the
grim skull, or heard the rattle of the dry bones. Archibald Floyd read
his newspapers and wrote his letters; Mrs. Walter Powell tended the
convalescent, who reclined during the best part of the day on the sofa
in the open window; and John Mellish loitered about the garden and the
farm-yard, leaned on the low white gate, smoking his cigar, and talking
to the men about the place, and was in and out of the house twenty
times in an hour. The banker pondered sometimes in serio-comic
perplexity as to what was to be done with this big Yorkshireman, who
hung upon him like a good-natured monster of six feet two, conjured
into existence by the hospitality of a modern Frankenstein. He had
invited him to dinner, and, lo! he appeared to be saddled with him for
life. He could not tell the friendly, generous, loud-spoken creature to
go away. Besides, Mr. Mellish was, on the whole, very useful, and he
did much toward keeping Aurora in apparently good spirits. Yet, on the
other hand, was it right to tamper with this great loving heart? Was it
just to let the young man linger in the light of those black eyes, and
then send him away when the invalid was equal to the effort of giving
him his congé? Archibald Floyd did not know that John had been
rejected by his daughter on a certain morning at Brighton, so he made
up his mind to speak frankly, and sound the depths of his visitor's
feelings.
Mrs. Powell was making tea at a little table near one of the
windows, Aurora had fallen asleep with an open book in her hand, and
the banker walked with John Mellish up and down an espaliered alley in
the golden sunset.
Archibald freely communicated his perplexities to the Yorkshireman.
"I need not tell you, my dear Mellish," he said, "how pleasant it is to
me to have you here. I never had a son; but if it had pleased God to
give me one, I could have wished him to be just such a frank,
noble-hearted fellow as yourself. I'm an old man, and have seen a great
deal of trouble—the sort of trouble which strikes deeper home to the
heart than any sorrows that begin in Lombard street or on 'Change; but
I feel younger in your society, and I find myself clinging to you and
leaning on you as a father might upon his son. You may believe, then,
that I don't wish to get rid of you."
"I do, Mr. Floyd; but do you think that any one else wishes to get
rid of me? Do you think I'm a nuisance to Miss Floyd?"
"No, Mellish," answered the banker, energetically. "I am sure that
Aurora takes pleasure in your society, and seems to treat you almost as
if you were her brother; but—but—I know your feelings, my dear boy,
and what I fear is, that you may perhaps never inspire a warmer feeling
in her heart."
"Let me stay and take my chance, Mr. Floyd," cried John, throwing
his cigar across the espaliers, and coming to a dead stop upon the
gravel walk in the warmth of his enthusiasm. "Let me stay and take my
chance. If there's any disappointment to be borne, I'll bear it like a
man; I'll go back to the Park, and you shall never be bothered with me
again. Miss Floyd has rejected me once already; but perhaps I was in
too great a hurry. I've grown wiser since then, and I've learned to
bide my time. I've one of the finest estates in Yorkshire; I'm not
worse looking than the generality of fellows, or worse educated than
the generality of fellows. I may n't have straight hair, and a pale
face, and look as if I'd walked out of a three-volume novel, like
Talbot Bulstrode. I may be a stone or two over the correct weight for
winning a young lady's heart; but I'm sound, wind and limb. I never
told a lie, or committed a mean action; and I love your daughter with
as true and pure a love as ever man felt for woman. May I try my luck
once more?"
"You may, John."
"And have I—thank you, sir, for calling me John—have I your good
wishes for my success?"
The banker shook Mr. Mellish by the hand as he answered this
question.
"You have, my dear John, my best and heartiest wishes."
So there were three battles of the heart being fought in that
springtide of fifty-eight. Aurora and Talbot, separated from each other
by the length and breadth of half England, yet united by an impalpable
chain, were struggling day by day to break its links; while poor John
Mellish quietly waited in the background, fighting the sturdy fight of
the strong heart, which very rarely fails to win the prize it is set
upon, however high or far away that prize may seem to be.
CHAPTER XI.
AT THE CHATEAU D'ARQUES.
John Mellish made himself entirely at home in the little Leamington
circle after this interview with Mr. Floyd. No one could have been more
tender in his manner, more respectful, untiring, and devoted, than was
this rough Yorkshireman to the broken old man. Archibald must have been
less than human had he not in somewise returned this devotion, and it
is therefore scarcely to be wondered that he became very warmly
attached to his daughter's adorer. Had John Mellish been the most
designing disciple of Machiavelli, instead of the most transparent and
candid of living creatures, I scarcely think he could have adopted a
truer means of making for himself a claim upon the gratitude of Aurora
Floyd than by the affection he evinced for her father. And this
affection was as genuine as all else in that simple nature. How could
he do otherwise than love Aurora's father? He was her father. He
had a sublime claim upon the devotion of the man who loved her—who
loved her as John loved—unreservedly, undoubtingly, childishly; with
such blind, unquestioning love as an infant feels for its mother. There
may be better women than that mother, perhaps, but who shall make the
child believe so?
John Mellish could not argue with himself upon his passion as Talbot
Bulstrode had done. He could not separate himself from his love, and
reason with the mild madness. How could he divide himself from that
which was himself—more than himself—a diviner self? He asked no
questions about the past life of the woman he loved. He never sought to
know the secret of Talbot's departure from Felden. He saw her,
beautiful, fascinating, perfect, and he accepted her as a great and
wonderful fact, like the moon and the stars shining down on the rustic
flower-beds and espaliered garden-walks in the balmy June nights.
So the tranquil days glided slowly and monotonously past that quiet
circle. Aurora bore her silent burden—bore her trouble with a grand
courage, peculiar to such rich organizations as her own, and none knew
whether the serpent had been rooted from her breast, or had made for
himself a permanent home in her heart. The banker's most watchful care
could not fathom the womanly mystery; but there were times when
Archibald Floyd ventured to hope that his daughter was at peace, and
Talbot Bulstrode wellnigh forgotten. In any case, it was wise to keep
her away from Felden Woods; so Mr. Floyd proposed a tour through
Normandy to his daughter and Mrs. Powell. Aurora consented, with a
tender smile and gentle pressure of her father's hand. She divined the
old man's motive, and recognized the all-watchful love which sought to
carry her from the scene of her trouble. John Mellish, who was not
invited to join the party, burst forth into such raptures at the
proposal that it would have required considerable hardness of heart to
have refused his escort. He knew every inch of Normandy, he said, and
promised to be of infinite use to Mr. Floyd and his daughter; which,
seeing that his knowledge of Normandy had been acquired in his
attendance at the Dieppe steeple-chases, and that his acquaintance with
the French language was very limited, seemed rather doubtful. But, for
all this, he contrived to keep his word. He went up to town and hired
an all-accomplished courier, who conducted the little party from town
to village, from church to ruin, and who could always find relays of
Normandy horses for the banker's roomy travelling carriage. The little
party travelled from place to place until pale gleams of color returned
in transient flushes to Aurora's cheeks. Grief is terribly selfish. I
fear that Miss Floyd never took into consideration the havoc that might
be going on in the great, honest heart of John Mellish. I dare say that
if she had ever considered the matter, she would have thought that a
broad-shouldered Yorkshireman of six feet two could never suffer
seriously from such a passion as love. She grew accustomed to his
society; accustomed to have his strong arm handy for her to lean upon
when she grew tired; accustomed to his carrying her sketch-book, and
shawls, and camp-stools; accustomed to be waited upon by him all day,
and served faithfully by him at every turn; taking his homage as a
thing of course, but making him superlatively and dangerously happy by
her tacit acceptance of it.
September was half gone when they bent their way homeward, lingering
for a few days at Dieppe, where the bathers were splashing about in
semi-theatrical costume, and the Etablissement des Bains was all aflame
with colored lanterns and noisy with nightly concerts.
The early autumnal days were glorious in their balmy beauty. The
best part of a year had gone by since Talbot Bulstrode had bade Aurora
that adieu which, in one sense at least, was to be eternal. They two,
Aurora and Talbot, might meet again, it is true. They might meet, ay,
and even be cordial and friendly together, and do each other good
service in some dim time to come; but the two lovers who had parted in
the little bay-windowed room at Felden Woods could never meet
again. Between them there was death and the grave.
Perhaps some such thoughts as these had their place in the breast of
Aurora Floyd as she sat with John Mellish at her side, looking down
upon the varied landscape from the height upon which the ruined walls
of the Chateau d'Arques still rear the proud memorials of a day that is
dead. I don't suppose that the banker's daughter troubled herself much
about Henry the Fourth, or any other dead and gone celebrity who may
have left the impress of his name upon that spot. She felt a tranquil
sense of the exquisite purity and softness of the air, the deep blue of
the cloudless sky, the spreading woods and grassy plains, the orchards,
where the trees were rosy with their plenteous burden, the tiny
streamlets, the white villa-like cottages and struggling gardens,
outspread in a fair panorama beneath her. Carried out of her sorrow by
the sensuous rapture we derive from nature, and for the first time
discovering in herself a vague sense of happiness, she began to wonder
how it was she had outlived her grief by so many months.
She had never, during those weary months, heard of Talbot Bulstrode.
Any change might have come to him without her knowledge. He might have
married—might have chosen a prouder and worthier bride to share his
lofty name. She might meet him on her return to England, with that
happier woman leaning upon his arm. Would some good-natured friend tell
the bride how Talbot had loved and wooed the banker's daughter? Aurora
found herself pitying this happier woman, who would, after all, win but
the second love of that proud heart—the pale reflection of a sun that
has set; the feeble glow of expiring embers when the great blaze has
died out. They had made her a couch with shawls and carriage-rugs,
outspread upon a rustic seat, for she was still far from strong, and
she lay in the bright September sunshine, looking down at the fair
landscape, and listening to the hum of beetles and the chirp of
grasshoppers upon the smooth turf.
Her father had walked to some distance with Mrs. Powell, who
explored every crevice and cranny of the ruins with the dutiful
perseverance peculiar to commonplace people; but faithful John Mellish
never stirred from her side. He was watching her musing face, trying to
read its meaning—trying to gather a gleam of hope from some chance
expression floating across it. Neither he nor she knew how long he had
watched her thus, when, turning to speak to him about the landscape at
her feet, she found him on his knees imploring her to have pity upon
him, and to love him, or to let him love her, which was much the same.
"I don't expect you to love me, Aurora," he said,
passionately; "how should you? What is there in a big, clumsy fellow
like me to win your love? I don't ask that. I only ask you to let me
love you, to let me worship you, as the people we see kneeling in the
churches here worship their saints. You won't drive me away from you,
will you, Aurora, because I presume to forget what you said to me that
cruel day at Brighton? You would never have suffered me to stay with
you so long, and to be so happy, if you had meant to drive me away at
the last! You never could have been so cruel!"
Miss Floyd looked at him with a sudden terror in her face. What was
this? What had she done? More wrong, more mischief! Was her life to be
one of perpetual wrong-doing? Was she to be for ever bringing sorrow
upon good people? Was this John Mellish to be another sufferer by her
folly?
"Oh, forgive me!" she cried, "forgive me! I never thought—"
"You never thought that every day spent by your side must make the
anguish of parting from you more cruelly bitter. Oh, Aurora, women
should think of these things! Send me away from you, and what shall I
be for the rest of my life? a broken man, fit for nothing better than
the race-course and the betting-rooms; a reckless man, ready to go to
the bad by any road that can take me there—worthless alike to myself
and to others. You must have seen such men, Aurora; men whose
unblemished youth promised an honorable manhood, but who break up all
of a sudden, and go to ruin in a few years of mad dissipation. Nine
times out of ten a woman is the cause of that sudden change. I lay my
life at your feet, Aurora; I offer you more than my heart—I offer you
my destiny. Do with it as you will."
He rose in his agitation, and walked a few paces away from her. The
grass-grown battlements sloped away from his feet; outer and inner moat
lay below him, at the bottom of a steep declivity. What a convenient
place for suicide, if Aurora should refuse to take pity upon him! The
reader must allow that he had availed himself of considerable artifice
in addressing Miss Floyd. His appeal had taken the form of an
accusation rather than a prayer, and he had duly impressed upon this
poor girl the responsibility she would incur in refusing him. And this,
I take it, is a meanness of which men are often guilty in their
dealings with the weaker sex.
Miss Floyd looked up at her lover with a quiet, half-mournful smile.
"Sit down there, Mr. Mellish," she said, pointing to a camp-stool at
her side.
John took the indicated seat, very much with the air of a prisoner
in a criminal dock about to answer for his life.
"Shall I tell you a secret?" asked Aurora, looking compassionately
at his pale face.
"A secret?"
"Yes; the secret of my parting with Talbot Bulstrode. It was not I
who dismissed him from Felden; it was he who refused to fulfil his
engagement with me."
She spoke slowly, in a low voice, as if it were painful to her to
say the words which told of so much humiliation.
"He did!" cried John Mellish, rising, red and furious, from his
seat, eager to run to look for Talbot Bulstrode then and there, in
order to inflict chastisement upon him.
"He did, John Mellish, and he was justified in doing so," answered
Aurora, gravely. "You would have done the same."
"Oh, Aurora, Aurora!"
"You would. You are as good a man as he, and why should your sense
of honor be less strong than his? A barrier arose between Talbot
Bulstrode and me, and separated us for ever. That barrier was a secret."
She told him of the missing year in her young life; how Talbot had
called upon her for an explanation, and how she had refused to give it.
John listened to her with a thoughtful face, which broke out into
sunshine as she turned to him and said,
"How would you have acted in such a case, Mr. Mellish?"
"How should I have acted, Aurora? I should have trusted you. But I
can give you a better answer to your question, Aurora. I can answer it
by a renewal of the prayer I made you five minutes ago. Be my wife."
"In spite of this secret?"
"In spite of a hundred secrets. I could not love you as I do,
Aurora, if I did not believe you to be all that is best and purest in
woman. I can not believe this one moment, and doubt you the next. I
give my life and honor into your hands. I would not confide them to the
woman whom I could insult by a doubt."
His handsome Saxon face was radiant with love and trustfulness when
he spoke. All his patient devotion, so long unheeded, or accepted as a
thing of course, recurred to Aurora's mind. Did he not deserve some
reward, some requital, for all this? But there was one who was nearer
and dearer to her, dearer than even Talbot Bulstrode had ever been, and
that one was the white-haired old man pottering about among the ruins
on the other side of the grassy platform.
"Does my father know of this, Mr. Mellish?" she asked.
"He does, Aurora. He has promised to accept me as his son; and
Heaven knows I will try to deserve that name. Do not let me distress
you, Aurora. The murder is out now. You know that I still love you,
still hope. Let time do the rest."
She held out both her hands to him with a tearful smile. He took
those little hands in his own broad palms, and, bending down, kissed
them reverently.
"You are right," she said; "let time do the rest. You are worthy of
the love of a better woman than me, John Mellish; but, with the help of
Heaven, I will never give you cause to regret having trusted me."
CHAPTER XII.
STEEVE HARGRAVES, "THE SOFTY."
Early in October Aurora Floyd returned to Felden Woods, once more
"engaged." The county families opened their eyes when the report
reached them that the banker's daughter was going to be married, not to
Talbot Bulstrode, but to Mr. John Mellish, of Mellish Park, near
Doncaster. The unmarried ladies—rather hanging on hand about Beckenham
and West Wickham—did not approve of all this chopping and changing.
They recognized the taint of the Prodder blood in this fickleness. The
spangles and the sawdust were breaking out, and Aurora was, as they had
always said, her mother's own daughter. She was a very lucky young
woman, they remarked, in being able, after jilting one rich man, to
pick up another; but, of course, a young person whose father could give
her fifty thousand pounds on her wedding-day might be permitted to play
fast and loose with the male sex, while worthier Marianas moped in
their moated granges till gray hairs showed themselves in glistening bandeaux, and cruel crow's-feet gathered about the corners of
bright eyes. It is well to be merry and wise, and honest and true, and
to be off with the old love, etc., but it is better to be Miss Floyd,
of the senior branch of Floyd, Floyd, and Floyd, for then you need be
none of these things. At least to such effect was the talk about
Beckenham when Archibald brought his daughter back to Felden Woods, and
a crowd of dress-makers and milliners set to work at the marriage
garments as busily as if Miss Floyd had never had any clothes in her
life before.
Mrs. Alexander and Lucy came back to Felden to assist in the
preparations for the wedding. Lucy had improved very much in appearance
since the preceding winter; there was a happier light in her soft blue
eyes, and a healthier hue in her cheeks; but she blushed crimson when
she first met Aurora, and hung back a little from Miss Floyd's caresses.
The wedding was to take place at the end of November. The bride and
bridegroom were to spend the winter in Paris, where Archibald Floyd was
to join them, and return to England "in time for the Craven Meeting,"
as John Mellish said; for I am sorry to say that, having been so
happily successful in his love-affair, this young man's thoughts
returned into their accustomed channels; and the creature he held
dearest on earth, next to Miss Floyd and those belonging to her, was a
bay filly called Aurora, and entered for the Oaks and Leger of a future
year.
Ought I to apologize for my heroine because she has forgotten Talbot
Bulstrode, and that she entertains a grateful affection for this
adoring John Mellish? She ought, no doubt, to have died of shame and
sorrow after Talbot's cruel desertion: and Heaven knows that only her
youth and vitality carried her through a very severe battle with the
grim rider of the pale horse; but, having once passed through that
dread encounter, she was, however feeble, in a fair way to recover.
These passionate griefs, to kill at all, must kill suddenly. The lovers
who die for love in our tragedies die in such a vast hurry that there
is generally some mistake or misapprehension about the business, and
the tragedy might have been a comedy if the hero or heroine had only
waited for a quarter of an hour. If Othello had but lingered a little
before smothering his wife, Mistress Emilia might have come in and
sworn and protested; and Cassio, with the handkerchief about his leg,
might have been in time to set the mind of the valiant Moor at rest,
and put the Venetian dog to confusion. How happily Mr. and Mrs. Romeo
Montague might have lived and died, thanks to the dear, good friar, if
the foolish bridegroom had not been in such a hurry to swallow the vile
stuff from the apothecary's; and, as people are, I hope and believe, a
little wiser in real life than they appear to be upon the stage, the
worms very rarely get an honest meal off men and women who have died
for love. So Aurora walked through the rooms at Felden in which Talbot
Bulstrode had so often walked by her side; and, if there was any regret
at her heart, it was a quiet sorrow, such as we feel for the dead—a
sorrow not unmingled with pity, for she thought that the proud son of
Sir John Raleigh Bulstrode might have been a happier man if he had been
as generous and trusting as John Mellish. Perhaps the healthiest sign
of the state of her health was, that she could speak of Talbot freely,
cheerfully, and without a blush. She asked Lucy if she had met Captain
Bulstrode that year; and the little hypocrite told her cousin Yes; that
he had spoken to them one day in the Park, and that she believed he had
gone into Parliament. She believed! Why, she knew his maiden
speech by heart, though it was on some hopelessly uninteresting bill in
which the Cornish mines were in some vague manner involved with the
national survey, and she could have repeated it as correctly as her
youngest brother could declaim to his "Romans, countrymen, and lovers."
Aurora might forget him, and basely marry a fair-haired Yorkshireman;
but for Lucy Floyd, earth only held this dark knight, with the severe
gray eyes and the stiff leg. Poor Lucy, therefore, loved, and was
grateful to her brilliant cousin for that fickleness which had brought
about such a change in the programme of the gay wedding at Felden
Woods. The fair young confidante and bridesmaid could assist in the
ceremonial now with a good grace. She no longer walked about like a
"corpse alive," but took a hearty womanly interest in the whole affair,
and was very much concerned in a discussion as to the merits of pink versus blue for the bonnets of the bridesmaids.
The boisterous happiness of John Mellish seemed contagious, and made
a genial atmosphere about the great mansion at Felden. Stalwart Andrew
Floyd was delighted with his young cousin's choice. No more refusals to
join him in the hunting-field, but half the county breakfasting at
Felden, and the long terrace and garden luminous with "pink."
Not a ripple disturbed the smooth current of that brief courtship.
The Yorkshireman contrived to make himself agreeable to everybody
belonging to his dark-eyed divinity. He flattered their weaknesses, he
gratified their caprices, he studied their wishes, and paid them all
such insidious court, that I'm afraid invidious comparisons were drawn
between John and Talbot, to the disadvantage of the proud young officer.
It was impossible for any quarrel to arise between the lovers, for
John followed his mistress about like some big slave, who only lived to
do her bidding; and Aurora accepted his devotion with a sultana-like
grace, which became her amazingly. Once more she visited the stables
and inspected her father's stud, for the first time since she had left
Felden for the Parisian finishing school. Once more she rode across
country, wearing a hat which provoked considerable criticism—a hat
which was no other than the now universal turban, or pork-pie, but
which was new to the world in the autumn of fifty-eight. Her earlier
girlhood appeared to return to her once more. It seemed almost as if
the two years and a half in which she had left and returned to her
home, and had met and parted with Talbot Bulstrode, had been blotted
from her life, leaving her spirits fresh and bright as they were before
that stormy interview in her father's study in the June of fifty-six.
The county families came to the wedding at Beckenham church, and
were fain to confess that Miss Floyd looked wondrously handsome in her
virginal crown of orange-buds and flowers, and her voluminous Mechlin
veil; she had pleaded hard to be married in a bonnet, but had been
overruled by a posse of female cousins. Mr. Richard Gunter provided
the marriage feast, and sent a man down to Felden to superintend the
arrangements, who was more dashing and splendid to look upon than any
of the Kentish guests. John Mellish alternately laughed and cried
throughout that eventful morning. Heaven knows how many times he shook
hands with Archibald Floyd, carrying the banker off into solitary
corners, and swearing, with the tears running down his broad cheeks, to
be a good husband to the old man's daughter, so that it must have been
a relief to the white-haired old Scotchman when Aurora descended the
staircase, rustling in violet moiré antique, and surrounded by her
bridesmaids, to take leave of this dear father before the prancing
steeds carried Mr. and Mrs. Mellish to that most prosaic of hymeneal
stages, the London Bridge station.
Mrs. Mellish! Yes, she was Mrs. Mellish now. Talbot Bulstrode read
of her marriage in that very column of the newspaper in which he had
thought, perhaps, to see her death. How flatly the romance ended! With
what a dull cadence the storm died out, and what a commonplace, gray,
every-day sky succeeded the terrors of the lightning! Less than a year
since, the globe had seemed to him to collapse, and creation to come to
a stand-still because of his trouble; and he was now in Parliament
legislating for the Cornish miners, and getting stout, his ill-natured
friends said; and she—she who ought, in accordance with all dramatic
propriety, to have died out of hand long before this, she had married a
Yorkshire land-owner, and would, no doubt, take her place in the
county, and play My Lady Bountiful in the village, and be chief
patroness at the race-balls, and live happily ever afterward. He
crumpled the Times newspaper, and flung it from him in his rage
and mortification. "And I once thought that she loved me," he cried.
And she did love you, Talbot Bulstrode—loved you as she can never
love this honest, generous, devoted John Mellish, though she may by and
by bestow upon him an affection which is a great deal better worth
having. She loved you with the girl's romantic fancy and reverent
admiration, and tried humbly to fashion her very nature anew, that she
might be worthy of your sublime excellence. She loved you as women only
love in their first youth, and as they rarely love the men they
ultimately marry. The tree is perhaps all the stronger when these first
frail branches are lopped away to give place to strong and spreading
arms, beneath which a husband and children may shelter.
But Talbot could not see all this. He saw nothing but that brief
announcement in the Times: "Aurora, only daughter of Archibald
Floyd, Banker, of Felden Woods, Kent, to John Mellish, Esq., of Mellish
Park, near Doncaster." He was angry with his sometime love, and more
angry with himself for feeling that anger; and he plunged furiously
into blue-books, to prepare himself for the coming session; and again
he took his gun and went out upon the "barren, barren moorland," as he
had done in the first violence of his grief, and wandered down to the
dreary sea-shore, where he raved about his "Amy, shallow-hearted," and
tried the pitch of his voice against the ides of February should come
round, and the bill for the Cornish miners be laid before the speaker.
Toward the close of January, the servants at Mellish Park prepared
for the advent of Master John and his bride. It was a work of love in
that disorderly household, for it pleased them that master would have
some one to keep him at home, and that the county would be entertained,
and festivals held in the roomy, rambling mansion. Architects,
upholsterers, and decorators had been busy through the short winter
days preparing a suite of apartments for Mrs. Mellish; and the western,
or, as it was called, the Gothic wing of the house, had been restored
and remodelled for Aurora, until the oak-roofed chambers blazed with
rose-color and gold, like a mediæval chapel. If John could have
expended half his fortune in the purchase of a roc's egg to hang in
these apartments, he would have gladly done so. He was so proud of his
Cleopatra-like bride, his jewel beyond all parallel amid all gems, that
he fancied he could not build a shrine rich enough for his treasure. So
the house is which honest country squires and their sensible motherly
wives had lived contentedly for nearly three centuries was almost
pulled to pieces before John thought it worthy of the banker's
daughter. The trainers, and grooms, and stable-boys shrugged their
shoulders superciliously, and spat fragments of straw disdainfully upon
the paved stable-yard, as they heard the clatter of the tools of the
stone-masons and glaziers busy about the façade of the restored
apartments. The stable would be naught now, they supposed, and
Muster Mellish would be always tied to his wife's apron-string. It was
a relief to them to hear that Mrs. Mellish was fond of riding and
hunting, and would, no doubt, take to horse-racing in due time, as the
legitimate taste of a lady of position and fortune.
The bells of the village church rang loudly and joyously in the
clear winter air as the carriage and four, which had met John and his
bride at Doncaster, dashed into the gates of Mellish Park, and up the
long avenue to the semi-Gothic, semi-barbaric portico of the great
door. Hearty Yorkshire voices rang out in loud cheers of welcome as
Aurora stepped from the carriage, and passed under the shadow of the
porch and into the old oak hall, which had been hung with evergreens
and adorned with floral devices, among which figured the legend,
"WELLCOME TO MELLISH!" and other such friendly inscriptions, more
conspicuous for their kindly meaning than their strict orthography. The
servants were enraptured with their master's choice. She was so
brightly handsome that the simple-hearted creatures accepted her beauty
as we accept the sunlight, and felt a genial warmth in that radiant
loveliness which the most classical perfection could never have
inspired. Indeed, a Grecian outline might have been thrown away upon
the Yorkshire servants, whose uncultivated tastes were a great deal
more disposed to recognize splendor of color than purity of form. They
could not choose but admire Aurora's eyes, which they unanimously
declared to be "regular shiners;" and the flash of her white teeth
glancing between the full crimson lips; and the bright flush which
lighted up her pale olive skin; and the purple lustre of her massive
coronal of plaited hair. Her beauty was of that luxuriant and splendid
order which has always most effect upon the masses, and the fascination
of her manner was almost akin to sorcery in its power over simple
people. I lose myself when I try to describe the feminine
intoxications, the wonderful fascination exercised by this dark-eyed
siren. Surely the secret of her power to charm must have been the
wonderful vitality of her nature, by virtue of which she carried life
and animal spirits about with her as an atmosphere, till dull people
grew merry by reason of her contagious presence; or perhaps the true
charm of her manner was that childlike and exquisite unconsciousness of
self which made her for ever a new creature—for ever impulsive and
sympathetic, acutely sensible of all sorrow in others, though of a
nature originally joyous in the extreme.
Mrs. Walter Powell had been transferred from Felden Woods to Mellish
Park, and was comfortably installed in her prim apartments when the
bride and bridegroom arrived. The Yorkshire housekeeper was to abandon
the executive power to the ensign's widow, who was to take all trouble
of administration off Aurora's hands.
"Heaven help your friends if they ever had to eat a dinner of my
ordering, John," Mrs. Mellish said, making a free confession of her
ignorance; "I am glad, too, that we have no occasion to turn the poor
soul out upon the world once more. Those long columns of advertisements
in the Times give me a sick pain at my heart when I think of
what a governess must have to encounter. I can not loll back in my
carriage and be 'grateful for my advantages,' as Mrs. Alexander says,
when I remember the sufferings of others. I am rather inclined to be
discontented with my lot, and to think it a poor thing after all, to be
rich and happy in a world where so many must suffer; so I am glad we
can give Mrs. Powell something to do at Mellish Park."
The ensign's widow rejoiced very much in that she was to be retained
in such comfortable quarters, but she did not thank Aurora for the
benefits received from the open hands of the banker's daughter. She did
not thank her, because—she hated her. Why did she hate her? She hated
her for the very benefits she received, or rather because she, Aurora,
had power to bestow such benefits. She hated her as such slow,
sluggish, narrow-minded creatures always hate the frank and generous;
hated her as envy will for ever hate prosperity; as Haman hated
Mordecai from the height of his throne, and as the man of Haman nature
would hate were he supreme in the universe. If Mrs. Walter Powell had
been a duchess, and Aurora a crossing-sweeper, she would still have
envied her; she would have envied her glorious eyes and flashing teeth,
her imperial carriage and generous soul. This pale, whity-brown haired
woman felt herself contemptible in the presence of Aurora, and she
resented the bounteous vitality of this nature which made her conscious
of the sluggishness of her own. She detested Mrs. Mellish for the
possession of attributes which she felt were richer gifts than all the
wealth of the house of Floyd, Floyd, and Floyd, melted into one
mountain of ore. But it is not for a dependent to hate, except in a
decorous and gentlewomanly manner—secretly, in the dim recesses of her
soul; while she dresses her face with an unvarying smile—a smile which
she puts on every morning with her clean collar, and takes off at night
when she goes to bed.
Now as, by an all-wise dispensation of Providence, it is not
possible for one person so to hate another without that other having a
vague consciousness of the deadly sentiment, Aurora felt that Mrs.
Powell's attachment to her was of no very profound a nature. But the
reckless girl did not seek to fathom the depth of any inimical feeling
which might lurk in her dependent's breast.
"She is not very fond of me, poor soul," she said, "and I dare say I
torment and annoy her with my careless follies. If I were like that
dear, considerate little Lucy, now—" And with a shrug of her
shoulders, and an unfinished sentence such as this, Mrs. Mellish
dismissed the insignificant subject from her mind.
You can not expect these grand, courageous creatures to be
frightened of quiet people. And yet, in the great dramas of life, it is
the quiet people who do the mischief. Iago was not a noisy person,
though, thank Heaven! it is no longer the fashion to represent him an
oily sneak, whom even the most foolish of Moors could not have
trusted.
Aurora was at peace. The storms that had so nearly shipwrecked her
young life had passed away, leaving her upon a fair and fertile shore.
Whatever griefs she had inflicted upon her father's devoted heart had
not been mortal, and the old banker seemed a very happy man when he
came, in the bright April weather, to see the young couple at Mellish
Park. Among all the hangers-on of that large establishment there was
only one person who did not join in the general voice when Mrs. Mellish
was spoken of, and that one person was so very insignificant that his
fellow-servants scarcely cared to ascertain his opinion. He was a man
of about forty, who had been born at Mellish Park, and had pottered
about the stables from his boyhood, doing odd jobs for the grooms, and
being reckoned, although a little "fond" upon common matters, a very
acute judge of horseflesh. This man was called Stephen, or more
commonly, Steeve Hargraves. He was a squat, broad-shouldered fellow,
with a big head, a pale, haggard face—a face whose ghastly pallor
seemed almost unnatural—reddish-brown eyes, and bushy, sandy eyebrows,
which formed a species of penthouse over those sinister-looking eyes.
He was the sort of man who is generally called repulsive—a man
from whom you recoil with a feeling of instinctive dislike, which is,
no doubt, both wicked and unjust; for we have no right to take
objection to a man because he has an ugly glitter in his eyes, and
shaggy tufts of red hair meeting on the bridge of his nose, and big
splay feet, which seem made to crush and destroy whatever comes in
their way; and this was what Aurora Mellish thought when, a few days
after her arrival at the Park, she saw Steeve Hargraves for the first
time, coming out of the harness-room with a bridle across his arm. She
was angry with herself for the involuntary shudder with which she drew
back at the sight of this man, who stood at a little distance polishing
the brass ornaments upon a set of harness, and furtively regarding Mrs.
Mellish as she leaned on her husband's arm, talking to the trainer
about the foals at grass in the meadows outside the Park.
Aurora asked who the man was.
"Why, his name is Hargraves, ma'am," answered the trainer; "but we
call him Steeve. He's a little bit touched in the upper story—a little
bit 'fond,' as we call it here; but he's useful about the stables when
he pleases, for he's rather a queer temper, and there's none of us has
ever been able to get the upper hand of him, as master knows."
John Mellish laughed.
"No," he said; "Steeve has pretty much his own way in the stables, I
fancy. He was a favorite groom of my father's twenty years ago; but he
got a fall in the hunting-field, which did him some injury about the
head, and he's never been quite right since. Of course this, with my
poor father's regard for him, gives him a claim upon us, and we put up
with his queer ways—don't we, Langley?"
"Well, we do, sir," said the trainer; "though, upon my honor, I'm
sometimes half afraid of him, and think he'll get up in the middle of
the night and murder some of us."
"Not till some of you have won a hatful of money, Langley. Steeve's
a little too fond of the brass to murder any of you for nothing. You
shall see his face light up presently, Aurora," said John, beckoning to
the stableman. "Come here, Steeve. Mrs. Mellish wishes you to drink her
health."
He dropped a sovereign into the man's broad, muscular palm—the hand
of a gladiator, with horny flesh and sinews of iron. Steeve's red eyes
glistened as his fingers closed upon the money.
"Thank you kindly, my lady," he said, touching his cap.
He spoke in a low, subdued voice, which contrasted so strangely with
the physical power manifest in his appearance that Aurora drew back
with a start.
Unhappily for this poor "fond" creature, whose person was in itself
repulsive, there was something in this inward, semi-whispering voice
which gave rise to an instinctive dislike in those who heard him speak
for the first time.
He touched his greasy woollen cap once more, and went slowly back to
his work.
"How white his face is!" said Aurora. "Has he been ill?"
"No. He has had that pale face ever since his fall. I was too young
when it happened to remember much about it, but I have heard my father
say that when they brought the poor creature home his face, which had
been florid before, was as white as a sheet of writing-paper, and his
voice, until that period strong and gruff, was reduced to the
half-whisper in which he now speaks. The doctors did all they could for
him, and carried him through an awful attack of brain fever, but they
could never bring back his voice, nor the color to his cheeks."
"Poor fellow!" said Mrs. Mellish, gently; "he is very much to be
pitied."
She was reproaching herself, as she said this, for that feeling of
repugnance which she could not overcome. It was a repugnance closely
allied to terror; she felt as if she could scarcely be happy at Mellish
Park while that man was on the premises. She was half inclined to beg
her indulgent husband to pension him off, and send him to the other end
of the county; but the next moment she was ashamed of her childish
folly, and a few hours afterward had forgotten Steeve Hargraves, the
"softy," as he was politely called in the stables.
Reader, when any creature inspires you with this instinctive,
unreasoning abhorrence, avoid that creature. He is dangerous. Take
warning, as you take warning by the clouds in the sky and the ominous
stillness of the atmosphere when there is a storm coming. Nature can
not lie; and it is nature which has planted that shuddering terror in
your breast; an instinct of self-preservation rather than of cowardly
fear, which, at the first sight of some fellow-creature, tells you more
plainly than words can speak, "That man is my enemy!"
Had Aurora suffered herself to be guided by this instinct; had she
given way to the impulse which she despised as childish, and caused
Stephen Hargraves to be dismissed from Mellish Park, what bitter
misery, what cruel anguish, might have been spared to herself and
others.
The mastiff Bow-wow had accompanied his mistress to her new home;
but Bow-wow's best days were done. A month before Aurora's marriage he
had been run over by a pony-carriage in one of the roads about Felden,
and had been conveyed, bleeding and disabled, to the veterinary
surgeon's, to have one of his hind legs put into splints, and to be
carried through his sufferings by the highest available skill in the
science of dog-doctoring. Aurora drove every day to Croydon to see her
sick favorite; and at the worst Bow-wow was always well enough to
recognize his beloved mistress, and roll his listless, feverish tongue
over her white hands, in token of that unchanging brute affection which
can only perish with life. So the mastiff was quite lame as well as
half blind when he arrived at Mellish Park with the rest of Aurora's
goods and chattels. He was a privileged creature in the roomy mansion;
a tiger-skin was spread for him upon the hearth in the drawing-room,
and he spent his declining days in luxurious repose, basking in the
firelight or sunning himself in the windows, as it pleased his royal
fancy; but, feeble as he was, always able to limp after Mrs. Mellish
when she walked on the lawn or in the woody shrubberies which skirted
the gardens.
One day, when she had returned from her morning's ride with John and
her father, who accompanied them sometimes upon a quiet gray cob, and
seemed a younger man for the exercise, she lingered on the lawn in her
riding-habit after the horses had been taken back to the stables, and
Mr. Mellish and his father-in-law had re-entered the house. The mastiff
saw her from the drawing-room window, and crawled out to welcome her.
Tempted by the exquisite softness of the atmosphere, she strolled, with
her riding-habit gathered under her arm and her whip in her hand,
looking for primroses under the clumps of trees upon the lawn. She
gathered a cluster of wild flowers, and was returning to the house,
when she remembered some directions respecting a favorite pony that was
ill, which she had omitted to give to her groom.
She crossed the stable-yard, followed by Bow-wow, found the groom,
gave him her orders, and went back to the gardens. While talking to the
man, she had recognized the white face of Steeve Hargraves at one of
the windows of the harness-room. He came out while she was giving her
directions, and carried a set of harness across to a coach-house on the
opposite side of the quadrangle. Aurora was on the threshold of the
gates opening from the stables into the gardens, when she was arrested
by a howl of pain from the mastiff Bow-wow. Rapid as lightning in every
movement, she turned round in time to see the cause of this cry. Steeve
Hargraves had sent the animal reeling away from him with a kick from
his iron-bound clog. Cruelty to animals was one of the failings of the
"softy." He was not cruel to the Mellish horses, for he had sense
enough to know that his daily bread depended upon his attention to
them; but Heaven help any outsider that came in his way. Aurora sprang
upon him like a beautiful tigress, and, catching the collar of his
fustian jacket in her slight hands, rooted him to the spot upon which
he stood. The grasp of those slender hands, convulsed by passion, was
not to be easily shaken off; and Steeve Hargraves, taken completely off
his guard, stared aghast at his assailant. Taller than the stable-man
by a foot and a half, she towered above him, her cheeks white with
rage, her eyes flashing fury, her hat fallen off, and her black hair
tumbling about her shoulders, sublime in her passion.
The man crouched beneath the grasp of the imperious creature.
"Let me go," he gasped, in his inward whisper, which had a hissing
sound in his agitation; "let me go, or you'll be sorry; let me go!"
"How dared you!" cried Aurora—"how dared you hurt him? My poor dog!
My poor, lame, feeble dog! How dared you do it? You cowardly dastard!
you—"
She disengaged her right hand from his collar, and rained a shower
of blows upon his clumsy shoulders with her slender whip; a mere toy,
with emeralds set in its golden head, but stinging like a rod of
flexible steel in that little hand.
"How dared you!" she repeated again and again, her cheeks changing
from white to scarlet in the effort to hold the man with one hand. Her
tangled hair had fallen to her waist by this time, and the whip was
broken in half a dozen places.
John Mellish, entering the stable-yard by chance at this very
moment, turned white with horror at beholding the beautiful fury.
"Aurora! Aurora!" he cried, snatching the man's collar from her
grasp, and hurling him half a dozen paces off. "Aurora, what is it?"
She told him, in broken gasps, the cause of her indignation. He took
the splintered whip from her hand, picked up her hat which she had
trodden upon in her rage, and led her across the yard toward the back
entrance to the house. It was such bitter shame to him to think that
this peerless, this adored creature should do anything to bring
disgrace or even ridicule upon herself. He would have stripped off his
coat and fought with half a dozen coal-heavers, and thought nothing of
it; but that she—
"Go in, go in, my darling girl," he said, with sorrowful tenderness;
"the servants are peeping and prying about, I dare say. You should not
have done this; you should have told me."
"I should have told you!" she cried, impatiently. "How could I stop
to tell you when I saw him strike my dog—my poor, lame dog?"
"Go in, darling, go in! There, there, calm yourself, and go in."
He spoke as if he had been trying to soothe an agitated child, for
he saw by the convulsive heaving of her breast that the violent emotion
would terminate in hysteria, as all womanly fury must, sooner or later.
He half led, half carried her up a back staircase to her own room, and
left her lying on a sofa in her riding-habit. He thrust the broken whip
into his pocket, and then, setting his strong white teeth and clenching
his fist, went to look for Stephen Hargraves. As he crossed the hall in
his way out, he selected a stout leather-thonged hunting-whip from a
stand of formidable implements. Steeve, the softy, was sitting on a
horse-block when John re-entered the stable-yard. He was rubbing his
shoulders with a very doleful face, while a couple of grinning
stable-boys, who had perhaps witnessed his chastisement, watched him
from a respectful distance. They had no inclination to go too near him
just then, for the softy had a playful habit of brandishing a big
clasp-knife when he felt himself aggrieved, and the bravest lad in the
stables had no wish to die from a stab in the abdomen, with the
pleasant conviction that his murderer's heaviest punishment might be a
fortnight's imprisonment or an easy fine.
"Now, Mr. Hargraves," said John Mellish, lifting the softy off the
horse-block and planting him at a convenient distance for giving full
play to the hunting-whip, "it was n't Mrs. Mellish's business to
horsewhip you, but it was her duty to let me do it for her; so take
that, you coward."
The leathern thong whistled in the air, and curled about Steeve's
shoulders; but John felt there was something despicable in the unequal
contest. He threw his whip away, and, still holding him by the collar,
conducted the softy to the gates of the stable-yard.
"You see that avenue," he said, pointing down a fair glade that
stretched before them, "it leads pretty straight out of the park, and I
strongly recommend you, Mr. Stephen Hargraves, to get to the end of it
as quick as ever you can, and never to show your ugly white face upon
an inch of ground belonging to me again. D'ye hear?"
"E-es, sir."
"Stay! I suppose there's wages or something due to you." He took a
handful of money from his waistcoat-pocket and threw it on the ground,
sovereigns and half-crowns rolling hither and thither on the gravel
path; then, turning on his heel, he left the softy to pick up the
scattered treasure. Steeve Hargraves dropped on his knees, and groped
about till he had found the last coin; then, as he slowly counted the
money from one hand into the other, his white face relapsed into a
grin; John Mellish had given him gold and silver amounting to upward of
two years of his ordinary wages.
He walked a few paces down the avenue, and then, looking back, shook
his fist at the house he was leaving behind him.
"You're a fine-spirited madam, Mrs. John Mellish, sure enough," he
muttered; "but never you give me a chance of doing you any mischief, or
by the Lord, fond as I am, I'll do it! They think the softy's up
to naught, perhaps. Wait a bit."
He took his money from his pocket again, and counted it once more as
he walked slowly toward the gates of the park.
It will be seen, therefore, that Aurora had two enemies, one without
and one within her pleasant home; one for ever brooding discontent and
hatred within the holy circle of the domestic hearth, the other
plotting ruin and vengeance without the walls of the citadel.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE SPRING MEETING.
The early spring brought Lucy Floyd on a visit to her cousin, a
wondering witness of the happiness that reigned at Mellish Park.
Poor Lucy had expected to find Aurora held as something better than
the dogs, and a little higher than the horses in that Yorkshire
household, and was considerably surprised to find her dark-eyed cousin
a despotic and capricious sovereign, reigning with undisputed sway over
every creature, biped or quadruped, upon the estate. She was surprised
to see the bright glow in her cheeks, the merry sparkle in her
eyes—surprised to hear the light tread of her footstep, the gushing
music of her laugh—surprised, in fact, to discover that, instead of
weeping over the dry bones of her dead love for Talbot Bulstrode,
Aurora had learned to love her husband.
Have I any need to be ashamed of my heroine in that she had
forgotten her straight-nosed, gray-eyed Cornish lover, who had set his
pride and his pedigree between himself and his affection, and had loved
her at best with a reservation, although Heaven only knows how dearly
he had loved her? Have I any cause to blush for this poor, impetuous
girl if, turning in the sickness of her sorrowful heart with a sense of
relief and gratitude to the honest shelter of John's love, she had
quickly learned to feel for him an affection which repaid him a
thousand-fold for his long-suffering devotion? Surely it would have
been impossible for any true-hearted woman to withhold some such
repayment for such love as that which in every word, and look, and
thought, and deed John Mellish bestowed upon his wife. How could she be
for ever his creditor for such a boundless debt? Are hearts like his
common among our clay? Is it a small thing to be beloved with this
loyal and pure affection? Is it laid so often at the feet of any mortal
woman that she should spurn and trample upon the holy offering?
He had loved, and, more, he had trusted her—he had trusted her,
when the man who passionately loved her had left her in an agony of
doubt and despair. The cause of this lay in the difference between the
two men. John Mellish had as high and stern a sense of honor as Talbot
Bulstrode; but while the Cornishman's strength of brain lay in the
reflective faculties, the Yorkshireman's acute intellect was strongest
in its power of perception. Talbot drove himself half mad with
imagining what might be; John saw what was, and he saw, or fancied he
saw, that the woman he loved was worthy of all love, and he gave his
peace and honor freely into her keeping.
He had his reward. He had his reward in her frank, womanly
affection, and in the delight of seeing that she was happy; no cloud
upon her face, no shadow on her life, but ever-beaming joy in her eyes,
ever-changing smiles upon her lips. She was happy in the calm security
of her home, happy in that pleasant strong-hold in which she was so
fenced about and guarded by love and devotion. I do not know that she
ever felt any romantic or enthusiastic love for this big Yorkshireman;
but I do know that from the first hour in which she laid her head upon
his broad breast she was true to him—true as a wife should be; true in
every thought, true in the merest shadow of a thought. A wide gulf
yawned around the altar of her home, separating her from every other
man in the universe, and leaving her alone with that one man whom she
had accepted as her husband. She had accepted him in the truest and
purest sense of the word. She had accepted him from the hand of God as
the protector and shelterer of her life; and, morning and night, upon
her knees she thanked the gracious Creator who had made this man for
her helpmeet.
But, after duly setting down all this, I have to confess that poor
John Mellish was cruelly hen-pecked. Such big, blustering fellows are
created to be the much-enduring subjects of petticoat government; and
they carry the rosy garlands until their dying hour with a sublime
consciousness that those floral chains are not very easy to be broken.
Your little man is self-assertive, and for ever on his guard against
womanly domination. All tyrannical husbands on record have been little
men, from Mr. Daniel Quilp upward; but who could ever convince a fellow
of six feet two in his stockings that he was afraid of his wife? He
submits to the petty tyrant with a quiet smile of resignation. What
does it matter? She is so little, so fragile; he could break that tiny
wrist with one twist of his big thumb and finger; and, in the meantime,
till affairs get desperate, and such measures become necessary, it's as
well to let her have her own way.
John Mellish did not even debate the point. He loved her, and he
laid himself down to be trampled upon by her gracious feet. Whatever
she did or said was charming, bewitching, and wonderful to him. If she
ridiculed or laughed at him, her laughter was the sweetest harmony in
creation; and it pleased him to think that his absurdities could give
birth to such music. If she lectured him, she arose to the sublimity of
a priestess, and he listened to her and worshipped her as the most
noble of living creatures. And, with all this, his innate manliness of
character preserved him from any taint of that quality our argot
has christened spooneyism. It was only those who knew him well and
watched him closely who could fathom the full depths of his tender
weakness. The noblest sentiments approach most nearly to the universal,
and this love of John's was in a manner universal. It was the love of
husband, father, mother, brother, melted into one comprehensive
affection. He had a mother's weak pride in Aurora, a mother's foolish
vanity in the wonderful creature, the rara avis he had won from
her nest to be his wife.
If Mrs. Mellish was complimented while John stood by, he simpered
like a school-girl who blushes at a handsome man's first flatteries.
I'm afraid he bored his male acquaintance about "my wife;" her
marvellous leap over the bullfinch; the plan she drew for the new
stables, "which the architect said was a better plan than he could have
drawn himself, sir, by gad" (a clever man, that Doncaster architect);
the surprising manner she had discovered the fault of the chestnut
colt's off fore leg; the pencil sketch she had made of her dog Bow-wow
("Sir Edwin Landseer might have been proud of such spirit and dash,
sir")—all these things did the country gentlemen hear, until, perhaps,
they grew a shade weary of John's talk of "my wife." But they were
never weary of Aurora herself. She took her place at once among them,
and they bowed down to her and worshipped her, envying John Mellish the
ownership of such a high-bred filly, as I fear they were but likely,
unconsciously, to designate my black-eyed heroine.
The domain over which Aurora found herself empress was no
inconsiderable one. John Mellish had inherited an estate which brought
him an income of something between £16,000 and £17,000 a year. Far-away
farms, upon wide Yorkshire wolds and fenny Lincolnshire flats, owned
him master; and the intricate secrets of his possessions were scarcely
known to himself—known, perhaps, to none but his land-steward and
solicitor, a grave gentleman who lived in Doncaster, and drove about
once a fortnight down to Mellish Park, much to the horror of his
light-hearted master, to whom "business" was a terrible bugbear. Not
that I would have the reader for a moment imagine John Mellish an
empty-headed blockhead, with no comprehension save for his own daily
pleasures. He was not a reading man, nor a business man, nor a
politician, nor a student of the natural sciences.
There was an observatory in the park, but John had fitted it up as a
smoking-room, the revolving openings in the roof being very convenient
for letting out the effluvia of his guests' cheroots and Havanas, Mr.
Mellish caring for the stars very much after the fashion of that
Assyrian monarch who was content to see them shine, and thank their
Maker for their beauty. He was not a spiritualist, and, unless one of
the tables at Mellish could have given him "a tip" for the "Sellinger"
or Great Ebor, he would have cared very little if every inch of walnut
and rose-wood in his house had grown oracular. But, for all this, he
was no fool; he had that brightly clear intellect which very often
accompanies perfect honesty of purpose, and which is the very intellect
of all others most successful in the discomfiture of all knavery. He
was not a creature to despise, for his very weaknesses were manly.
Perhaps Aurora felt this, and that it was something to rule over such a
man. Sometimes, in an outburst of loving gratitude, she would nestle
her handsome head upon his breast—tall as she was, she was only tall
enough to take shelter under his wing—and tell him that he was the
dearest and the best of men, and that, although she might love him to
her dying day, she could never, never, never love him half as much as
he deserved. After which, half ashamed of herself for the sentimental
declaration, she would alternately ridicule, lecture, and tyrannize
over him for the rest of the day.
Lucy beheld this state of things with silent bewilderment. Could the
woman who had once been loved by Talbot Bulstrode sink to this—the
happy wife of a fair-haired Yorkshireman, with her fondest wishes
concentred in her namesake, the bay filly, which was to run in a
weight-for-age race at the York Spring, and was entered for the ensuing
Derby; interested in a tan-gallop, a new stable; talking of mysterious
but evidently all-important creatures, called by such names as Scott,
and Fobert, and Challoner; and, to all appearance, utterly forgetful of
the fact that there existed upon the earth a divinity with fathomless
gray eyes, known as the heir of Bulstrode? Poor Lucy was like to have
been driven wellnigh demented by the talk about this bay filly Aurora
as the spring meeting drew near. She was taken to see it every morning
by Aurora and John, who, in their anxiety for the improvement of their
favorite, looked at the animal upon each visit as if they expected some
wonderful physical transformation to have occurred in the stillness of
the night. The loose box in which the filly was lodged was watched
night and day by an amateur detective force of stable-boys and
hangers-on; and John Mellish once went so far as to dip a tumbler into
the pail of water provided for the bay filly Aurora, to ascertain, of
his own experience, that the crystal fluid was innocuous; for he grew
nervous as the eventful day drew nigh, and was afraid of lurking danger
to the filly from dark-minded touts who might have heard of her in
London. I fear the touts troubled their heads very little about this
graceful two-year old, though she had the blood of Old Melbourne and
West Australian in her veins, to say nothing of other aristocracy upon
the maternal side.
The suspicious gentlemen hanging about York and Doncaster in those
early April days were a great deal too much occupied with Lord
Glasgow's lot, and John Scott's lot, and Lord Zetland's, and Mr.
Merry's lot, and other lots of equal distinction, to have much time to
prowl about Mellish Park, or peer into that meadow which the young man
had caused to be surrounded by an eight-foot fence for the privacy of
the Derby winner in futuro.
Lucy declared the filly to be the loveliest of creatures, and safe
to win any number of cups and plates that might be offered for equine
competition; but she was always glad, when the daily visit was over, to
find herself safely out of reach of those high-bred hind legs, which
seemed to possess a faculty for being in all four corners of the loose
box at one and the same moment.
The first day of the meeting came, and found half the Mellish
household established at York; John and his family at a hotel near the
betting-rooms; and the trainer, his satellites, and the filly, at a
little inn close to the Knavesmire.
Archibald Floyd did his best to be interested in the event which was
so interesting to his children; but he freely confessed to his
grand-niece Lucy that he heartily wished the meeting over, and the
merits of the bay filly decided. She had stood her trial nobly, John
said; not winning with a rush, it is true; in point of fact, being in a
manner beaten; but evincing a power to stay, which promised better for
the future than any two-year-old velocity. When the saddling-bell rang,
Aurora, her father, and Lucy were stationed in the balcony, a crowd of
friends about them; Mrs. Mellish, with a pencil in her hand, putting
down all manner of impossible bets in her excitement, and making such a
book as might have been preserved as a curiosity in sporting annals.
John was pushing in and out of the ring below, tumbling over small
bookmen in his agitation, dashing from the ring to the weighing-house,
and hanging about the small, pale-faced boy who was to ride the filly
as anxiously as if the jockey had been a prime minister, and John a
family man with half a dozen sons in need of government appointments. I
tremble to think how many bonuses, in the way of five-pound notes, John
promised the pale-faced lad on condition that the stakes (some small
matter amounting to about £60) were pulled off—pulled off where, I
wonder—by the bay filly Aurora. If the youth had not been of that
preternatural order of being who seem born of an emotionless character
to wear silk for the good of their fellow-men, his brain must certainly
have been dazed by the variety of conflicting directions which John
Mellish gave him within the critical last quarter of an hour; but,
having received his orders early that morning from the trainer,
accompanied with a warning not to suffer himself to be tewed
(Yorkshire patois for worried) by anything Mr. Mellish might
say, the sallow-complexioned lad walked about in the calm serenity of
innocence—there are honest jockeys in the world, thank Heaven! and
took his seat in the saddle with as even a pulse as if he had been
about to ride in an omnibus.
There were some people upon the stand that morning who thought the
face of Aurora Mellish as pleasant a sight as the smooth green sward of
the Knavesmire, or the best horse-flesh in the county of York. All
forgetful of herself in her excitement, with her natural vivacity
multiplied by the animation of the scene before her, she was more than
usually lovely; and Archibald Floyd looked at her with a fond emotion,
so intermingled with gratitude to Heaven for the happiness of his
daughter's destiny as to be almost akin to pain. She was happy—she was
thoroughly happy at last—the child of his dead Eliza, this sacred
charge left to him by the woman he had loved; she was happy, and she
was safe; he could go to his grave resignedly tomorrow, if it pleased
God, knowing this. Strange thoughts, perhaps, for a crowded
race-course; but our most solemn fancies do not come always in solemn
places. Nay, it is often in the midst of crowds and confusion that our
souls wing their loftiest flights, and the saddest memories return to
us. You see a man sitting at some theatrical entertainment with a
grave, abstracted face, over which no change of those around him has
any influence. He may be thinking of his dead wife, dead ten years ago;
he may be acting over well-remembered scenes of joy and sorrow; he may
be recalling cruel words, never to be atoned for upon earth—angry
looks, gone to be registered against him in the skies, while his
children are laughing at the clown on the stage below him. He may be
moodily meditating inevitable bankruptcy or coming ruin, holding
imaginary meetings with his creditors, and contemplating prussic acid
upon the refusal of his certificate, while his eldest daughter is
crying with Pauline Deschapelles. So Archibald Floyd, while the numbers
were going up, and the jockeys being weighed, and the bookmen clamoring
below him, leaned over the broad ledge of the stone balcony, and,
looking far away across the grassy amphitheatre, thought of his dead
wife who had bequeathed to him this precious daughter.
The bay filly Aurora was beaten ignominiously. Mrs. Mellish turned
white with despair, as she saw the amber jacket, black belt, and blue
cap crawling in at the heels of the ruck, the jockey looking pale
defiance at the by-standers; as who should say that the filly had never
been meant to win, and that the defeat of to-day was but an
artfully-concocted ruse whereby fortunes were to be made in the future?
John Mellish, something used to such disappointments, crept away to
hide his discomfiture outside the ring; but Aurora dropped her card and
pencil, and, stamping her foot upon the stone flooring of the balcony,
told Lucy and the banker that it was a shame, and that the boy must
have sold the race, as it was impossible that the filly could have been
fairly beaten. As she turned to say this, her cheeks flushed with
passion, and her eyes flashing bright indignation on any one who might
stand in the way to receive the angry electric light, she became aware
of a pale face and a pair of gray eyes earnestly regarding her from the
threshold of an open window two or three paces off, and in another
moment both she and her father had recognized Talbot Bulstrode.
The young man saw that he was recognized, and approached them, hat
in hand—very, very pale, as Lucy always remembered—and, with a voice
that trembled as he spoke, wished the banker and the two ladies
"Good-day."
And it was thus that they met, these two who had "parted in silence
and tears," more than "half broken-hearted," to sever, as they thought,
for eternity; it was thus, upon this commonplace, prosaic, half-guinea
grand stand—that Destiny brought them once more face to face.
A year ago, and how often in the spring twilight Aurora Floyd had
pictured her possible meeting with Talbot Bulstrode! He would come upon
her suddenly, perhaps, in the still moonlight, and she would swoon away
and die at his feet of the unendurable emotion; or they would meet in
some crowded assembly, she dancing, laughing with hollow, simulated
mirth, and the shock of one glance of those eyes would slay her in her
painted glory of jewels and grandeur. How often, ah! how often she had
acted the scene and felt the anguish! only a year ago, less than a year
ago, ay! even so lately as on that balmy September day when she had
laid on the rustic couch at the Chateau d'Arques, looking down at the
fair Normandy landscape, with faithful John at watch by her side, the
tame goats browsing upon the grassy platform behind her, and
preternaturally ancient French children teasing the mild,
long-suffering animals; and to-day she met him with her thoughts so
full of the horse that had just been beaten that she scarcely knew what
she said to her sometime lover. Aurora Floyd was dead and buried, and
Aurora Mellish, looking critically at Talbot Bulstrode, wondered how
any one could have ever gone near to the gates of death for the love of
him.
It was Talbot who grew pale at this unlooked-for encounter; it was
Talbot whose voice was shaken in the utterance of those few every-day
syllables which common courtesy demanded of him. The captain had not so
easily learned to forget. He was older than Aurora, and he had reached
the age of two-and-thirty without having ever loved woman, only to be
more desperately attacked by the fatal disease when his time came. He
suffered acutely at that sudden meeting.—Wounded in his pride by her
serene indifference, dazzled afresh by her beauty, mad with jealous
fury at the thought that he had lost her, Captain Bulstrode's feelings
were of no very enviable nature; and, if Aurora had ever wished to
avenge that cruel scene at Felden Woods, her hour of vengeance had most
certainly come. But she was too generous a creature to have harbored
such a thought. She had submitted in all humility to Talbot's decree;
she had accepted his decision, and had believed in its justice; and,
seeing his agitation to-day, she was sorry for him. She pitied him with
a tender, matronly compassion, such as she, in the safe harbor of a
happy home, might be privileged to feel for this poor wanderer still at
sea on life's troubled ocean. Love, and the memory of love, must indeed
have died before we can feel like this. The terrible passion must have
died that slow and certain death from the grave of which no haunting
ghost ever returns to torment the survivors. It was, and it is not.
Aurora might have been shipwrecked and cast on a desert island with
Talbot Bulstrode, and might have lived ten years in his company without
ever feeling for ten seconds as she had felt for him once. With these
impetuous and impressionable people, who live quickly, a year is
sometimes as twenty years; so Aurora looked back at Talbot Bulstrode
across a gulf which stretched for weary miles between them, and
wondered if they had really ever stood side by side, allied by hope and
love, in the days that were gone.
While Aurora was thinking of these things, as well as a little of
the bay filly, and while Talbot, half choked by a thousand confused
emotions, tried to appear preternaturally at his ease, John Mellish,
having refreshed his spirits with bottled beer, came suddenly upon the
party, and slapped the captain on the back.
He was not jealous, this happy John. Secure in his wife's love and
truth, he was ready to face a regiment of her old admirers; indeed, he
rather delighted in the idea of avenging Aurora upon this cowardly
lover. Talbot glanced involuntarily at the members of the York
constabulary on the course below, wondering how they would act if he
were to fling John Mellish over the stone balcony, and do a murder then
and there. He was thinking this while John was nearly wringing off his
hand in cordial salutation, and asking what the deuce had brought him
to the York Spring.
Talbot explained rather lamely that, being knocked up by his
Parliamentary work, he had come down to spend a few days with an old
brother-officer, Captain Hunter, who had a place between York and Leeds.
Mr. Mellish declared that nothing could be more lucky than this. He
knew Hunter well; the two men must join them at dinner that day! and
Talbot must give them a week at the Park after he left the captain's
place.
Talbot murmured some vague protestation of the impossibility of
this, to which John paid no attention whatever, hustling his sometime
rival away from the ladies in his eagerness to get back to the ring,
where he had to complete his book for the next race.
So Captain Bulstrode was gone once more, and throughout the brief
interview no one had cared to notice Lucy Floyd, who had been pale and
red by turns half a dozen times within the last ten minutes.
John and Talbot returned after the start, with Captain Hunter, who
was brought on to the stand to be presented to Aurora, and who
immediately entered into a very animated discussion upon the day's
racing. How Captain Bulstrode abhorred this idle babble of horse-flesh,
this perpetual jargon, alike in every mouth, from Aurora's rosy Cupid's
bow to the tobacco-tainted lips of the bookmen in the ring! Thank
Heaven, this was not his wife, who knew all the slang of the course,
and, with lorgnette in hand, was craning her swan-like throat to catch
sight of a wind in the Knavesmire and the horse that had a lead of half
a mile.
Why had he ever consented to come into this accursed horse-racing
county? Why had he deserted the Cornish miners even for a week? Better
to be wearing out his brains over Dryasdust pamphlets and Parliamentary
minutes than to be here, desolate among this shallow-minded, clamorous
multitude, who have nothing to do but to throw up caps and cry huzza
for any winner of any race. Talbot, as a by-stander, could not but
remark this, and draw from this something of a philosophical lesson on
life. He saw that there was always the same clamor and the same
rejoicing in the crowd, whether the winning jockey wore blue and black
belt, yellow and black cap, white with scarlet spots, or any other
variety of color, even to dismal sable; and he could but wonder how
this was. Did the unlucky speculators run away and hide themselves
while the uplifted voices were rejoicing? When the welkin was rent with
the name of Kettledrum, where were the men who had backed Dundee
unflinchingly up to the dropping of the flag and the ringing of the
bell? When Thormanby came in with a rush, where were the wretched
creatures whose fortunes hung on Umpire or Wizard? They were
voiceless, these poor unlucky ones, crawling away with sick white
faces, to gather in groups and explain to each other, with stable
jargon intermingled with oaths, how it ought not to have been, and
never could have been, but for some unlooked-for and preposterous
combination of events never before witnessed upon any mortal course.
How little is ever seen of the losers in any of the great races run
upon this earth? For years and years the name of Louis Napoleon is an
empty sound, signifying nothing; when, lo! a few master-strokes of
policy and finesse, a little juggling with those pieces of
pasteboard out of which are built the shaky card-palaces men call
empires, and creation rings with the same name; the outsider emerges
from the ruck, and the purple jacket, spotted with golden bees, is
foremost in the mighty race.
Talbot Bulstrode leaned with folded arms upon the stone balustrade,
looking down at the busy life below him, and thinking of these things.
Pardon him for his indulgence in dreary platitudes and wornout
sentimentalities. He was a desolate, purposeless man; entered for no
race himself; scratched for the matrimonial stakes; embittered by
disappointment; soured by doubt and suspicion. He had spent the dull
winter months upon the Continent, having no mind to go down to
Bulstrode to encounter his mother's sympathy and his cousin Constance
Trevyllian's chatter. He was unjust enough to nourish a secret dislike
to that young lady for the good service she had done him by revealing
Aurora's flight.
Are we ever really grateful to the people who tell us of the
iniquity of those we love? Are we ever really just to the kindly
creatures who give us friendly warning of our danger? No, never. We
hate them; always involuntarily reverting to them as the first cause of
our anguish; always repeating to ourselves that, had they been silent,
that anguish need never have been; always ready to burst forth in one
wild rage with the mad cry that "it is better to be much abused than
but to know 't a little." When the friendly Ancient drops his poisoned
hints into poor Othello's ear, it is not Mrs. Desdemona, but Iago
himself, whom the noble Moor first has a mind to strangle. If poor,
innocent Constance Treyvellian had been born the veriest cur in the
county of Cornwall, she would have had a better chance of winning
Talbot's regard than she had now.
Why had he come into Yorkshire? I left that question unanswered just
now, for I am ashamed to tell the reasons which actuated this unhappy
man. He came, in a paroxysm of curiosity, to learn what kind of life
Aurora led with her husband, John Mellish. He had suffered horrible
distractions of mind upon this subject, one moment imagining her the
most despicable of coquettes, ready to marry any man who had a fair
estate and a good position to offer her, and by and by depicting her as
some white-robed Iphigenia, led a passive victim to the sacrificial
shrine. So, when happening to meet this good-natured brother-officer at
the United Service Club, he had consented to run down to Captain
Hunter's country place for a brief respite from Parliamentary minutes
and red tape, the artful hypocrite had never owned to himself that he
was burning to hear tidings of his false and fickle love, and that it
was some lingering fumes of the old intoxication that carried him down
to Yorkshire. But now—now that he met her—met her, the heartless,
abominable creature, radiant and happy—mere simulated happiness and
feverish mock radiance, no doubt, but too well put on to be quite
pleasing to him—now he knew her. He knew her at last, the wicked
enchantress, the soulless siren. He knew that she had never loved him;
that she was, of course, powerless to love; good for nothing but to
wreathe her white arms and flash the dark splendor of her eyes for weak
man's destruction; fit for nothing but to float in her beauty above the
waves that concealed the bleached bones of her victims. Poor John
Mellish! Talbot reproached himself for his hardness of heart in
nourishing one spiteful feeling toward a man who was so deeply to be
pitied.
When the race was done Captain Bulstrode turned and beheld the
black-eyed sorceress in the midst of a group gathered about a grave
patriarch, with gray hair, and the look of one accustomed to command.
This grave patriarch was John Pastern.
I write his name with respect, even as it was reverentially
whispered there, till, travelling from lip to lip, every one present
knew that a great man was among them. A very quiet, unassuming veteran,
sitting with his womankind about him—his wife and daughter, as I
think—self-possessed and grave, while men were busy with his name in
the crowd below, and while tens of thousands were staked in trusting
dependence on his acumen. What golden syllables might have fallen from
those oracular lips had the veteran been so pleased! What hundreds
would have been freely bidden for a word, a look, a nod, a wink, a mere
significant pursing-up of the lips from that great man! What is the
fable of the young lady who discoursed pearls and diamonds to a truth
such as this! Pearls and diamonds must be of a large size which would
be worth the secrets of those Richmond stables, the secrets which Mr.
Pastern might tell if he chose. Perhaps it is the knowledge of this
which gives him a calm, almost clerical gravity of manner. People come
to him, and fawn upon him, and tell him that such and such a horse from
his stable has won, or looks safe to win; and he nods pleasantly,
thanking them for the kind information, while perhaps his thoughts are
far away on Epsom Downs or Newmarket Flats, winning future Derbys and
two thousands with colts that are as yet unfoaled.
John Mellish is on intimate terms with the great man, to whom he
presents Aurora, and of whom he asks advice upon a matter that has been
troubling him for some time. His trainer's health is failing him, and
he wants assistance in the stables—a younger man, honest and clever.
Does Mr. Pastern know such a one?
The veteran tells him, after due consideration, that he does know of
a young man—honest, he believes, as times go—who was once employed in
the Richmond stables, and who had written to him only a few days
before, asking for his influence in getting him a situation. "But the
lad's name has slipped my memory," added Mr. Pastern; "he was but a lad
when he was with me; but, bless my soul, that's ten years ago! I'll
look up his letter when I go home, and write to you about him. I know
he's clever, and I believe he's honest; and I shall be only too happy,"
concluded the old gentleman, gallantly, "to do anything to oblige Mrs.
Mellish."
CHAPTER XIV.
"LOVE TOOK UP THE GLASS OF TIME AND
TURNED IT IN HIS GLOWING HANDS."
Talbot Bulstrode yielded at last to John's repeated invitations, and
consented to pass a couple of days at Mellish Park.
He despised and hated himself for the absurd concession. In what a
pitiful farce had the tragedy ended! A visitor in the house of his
rival—a calm spectator of Aurora's everyday, commonplace happiness.
For the space of two days he had consented to occupy this most
preposterous position. Two days only; then back to the Cornish miners,
and the desolate bachelor's lodgings in Queen's Square, Westminster;
back to his tent in life's great Sahara. He could not, for the very
soul of him, resist the temptation of beholding the inner life of that
Yorkshire mansion. He wanted to know for certain—what was it to him, I
wonder—whether she was really happy, and had utterly forgotten him.
They all returned to the Park together—Aurora, John, Archibald Floyd,
Lucy, Talbot Bulstrode, and Captain Hunter. The last-named officer was
a jovial gentleman, with a hook nose and auburn whiskers; a gentleman
whose intellectual attainments were of no very oppressive order, but a
hearty, pleasant guest in an honest country mansion, where there is
cheer and welcome for all.
Talbot could but inwardly confess that Aurora became her new
position. How everybody loved her! What an atmosphere of happiness she
created about her wherever she went! How joyously the dogs barked and
leaped at sight of her, straining their chains in the desperate effort
to approach her! How fearlessly the thorough-bred mares and foals ran
to the paddock-gates to bid her welcome, bending down their velvet
nostrils to nestle upon her shoulder, or respond to the touch of her
caressing hand! Seeing all this, how could Talbot refrain from
remembering that the same sunlight might have shone upon that dreary
castle far away by the surging Western Sea? She might have been his,
this beautiful creature; but at what price? At the price of honor; at
the price of every principle of his mind, which had set up for himself
a holy and perfect standard—a pure and spotless ideal for the wife of
his choice. Forbid it, manhood! He might have weakly yielded; he might
have been happy, with the blind happiness of a lotus-eater, but not the
reasonable bliss of a Christian. Thank Heaven for the strength which
had been given him to escape from the silken net! Thank Heaven for the
power which had been granted to him to fight the battle!
Standing by Aurora's side in one of the wide windows at Mellish
Park, looking far out over the belted lawn to the glades in which the
deer lay basking drowsily in the April sunlight, he could not repress
the thought uppermost in his mind.
"I am—very glad—to see you so happy, Mrs. Mellish."
She looked at him with frank, truthful eyes, in whose brightness
there was not one latent shadow.
"Yes," she said, "I am very, very happy. My husband is very good to
me. He loves—and trusts me."
She could not resist that one little stab—the only vengeance she
ever took upon him, but a stroke that pierced him to the heart.
"Aurora! Aurora! Aurora!" he cried.
That half-stifled cry revealed the secret of wounds that were not
yet healed. Mrs. Mellish turned pale at the traitorous sound. This man
must be cured. The happy wife, secure in her own strong-hold of love
and confidence, could not bear to see this poor fellow still adrift.
She by no means despaired of his cure, for experience had taught her
that although love's passionate fever takes several forms there are
very few of them incurable. Had she not passed safely through the
ordeal herself, without one scar to bear witness of the old wounds?
She left Captain Bulstrode staring moodily out of the window, and
went away to plan the saving of this poor shipwrecked soul.
She ran, in the first place, to tell Mr. John Mellish of her
discovery, as it was her custom to carry to him every scrap of
intelligence, great and small.
"My dearest old Jack," she said—it was another of her customs to
address him by every species of exaggeratedly endearing appellation; it
may be that she did this for the quieting of her own conscience, being
well aware that she tyrannized over him—"my darling boy, I have made a
discovery."
"About the filly?"
"About Talbot Bulstrode."
John's blue eyes twinkled maliciously. He was half prepared for what
was coming.
"What is it, Lolly?"
Lolly was a corruption of Aurora, devised by John Mellish.
"Why, I'm really afraid, my precious darling, that he has n't quite
got over—"
"My taking you away from him!" roared John. "I thought as much. Poor
devil—poor Talbot! I could see that he would have liked to fight me on
the stand at York. Upon my word, I pity him!" and, in token of his
compassion, Mr. Mellish burst into that old joyous, boisterous, but
musical laugh, which Talbot might almost have heard at the other end of
the house.
This was a favorite delusion of John's. He firmly believed that he
had won Aurora's affection in fair competition with Captain Bulstrode,
pleasantly ignoring that the captain had resigned all pretensions to
Miss Floyd's hand nine or ten months before his own offer had been
accepted.
The genial, sanguine creature, had a habit of deceiving himself in
this manner. He saw all things in the universe just as he wished to see
them—all men and women good and honest; life one long, pleasant
voyage, in a well-fitted ship, with only first-class passengers on
board. He was one of those men who are likely to cut their throats or
take prussic acid upon the day they first encounter the black visage of
Care.
"And what are we to do with this poor fellow, Lolly?"
"Marry him!" exclaimed Mrs. Mellish.
"Both of us?" said John, simply.
"My dearest pet, what an obtuse old darling you are! No; marry him
to Lucy Floyd, my first cousin once removed, and keep the Bulstrode
estate in the family."
"Marry him to Lucy!"
"Yes; why not? She has studied enough, and learned history, and
geography, and astronomy, and botany, and geology, and conchology, and
entomology enough; and she has covered I don't know how many China jars
with impossible birds and flowers; and she has illuminated missals, and
read High-Church novels; so the next best thing she can do is to marry
Talbot Bulstrode."
John had his own reasons for agreeing with Aurora in this matter. He
remembered that secret of poor Lucy's which he had discovered more than
a year before at Felden Woods—the secret which had been revealed to
him by some mysterious sympathetic power belonging to hopeless love. So
Mr. Mellish declared his hearty concurrence in Aurora's scheme, and the
two amateur match-makers set to work to devise a complicated man-trap,
in the which Talbot was to be entangled; never for a moment imagining
that, while they were racking their brains in the endeavor to bring
this piece of machinery to perfection, the intended victim was quietly
strolling across the sunlit lawn toward the very fate they desired for
him.
Yes, Talbot Bulstrode lounged with languid step to meet his destiny
in a wood upon the borders of the Park—a part of the Park, indeed,
inasmuch as it was within the boundary fence of John's domain. The
wood-anemones trembled in the spring breezes deep in those shadowy
arcades; pale primroses showed their mild faces amid their sheltering
leaves; and in shady nooks, beneath low spreading boughs of elm and
beech, oak and ash, the violets hid their purple beauty from the vulgar
eye. A lovely spot, soothing by its harmonious influence; a very forest
sanctuary, without whose dim arcades man cast his burden down, to enter
in a child. Captain Bulstrode had felt in no very pleasant humor as he
walked across the lawn, but some softening influence stole upon him on
the threshold of that sylvan shelter which made him feel a better man.
He began to question himself as to how he was playing his part in the
great drama of life.
"Good Heavens!" he thought, "what a shameful coward, what a negative
wretch I have become by this one grief of my manhood! An indifferent
son, a careless brother, a useless, purposeless creature, content to
dawdle away my life in feeble pottering with political economy. Shall I
ever be in earnest again? Is this dreary doubt of every living creature
to go with me to my grave? Less than two years ago my heart sickened at
the thought that I had lived to two-and-thirty years of age and had
never been loved. Since then—since then—since then I have lived
through life's brief fever; I have fought manhood's worst and sharpest
battle, and find myself—where? Exactly where I was before—still
companion-less upon the dreary journey, only a little nearer to the
end."
He walked slowly onward into the woodland aisle, other aisles
branching away from him right and left into deep glades and darkening
shadow. A month or so later, and the mossy ground beneath his feet
would be one purple carpet of hyacinths, the very air thick with a
fatal scented vapor from the perfumed bulbs.
"I asked too much," said Talbot, in that voiceless argument we are
perpetually carrying on with ourselves; "I asked too much—I yielded to
the spell of the siren, and was angry because I missed the white wings
of the angel. I was bewitched by the fascinations of a beautiful
woman, when I should have sought for a noble-minded wife."
He went deeper and deeper into the wood, going to his fate, as
another man was to do before the coming summer was over; but to what a
different fate! The long arcades of beech and elm had reminded him from
the first of the solemn aisles of a cathedral. The saint was only
needed. And, coming suddenly to a spot where a new arcade branched off
abruptly on his right hand, he saw, in one of the sylvan niches, as
fair a saint as had ever been modelled by the hand of artist and
believer—the same golden-haired angel he had seen in the long
drawing-room at Felden Woods—Lucy Floyd, with the pale aureola about
her head, her large straw hat in her lap, filled with anemones and
violets, and the third volume of a novel in her hand.
How much in life often hangs, or seems to us to hang, upon what is
called by playwrights "a situation!" But for this sudden encounter, but
for coming thus upon this pretty picture, Talbot Bulstrode might have
dropped into his grave ignorant to the last of Lucy's love for him.
But, given a sunshiny April morning (April's fairest bloom, remember,
when the capricious nymph is mending her manners, aware that her
lovelier sister May is at hand, and anxious to make a good impression
before she drops her farewell courtesy, and weeps her last brief shower
of farewell tears)—given a balmy spring morning, solitude, a wood,
wild flowers, golden hair, and blue eyes, and is the problem difficult
to solve?
Talbot Bulstrode, leaning against the broad trunk of a beech, looked
down at the fair face, which crimsoned under his eyes, and the first
glimmering hint of Lucy's secret began to dawn upon him. At that moment
he had no thought of profiting by the discovery, no thought of what he
was afterward led on to say. His mind was filled with the storm of
emotion that had burst from him in that wild cry to Aurora. Rage and
jealousy, regret, despair, envy, love, and hate—all the conflicting
feelings that had struggled like so many demons in his soul at sight
of Aurora's happiness, were still striving for mastery in his breast,
and the first words he spoke revealed the thoughts that were uppermost.
"Your cousin is very happy in her new life, Miss Floyd?" he said.
Lucy looked up at him with surprise. It was the first time he had
spoken to her of Aurora.
"Yes," she answered quietly, "I think she is happy."
Captain Bulstrode whisked the end of his cane across a group of
anemones, and decapitated the tremulous blossoms. He was thinking,
rather savagely, what a shame it was that this glorious Aurora could be
happy with big, broad-shouldered, jovial-tempered John Mellish. He
could not understand the strange anomaly; he could not discover the
clew to the secret; he could not comprehend that the devoted love of
this sturdy Yorkshireman was in itself strong enough to conquer all
difficulties, to outweigh all differences.
Little by little he and Lucy began to talk of Aurora, until Miss
Floyd told her companion all about that dreary time at Felden Woods
during which the life of the heiress was wellnigh despaired of. So she
had loved him truly, then, after all; she had loved and had suffered,
and had lived down her trouble, and had forgotten him and was happy.
The story was all told in that one sentence. He looked blankly back at
the irrecoverable past, and was angry with the pride of the Bulstrodes,
which had stood between himself and his happiness.
He told sympathizing Lucy something of his sorrow; told her that
misapprehension—mistaken pride—had parted him from Aurora. She tried,
in her gentle, innocent fashion, to comfort the strong man in his
weakness, and in trying revealed—ah! how simply and transparently—the
old secret, which had so long been hidden from him.
Heaven help the man whose heart is caught at the rebound by a
fair-haired divinity, with dove-like eyes, and a low, tremulous voice,
softly attuned to his grief. Talbot Bulstrode saw that he was beloved,
and in very gratitude made a dismal offer of the ashes of that fire
which had burnt so fiercely at Aurora's shrine. Do not despise this
poor Lucy if she accepted her cousin's forgotten lover with humble
thankfulness, nay, with a tumult of wild delight, and with joyful fear
and trembling. She loved him so well, and had loved him so long.
Forgive and pity her, for she was one of those pure and innocent
creatures whose whole being resolves itself into affection; to whom
passion, anger, and pride are unknown; who live only to love, and who
love until death. Talbot Bulstrode told Lucy Floyd that he had loved
Aurora with the whole strength of his soul, but that now the battle was
over, he, the stricken warrior, needed a consoler for his declining
days; would she, could she, give her hand to one who would strive to
the uttermost to fulfil a husband's duty, and to make her happy? Happy!
She would have been happy if he had asked her to be his slave—happy if
she could have been a scullery-maid at Bulstrode Castle, so that she
might have seen the dark face she loved once or twice a day through the
obscure panes of some kitchen-window.
But she was the most undemonstrative of women, and, except by her
blushes, and her drooping eyelids, and the teardrop trembling upon the
soft auburn lashes, she made no reply to the captain's appeal, until at
last, taking her hand in his, he won from her a low consenting murmur,
which meant Yes.
Good Heavens! how hard it is upon such women as these that they feel
so much and yet display so little feeling. The dark-eyed, impetuous
creatures, who speak out fearlessly, and tell you that they love or
hate you, flinging their arms around your neck or throwing the
carving-knife at you, as the case may be, get full value for all their
emotion; but these gentle creatures love, and make no sign. They sit,
like Patience on a monument, smiling at grief, and no one reads the
mournful meaning of that sad smile. Concealment, like the worm i' the
bud, feeds on their damask cheeks, and compassionate relatives tell
them that they are bilious, and recommend Cockle's pills, or some other
homely remedy, for their pallid complexions. They are always at a
disadvantage. Their inner life may be a tragedy, all blood and tears,
while their outward existence is some dull domestic drama of every-day
life. The only outward sign Lucy Floyd gave of the condition of her
heart was that one tremulous, half-whispered affirmative, and yet what
a tempest of emotion was going forward within! The muslin folds of her
dress rose and fell with the surging billows, but for the very life of
her she could have uttered no better response to Talbot's pleading.
It was only by and by, after she and Captain Bulstrode had wandered
slowly back to the house, that her emotion betrayed itself. Aurora met
her cousin in the corridor out of which their rooms opened, and,
drawing Lucy into her own dressing-room, asked the truant where she had
been.
"Where have you been, you runaway girl? John and I have wanted you
half a dozen times."
Miss Lucy Floyd explained that she had been in the wood with the
last new novel—a High-Church novel, in which the heroine rejected the
clerical hero because he did not perform the service according to the
Rubric. Now, Miss Lucy Floyd made this confession with so much
confusion and so many blushes that it would have appeared as if there
were some lurking criminality in the fact of spending an April morning
in a wood; and, being farther examined as to why she had staid so long,
and whether she had been alone all the time, poor Lucy fell into a
pitiful state of embarrassment, saying that she had been alone, that is
to say, part of the time, or at least most of the time, but that
Captain Bulstrode—"
But, in trying to pronounce his name—this beloved, this sacred
name—Lucy Floyd's utterance failed her; she fairly broke down, and
burst into tears.
Aurora laid her cousin's face upon her breast, and looked down with
a womanly, matronly glance into those tearful blue eyes.
"Lucy, my darling," she said, "is it really and truly as I think—as
I wish—Talbot loves you?"
"He has asked me to marry him," Lucy whispered.
"And you—you have consented—you love him?"
Lucy Floyd only answered by a new burst of tears.
"Why, my darling, how this surprises me! How long has it been so,
Lucy? How long have you loved him?"
"From the hour I first saw him," murmured Lucy; "from the day he
first came to Felden. Oh, Aurora! I know how foolish and weak it was; I
hate myself for the folly; but he is so good, so noble, so—"
"My silly darling; and because he is good and noble, and asked you
to be his wife, you shed as many tears as if you had been asked to go
to his funeral. My loving, tender Lucy, you loved him all the time
then; and you were so gentle and good to me—to me, who was selfish
enough never to guess! My dearest, you are a hundred times better
suited to him than ever I was, and you will be as happy—as happy as I
am with that ridiculous old John."
Aurora's eyes filled with tears as she spoke.
She was truly and sincerely glad that Talbot was in a fair way to
find consolation, still more glad that her sentimental cousin was to be
made happy.
Talbot Bulstrode lingered on a few days at Mellish Park—happy, ah!
too happy days for Lucy Floyd—and then departed, after receiving the
congratulations of John and Aurora.
He was to go straight to Alexander Floyd's villa at Fulham, and
plead his cause with Lucy's father. There was little fear of his
meeting other than a favorable reception, for Talbot Bulstrode, of
Bulstrode Castle, was a very great match for a daughter of the junior
branch of Floyd, Floyd, and Floyd, a young lady whose expectations were
considerably qualified by half a dozen brothers and sisters.
So Captain Bulstrode went back to London as the betrothed lover of
Lucy Floyd—went back with a subdued gladness in his heart all unlike
the stormy joys of the past. He was happy in the choice he had made,
calmly and dispassionately. He had loved Aurora for her beauty and her
fascination; he was going to marry Lucy because he had seen much of
her, had observed her closely, and believed her to be all that a woman
should be. Perhaps, if stern truth must be told, Lucy's chief charm in
the captain's eyes lay in that reverence for himself which she so
naively betrayed. He accepted her worship with a quiet, unconscious
serenity, and thought her the most sensible of women.
Mrs. Alexander was utterly bewildered when Aurora's sometime lover
pleaded for her daughter's hand. She was too busy a mother among her
little flock to be the most penetrating of observers, and she had never
suspected the state of Lucy's heart. She was glad, therefore, to find
that her daughter did justice to her excellent education, and had too
much good sense to refuse so advantageous an offer as that of Captain
Bulstrode; and she joined with her husband in perfect approval of
Talbot's suit. So, there being no let or hinderance, and as the lovers
had long known and esteemed each other, it was decided, at the
captain's request, that the wedding should take place early in June,
and that the honeymoon should be spent at Bulstrode Castle. At the end
of May Mr. and Mrs. Mellish went to Felden on purpose to attend Lucy's
wedding, which took place with great style at Fulham, Archibald Floyd
presenting his grand-niece with a check for five thousand pounds after
the return from church.
Once during that marriage ceremony Talbot Bulstrode was nigh rubbing
his eyes, thinking that the pageant must be a dream. A dream surely;
for here was a pale, fairhaired girl by his side, while the woman he
had chosen two years before stood amid a group behind him, and looked
on at the ceremony a pleased spectator. But when he felt the little
gloved hand trembling upon his arm as the bride and bridegroom left the
altar he remembered that it was no dream, and that life held new and
solemn duties for him from that hour.
Now, my two heroines being married, the reader versed in the
physiology of novel-writing may conclude that my story is done, that
the green curtain is ready to fall upon the last act of the play, and
that I have nothing more to do than to entreat indulgence for the
shortcomings of the performance and the performers. Yet, after all,
does the business of the real life-drama always end upon the
altar-steps? Must the play needs be over when the hero and heroine have
signed their names in the register? Does man cease to be, to do, and to
suffer when he gets married? And is it necessary that the novelist,
after devoting three volumes to the description of a courtship of six
weeks duration, should reserve for himself only half a page in which to
tell us the events of two-thirds of a lifetime? Aurora is married, and
settled, and happy; sheltered, as one would imagine, from all dangers,
safe under the wing of her stalwart adorer; but it does not therefore
follow that the story of her life is done. She has escaped ship-wreck
for a while, and has safely landed on a pleasant shore; but the storm
may still lower darkly upon the horizon, while the hoarse thunder
grumbles threateningly in the distance.
CHAPTER XV.
MR. PASTERN'S LETTER.
Mr. John Mellish reserved to himself one room upon the ground-floor
of his house, a cheerful, airy apartment, with French windows opening
upon the lawn—windows that were sheltered from the sun by a veranda
overhung with jessamine and roses. It was altogether a pleasant room
for the summer season, the floor being covered with an India matting
instead of a carpet, and many of the chairs being made of light
basket-work. Over the chimney-piece hung a portrait of John's father,
and opposite to this work of art there was the likeness of the deceased
gentleman's favorite hunter, surmounted by a pair of brightly-polished
spurs, the glistening rowels of which had often pierced the sides of
that faithful steed. In this chamber Mr. Mellish kept his whips, canes,
foils, single-sticks, boxing-gloves, spurs, guns, pistols, powder and
shot flasks, fishing-tackle, boots and tops, and many happy mornings
were spent by the master of Mellish Park in the pleasing occupation of
polishing, repairing, inspecting, and otherwise setting in order these
possessions. He had as many pairs of hunting-boots as would have
supplied half Leicestershire, with tops to match. He had whips enough
for half the Melton Hunt. Surrounded by these treasures, as it were in
a temple sacred to the deities of the race-course and the
hunting-field, Mr. John Mellish used to hold solemn audiences with his
trainer and his head groom upon the business of the stable.
It was Aurora's custom to peep into this chamber perpetually, very
much to the delight and distraction of her adoring husband, who found
the black eyes of his divinity a terrible hinderance to business,
except, indeed, when he could induce Mrs. Mellish to join in the
discussion upon hand, and lend the assistance of her powerful intellect
to the little conclave. I believe that John thought she could have
handicapped the horses for the Chester Cup as well as Mr. Topham
himself. She was such a brilliant creature that every little smattering
of knowledge she possessed appeared to such good account as to make her
seem an adept in any subject of which she spoke, and the simple
Yorkshireman believed in her as the wisest, as well as the noblest and
fairest of women.
Mr. and Mrs. Mellish returned to Yorkshire immediately after Lucy's
wedding. Poor John was uneasy about his stables: for his trainer was a
victim to chronic rheumatism, and Mr. Pastern had not as yet made any
communication respecting the young man of whom he had spoken on the
stand at York.
"I shall keep Langley," John said to Aurora, speaking of his old
trainer; "for he's an honest fellow, and his judgment will always be of
use to me. He and his wife can still occupy the rooms over the
stables, and the new man, whoever he may be, can live in the lodge on
the north side of the Park. Nobody ever goes in at that gate, so the
lodge-keeper's post is a sinecure, and the cottage has been shut up for
the last year or two. I wish John Pastern would write."
"And I wish whatever you wish, my dearest life," Aurora said,
dutifully, to her happy slave.
Very little had been seen of Steeve Hargraves, the softy, since the
day upon which John Mellish had turned him neck and crop out of his
service. One of the grooms had seen him in a little village close to
the Park, and Stephen had informed the man that he was getting his
living by doing odd jobs for the doctor of the parish, and looking
after that gentleman's horse and gig; but the softy had seemed inclined
to be sulky, and had said very little about himself or his sentiments.
He made very particular inquiries, though, about Mrs. Mellish, and
asked so many questions as to what Aurora did and said, where she went,
whom she saw, and how she agreed with her husband, that at last the
groom, although only a simple country lad, refused to answer any more
interrogatories about his mistress.
Steeve Hargraves rubbed his coarse, sinewy hands, and chuckled as he
spoke of Aurora.
"She's a rare proud one—a regular high-spirited lady," he said, in
that whispering voice that always sounded strange. "She laid in on me
with that riding-whip of hers; but I bear no malice—I bear no malice.
She's a beautiful creature, and I wish Mr. Mellish joy of his bargain."
The groom scarcely knew how to take this, not being fully aware
whether it was intended as a compliment or an impertinence. So he
nodded to the softy and strode off, leaving him still rubbing his hands
and whispering about Aurora Mellish, who had long ago forgotten her
encounter with Mr. Stephen Hargraves.
How was it likely that she should remember him or take heed of him?
How was it likely that she should take alarm because the pale-faced
widow, Mrs. Walter Powell, sat by her hearth and hated her? Strong in
her youth and beauty, rich in her happiness, sheltered and defended by
her husband's love, how should she think of danger? How should she
dread misfortune? She thanked God every day that the troubles of her
youth were past, and that her path in life led henceforth through
smooth and pleasant places, where no perils could come.
Lucy was at Bulstrode Castle, winning upon the affections of her
husband's mother, who patronized her daughter-in-law with lofty
kindness, and took the blushing, timorous creature under her sheltering
wing. Lady Bulstrode was very well satisfied with her son's choice. He
might have done better, certainly, as to position and fortune, the lady
hinted to Talbot; and, in her maternal anxiety, she would have
preferred his marrying any one rather than the cousin of that
Miss Floyd, who ran away from school and caused such a scandal at the
Parisian seminary. But Lady Bulstrode's heart warmed to Lucy, who was
so gentle and humble, and who always spoke of Talbot as if he had been
a being far "too bright and good," etc., much to the gratification of
her ladyship's maternal vanity.
"She has a very proper affection for you, Talbot," Lady Bulstrode
said, "and, for so young a creature, promises to make an excellent
wife; far better suited to you, I'm sure, than her cousin could ever
have been."
Talbot turned fiercely upon his mother, very much to the lady's
surprise.
"Why will you be for ever bringing Aurora's name into the question,
mother?" he cried. "Why can not you let her memory rest? You parted us
for ever—you and Constance—and is not that enough? She is married,
and she and her husband are a very happy couple. A man might have a
worse wife than Mrs. Mellish, I can tell you; and John seems to
appreciate her value in his rough way."
"You need not be so violent, Talbot," Lady Bulstrode said with
offended dignity. "I am very glad to hear that Miss Floyd has altered
since her school-days, and I hope that she may continue to be a good
wife," she added, with an emphasis which expressed that she had no very
great hopes of the continuance of Mr. Mellish's happiness.
"My poor mother is offended with me," Talbot thought, as Lady
Bulstrode swept out of the room. "I know I am an abominable bear, and
that nobody will ever truly love me so long as I live. My poor little
Lucy loves me after her fashion—loves me in fear and trembling, as if
she and I belonged to different orders of beings—very much as the
flying woman must have loved my countryman, Peter Wilkins, I think.
But, after all, perhaps my mother is right, and my gentle little wife
is better suited to me than Aurora would have been."
So we dismiss Talbot Bulstrode for a while, moderately happy, and
yet not quite satisfied. What mortal ever was quite satisfied in this
world? It is a part of our earthly nature always to find something
wanting, always to have a vague, dull, ignorant yearning which can not
be appeased. Sometimes, indeed, we are happy; but in our wildest
happiness we are still unsatisfied, for it seems then sin if the
cup of joy were too full, and we grow cold with terror at the thought
that, even because of its fulness, it may possibly be dashed to the
ground. What a mistake this life would be, what a wild, feverish dream,
what an unfinished and imperfect story, if it were not a prelude to
something better! Taken by itself, it is all trouble and confusion;
but, taking the future as the key-note of the present, how wondrously
harmonious the whole becomes! How little does it signify that our
hearts are not complete, our wishes not fulfilled, if the completion
and the fulfilment are to come hereafter!
Little more than a week after Lucy's wedding Aurora ordered her
horse immediately after breakfast, upon a sunny summer morning, and,
accompanied by the old groom who had ridden behind John's father, went
out on an excursion among the villages round Mellish Park, as it was
her habit to do once or twice a week.
The poor in the neighborhood of the Yorkshire mansion had good
reason to bless the coming of the banker's daughter. Aurora loved
nothing better than to ride from cottage to cottage, chatting with the
simple villagers, and finding out their wants. She never found the
worthy creatures very remiss in stating their necessities, and the
housekeeper at Mellish Park had enough to do in distributing Aurora's
bounties among the cottagers who came to the servants' hall with pencil
orders from Mrs. Mellish. Mrs. Walter Powell sometimes ventured to take
Aurora to task on the folly and sinfulness of what she called
indiscriminate almsgiving; but Mrs. Mellish would pour such a flood of
eloquence upon her antagonist that the ensign's widow was always glad
to retire from the unequal contest. Nobody had ever been able to argue
with Archibald Floyd's daughter. Impulsive and impetuous, she had
always taken her own course, whether for weal or woe, and nobody had
been strong enough to hinder her.
Returning on this lovely June morning from one of these charitable
expeditions, Mrs. Mellish dismounted from her horse at a little
turnstile leading into the wood, and ordered the groom to take the
animal home.
"I have a fancy for walking through the wood, Joseph," she said,
"it's such a lovely morning. Take care of Mazeppa; and if you see Mr.
Mellish, tell him that I shall be home directly."
The man touched his hat, and rode off, leading Aurora's horse.
Mrs. Mellish gathered up the folds of her habit and strolled slowly
into the wood under whose shadow Talbot Bulstrode and Lucy had wandered
on that eventful April day which sealed the young lady's fate.
Now, Aurora had chosen to ramble homeward through this wood because,
being thoroughly happy, the warm gladness of the summer weather filled
her with a sense of delight which she was loath to curtail. The drowsy
hum of the insects, the rich coloring of the woods, the scent of wild
flowers, the ripple of water, all blended into one delicious whole, and
made the earth lovely.
There is something satisfactory, too, in the sense of possession;
and Aurora felt, as she looked down the long avenues, and away through
distant loop-holes in the wood to the wide expanse of park and lawn,
and the picturesque irregular pile of building beyond, half Gothic,
half Elizabethan, and so lost in a rich tangle of ivy and bright
foliage as to be beautiful at every point—she felt, I say, that all
the fair picture was her own, or her husband's, which was the same
thing. She had never for one moment regretted her marriage with John
Mellish. She had never, as I have said already, been inconstant to him
by one thought.
In one part of the wood the ground rose considerably, so that the
house, which lay low, was distinctly visible whenever there was a break
in the trees. The rising ground was considered the prettiest spot in
the wood, and here a summer-house had been erected—a fragile wooden
building, which had fallen into decay of late years, but which was
still a pleasant resting-place upon a summer's day, being furnished
with a wooden table and a broad bench, and sheltered from the sun and
wind by the lower branches of a magnificent beech. A few paces away
from this summerhouse there was a pool of water, the surface of which
was so covered with lilies and tangled weeds as to have beguiled a
short-sighted traveller into forgetfulness of the danger beneath.
Aurora's way led her past this spot, and she started with a momentary
sensation of terror on seeing a man lying asleep by the side of the
pool. She quickly recovered herself, remembering that John allowed the
public to use the footpath through the wood; but she started again when
the man, who must have been a bad sleeper, to be aroused by her light
footstep, lifted his head and displayed the white face of the softy.
He rose slowly from the ground upon seeing Mrs. Mellish, and crawled
away, looking at her as he went, but not making any acknowledgment of
her presence.
Aurora could not repress a brief terrified shudder; it seemed as if
her footfall had startled some viperish creature, some loathsome member
of the reptile race, and scared it from its lurking-place.
Steeve Hargraves disappeared among the trees as Mrs. Mellish walked
on, her head proudly erect, but her cheek a shade paler than before
this unexpected encounter with the softy.
Her joyous gladness in the bright summer's day had forsaken her as
suddenly as she had met Stephen Hargraves; that bright smile, which was
even brighter than the morning sunshine, faded out, and left her face
unnaturally grave.
"Good Heavens!" she exclaimed, "how foolish I am! I am actually
afraid of that man—afraid of that pitiful coward who could hurt my
feeble old dog. As if such a creature as that could do one any
mischief!"
Of course this was very wisely argued, as no coward ever by any
chance worked any mischief upon this earth, since the Saxon prince was
stabbed in the back while drinking at his kinswoman's gate, or since
brave King John and his creature plotted together what they should do
with the little boy Arthur.
Aurora walked slowly across the lawn toward that end of the house at
which the apartment sacred to Mr. Mellish was situated. She entered
softly at the open window, and laid her hand upon John's shoulder as he
sat at a table covered with a litter of account-books, racing-lists,
and disorderly papers.
He started at the touch of the familiar hand.
"My darling, I'm so glad you've come in. How long you've been!"
She looked at her little jewelled watch. Poor John had loaded her
with trinkets and gewgaws. His chief grief was that she was a wealthy
heiress, and that he could give her nothing but the adoration of his
simple, honest heart.
"Only half-past one, you silly old John," she said. "What made you
think me late?"
"Because I wanted to consult you about something, and to tell you
something. Such good news!"
"About what?"
"About the trainer."
She shrugged her shoulders, and pursed up her red lips with a
bewitching little gesture of indifference.
"Is that all?" she said.
"Yes; but a'n't you glad we've got the man at last—the very man to
suit us, I think? Where's John Pastern's letter?"
Mr. Mellish searched among the litter of papers upon the table,
while Aurora, leaning against the frame-work of the open window,
watched him, and laughed at his embarrassment.
She had recovered her spirits, and looked the very picture of
careless gladness as she leaned in one of those graceful and unstudied
attitudes peculiar to her, supported by the frame-work of the window,
and with the trailing jessamine waving round her in the soft summer
breeze. She lifted her ungloved hand and gathered the roses above her
head as she talked to her husband.
"You most disorderly and unmethodic of men," she said, laughing, "I
would n't mind betting you won't find it."
I'm afraid that Mr. Mellish muttered an oath as he tossed about the
heterogeneous mass of papers in his search for the missing document.
"I had it five minutes before you came in, Aurora," he said, "and
now there's not a sign of it—oh, here it is!"
Mr. Mellish unfolded the letter, and, smoothing it out upon the
table before him, cleared his throat preparatory to reading the
epistle. Aurora still leaned against the window-frame, half in and half
out of the room, singing a snatch of a popular song, and trying to
gather an obstinate half-blown rose which grew provokingly out of reach.
"You're attending, Aurora?"
"Yes, dearest and best."
"But do come in. You can't hear a word there."
Mrs. Mellish shruggéd her shoulders, as who should say, "I submit to
the command of a tyrant," and advanced a couple of paces from the
window; then, looking at John with an enchantingly insolent toss of her
head, she folded her hands behind her, and told him she would "be
good." She was a careless, impetuous creature, dreadfully forgetful of
what Mrs. Walter Powell called her "responsibilities;" every mortal
thing by turns, and never any one thing for two minutes together;
happy, generous, affectionate; taking life as a glorious summer's
holiday, and thanking God for the bounty which made it so pleasant to
her.
Mr. John Pastern began his letter with an apology for having so long
deferred writing. He had lost the address of the person he had wished
to recommend, and had waited until the man wrote to him.
"I think he will suit you very well," the letter went on to say, "as
he is well up in his business, having had plenty of experience as
groom, jockey, and trainer. He is only thirty years of age, but met
with an accident some time since, which lamed him for life. He was half
killed in a steeple-chase in Prussia, and was for upward of a year in a
hospital at Berlin. His name is James Conyers, and he can have a
character from—"
The letter dropped out of John Mellish's hand as he looked up at his
wife. It was not a scream which she had uttered. It was a gasping cry,
more terrible to hear than the shrillest scream that ever came from the
throat of woman in all the long history of womanly distress.
"Aurora! Aurora!"
He looked at her, and his own face changed and whitened at the sight
of hers. So terrible a transformation had come over her during the
reading of that letter that the shock could scarcely have been greater
had he looked up and seen another person in her place.
"It's wrong! it's wrong!" she cried, hoarsely; "you've read the
wrong name. It can't be that!"
"What name?"
"What name?" she echoed fiercely, her face flaming up with a wild
fury—"that name! I tell you it can't be. Give me the letter."
He obeyed her mechanically, picking up the paper and handing it to
her, but never removing his eyes from her face.
She snatched it from him; looked at it for a few moments with her
eyes dilated and her lips apart; then, reeling back two or three paces,
her knees bent under her, and she fell heavily to the ground.
CHAPTER XVI.
MR. JAMES CONYERS.
The first week in July brought James Conyers, the new trainer, to
Mellish Park. John had made no particular inquiries as to the man's
character of any of his former employers, as a word from Mr. Pastern
was all-sufficient.
Mr. Mellish had endeavored to discover the cause of Aurora's
agitation at the reading of Mr. Pastern's letter. She had fallen like a
dead creature at his feet; she had been hysterical throughout the
remainder of the day, and delirious in the ensuing night, but she had
not uttered one word calculated to throw any light upon the secret of
her strange manifestation of emotion.
Her husband sat by her bedside upon the day after that on which she
had fallen into the death-like swoon, watching her with a grave,
anxious face, and earnest eyes that never wandered from her own.
He was suffering very much the same agony that Talbot Bulstrode had
endured at Felden on the receipt of his mother's letter. The dark wall
was slowly rising and separating him from the woman he loved. He was
now to discover the tortures known only to the husband whose wife is
parted from him by that which has more power to sever than any width of
land or wild extent of ocean—a secret.
He watched the pale face lying on the pillow; the large, black,
haggard eyes, wide open, and looking blankly out at the faraway purple
tree-tops in the horizon; but there was no clew to the mystery in any
line of that beloved countenance; there was little more than an
expression of weariness, as if the soul, looking out of that white
face, was so utterly enfeebled as to have lost all power to feel
anything but a vague yearning for rest.
The wide casement windows were open, but the day was hot and
oppressive—oppressively still and sunny; the landscape sweltering
under a yellow haze, as if the very atmosphere had been opaque with
melted gold. Even the roses in the garden seemed to feel the influence
of the blazing summer sky, dropping their heavy heads like human
sufferers from headache. The mastiff Bow-wow, lying under an acacia
upon the lawn, was as peevish as any captious elderly gentleman, and
snapped spitefully at a frivolous butterfly that wheeled, and spun, and
threw summersaults about the dog's head. Beautiful as was this summer's
day, it was one on which people are apt to lose their tempers, and
quarrel with each other by reason of the heat; every man feeling a
secret conviction that his neighbor is in some way to blame for the
sultriness of the atmosphere, and that it would be cooler if he were
out of the way. It was one of those days on which invalids are
especially fractious, and hospital nurses murmur at their vocation; a
day on which third-class passengers travelling long distances by
excursion-trains are savagely clamorous for beer at every station, and
hate each other for the narrowness and hardness of the carriage-seats,
and for the inadequate means of ventilation provided by the Railway
Company; a day on which stern business men revolt against the ceaseless
grinding of the wheel, and, suddenly reckless of consequences, rush
wildly to the Crown and Sceptre, to cool their overheated systems with
water souchy and still hock; and abnormal day, upon which the machinery
of every-day life gets out of order, and runs riot throughout twelve
suffocating hours.
John Mellish, sitting patiently by his wife's side, thought very
little of the summer weather. I doubt if he knew whether the month was
January or June. For him earth only held one creature, and she was ill
and in distress—distress from which he was powerless to save
her—distress the very nature of which he was ignorant.
His voice trembled when he spoke to her.
"My darling, you have been very ill," he said.
She looked at him with a smile so unlike her own that it was more
painful to him to see than the loudest agony of tears, and stretched
out her hand. He took the burning hand in his, and held it while he
talked to her.
"Yes, dearest, you have been ill; but Morton says the attack was
merely hysterical, and that you will be yourself again to-morrow, so
there's no occasion for anxiety on that score. What grieves me,
darling, is to see that there is something on your mind—something
which has been the real cause of your illness."
She turned her face upon the pillow, and tried to snatch her hand
from his in her impatience, but he held it tightly in both his own.
"Does my speaking of yesterday distress you, Aurora?" he asked,
gravely.
"Distress me? Oh, no."
"Then tell me, darling, why the mention of that man, the trainer's
name, had such a terrible effect upon you."
"The doctor told you that the attack was hysterical," she said,
coldly; "I suppose I was hysterical and nervous yesterday."
"But the name, Aurora, the name. This James Conyers, who is he?" He
felt the hand he held tighten convulsively upon his own as he mentioned
the trainer's name.
"Who is this man? Tell me, Aurora. For God's sake, tell me the
truth."
She turned her face toward him once more as he said this.
"If you only want the truth from me, John, you must ask me nothing.
Remember what I said to you at the Chateau d'Arques. It was a secret
that parted me from Talbot Bulstrode. You trusted me then, John—you
must trust me to the end; or, if you can not trust me"—she stopped
suddenly, and the tears welled slowly up to her large, mournful eyes as
she looked at her husband.
"What, dearest?"
"We must part—as Talbot and I parted."
"Part!" he cried; "my love, my love! Do you think there is anything
upon this earth strong enough to part us, except death? Do you think
that any combination of circumstances, however strange, however
inexplicable, would ever cause me to doubt your honor, or to tremble
for my own? Could I be here if I doubted you? could I sit by your side,
asking you these questions, if I feared the issue? Nothing shall shake
my confidence—nothing can. But have pity on me; think how bitter a
grief it is to sit here with your hand in mine, and to know that there
is a secret between us. Aurora, tell me—this man, this Conyers—what
is he, and who is he?"
"You know that as well as I do. A groom once; afterward a jockey;
and now a trainer."
"But you know him?"
"I have seen him."
"When?"
"Some years ago, when he was in my father's service."
John Mellish breathed more freely for a moment. The man had been a
groom at Felden Woods, that was all. This accounted for the fact of
Aurora's recognizing his name, but not for her agitation. He was no
nearer the clew to the mystery than before.
"James Conyers was in your father's service," he said, thoughtfully;
"but why should the mention of his name yesterday have caused you such
emotion?"
"I can not tell you."
"It is another secret, then, Aurora," he said, reproachfully; "or
has this man anything to do with the old secret of which you told me at
the Chateau d'Arques?"
She did not answer him.
"Ah! I see—I understand, Aurora," he added, after a pause. "This
man was a servant at Felden Woods; a spy, perhaps; and he discovered
the secret, and traded upon it, as servants often have done before.
This caused your agitation at hearing his name. You were afraid that he
would come here and annoy you, making use of this secret to extort
money, and keeping you in perpetual terror of him. I think I can
understand it all. I am right, am I not?"
She looked at him with something of the expression of a hunted
animal that finds itself at bay.
"Yes, John."
"This man—this groom—knows something of—of the secret?"
"He does."
John Mellish turned away his head, and buried his face in his hands.
What cruel anguish! what bitter degradation! This man, a groom, a
servant, was in the confidence of his wife, and had such power to
harass and alarm her that the very mention of his name was enough to
cast her to the earth, as if stricken by sudden death. What, in the
name of Heaven, could this secret be, which was in the keeping of a
servant, and yet could not be told to him? He bit his lip till his
strong teeth met upon the quivering flesh, in the silent agony of that
thought. What could it be? He had sworn, only a minute before, to trust
in her blindly to the end; and yet—and yet—His massive frame shook
from head to heel in that noiseless struggle; doubt and despair rose
like twin demons in his soul: but he wrestled with them, and overcame
them; and, turning with a white face to his wife, said quietly:
"I will press these painful questions no farther, Aurora. I will
write to Pastern, and tell him that the man will not suit us; and—"
He was rising to leave her bedside, when she laid her hand upon his
arm.
"Don't write to Mr. Pastern, John," she said; "the man will suit you
very well, I dare say. I had rather he came."
"You wish him to come here?"
"Yes."
"But he will annoy you; he will try to extort money from you."
"He would do that in any case, since he is alive. I thought that he
was dead."
"Then you really wish him to come here?"
"I do."
John Mellish left his wife's room inexpressibly relieved. The secret
could not be so very terrible after all, since she was willing that the
man who knew it should come to Mellish Park, where there was at least a
remote chance of his revealing it to her husband. Perhaps, after all,
this mystery involved others rather than herself—her father's
commercial integrity—her mother? He had heard very little of her
mother's history; perhaps she—Pshaw! why weary himself with
speculative surmises? he had promised to trust her, and the hour had
come in which he was called upon to keep his promise. He wrote to Mr.
Pastern, accepting his recommendation of James Conyers, and waited
rather impatiently to see what kind of man the trainer was.
He received a letter from Conyers, very well written and worded, to
the effect that he would arrive at Mellish Park upon the third of July.
Aurora had recovered from her brief hysterical attack when this
letter arrived; but, as she was still weak and out of spirits, her
medical man recommended change of air; so Mr. and Mrs. Mellish drove
off to Harrowgate upon the 28th of June, leaving Mrs. Powell behind
them at the Park.
The ensign's widow had been scrupulously kept out of Aurora's room
during her short illness, being held at bay by John, who coolly shut
the door in the lady's sympathetic face, telling her that he'd wait
upon his wife himself, and that when he wanted female assistance he
would ring for Mrs. Mellish's maid.
Now, Mrs. Walter Powell, being afflicted with that ravenous
curiosity common to people who live in other people's houses, felt
herself deeply injured by this line of conduct. There were mysteries
and secrets afloat, and she was not to be allowed to discover them;
there was a skeleton in the house, and she was not to anatomize the
bony horror. She scented trouble and sorrow as carnivorous animals
scent their prey, and yet she, who hated Aurora, was not to be allowed
to riot at the unnatural feast.
Why is it that the dependents in a household are so feverishly
inquisitive about the doings and sayings, the manners and customs, the
joys and sorrows of those who employ them? Is it that, having abnegated
for themselves all active share in life, they take an unhealthy
interest in those who are in the thick of the strife? Is it because,
being cut off, in a great measure, by the nature of their employments
from family ties and family pleasures, they feel a malicious delight in
all family trials and vexations, and the ever-recurring breezes which
disturb the domestic atmosphere? Remember this, husbands and wives,
fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, brothers and sisters, when you
quarrel. Your servants enjoy the fun. Surely that recollection
ought to be enough to keep you for ever peaceful and friendly. Your
servants listen at your doors, and repeat your spiteful speeches in the
kitchen, and watch you while they wait at table, and understand every
sarcasm, every innuendo, every look, as well as those at whom the cruel
glances and the stinging words are aimed. They understand your sulky
silence, your studied and overacted politeness. The most polished form
your hate and anger can take is as transparent to those household spies
as if you threw knives at each other, or pelted your enemy with the
side-dishes and vegetables, after the fashion of disputants in a
pantomime. Nothing that is done in the parlor is lost upon these quiet,
well-behaved watchers from the kitchen. They laugh at you; nay, worse,
they pity you. They discuss your affairs, and make out your income, and
settle what you can afford to do and what you can't afford to do; they
prearrange the disposal of your wife's fortune, and look prophetically
forward to the day when you will avail yourself of the advantages of
the new Bankruptcy Act. They know why you live on bad terms with your
eldest daughter, and why your favorite son was turned out of doors; and
they take a morbid interest in every dismal secret of your life. You
don't allow them followers; you look blacker than thunder if you see
Mary's sister or John's poor old mother sitting meekly in your hall;
you are surprised if the postman brings them letters, and attribute the
fact to the pernicious system of over-educating the masses; you shut
them from their homes and their kindred, their lovers and their
friends; you deny them books, you grudge them a peep at your newspaper,
and then you lift up your eyes and wonder at them because they are
inquisitive, and because the staple of their talk is scandal and gossip.
Mrs. Walter Powell, having been treated by most of her employers as
a species of upper servant, had acquired all the instincts of a
servant, and she determined to leave no means untried in order to
discover the cause of Aurora's illness, which the doctor had darkly
hinted to her had more to do with the mind than the body. John Mellish
had ordered a carpenter to repair the lodge at the north gate for the
accommodation of James Conyers, and John's old trainer, Langley, was to
receive his colleague and introduce him to the stables.
The new trainer made his appearance at the lodge-gates in the
glowing July sunset; he was accompanied by no less a person than Steeve
Hargraves, the softy, who had been lurking about the station upon the
look-out for a job, and who had been engaged by Mr. Conyers to carry
his portmanteau.
To the surprise of the trainer, Stephen Hargraves set down his
burden at the Park gates.
"You'll have to find some one else to carry it th' rest 't' ro-ad,"
he said, touching his greasy cap, and extending his broad palm to
receive the expected payment.
Mr. James Conyers was rather a dashing fellow, with no small amount
of that quality which is generally termed "swagger," so he turned
sharply round upon the softy and asked him what the devil he meant.
"I mean that I may n't go inside yon gates," muttered Stephen
Hargraves; "I mean that I've been turned out of yon place that I've
lived in, man and boy, for forty years—turned out like a dog, neck and
crop."
Mr. Conyers threw away the stump of his cigar, and stared
superciliously at the softy.
"What does the man mean?" he asked of the woman who had opened the
gates.
"Why, poor fellow, he's a bit fond, sir, and him and Mrs. Mellish
did n't get on very well; she has a rare spirit, and I have
heard that she horsewhipped him for beating her favorite dog. Anyways,
master turned him out of his service."
"Because my lady had horsewhipped him. Servants'-hall justice all
the world over," said the trainer, laughing, and lighting a second
cigar from a metal fusee-box in his waistcoat-pocket.
"Yes, that's justice, a'n't it?" the softy said, eagerly. "You would
n't like to be turned out of a place as you'd lived in forty year,
would you? But Mrs. Mellish has a rare spirit, bless her pretty face!"
The blessing enunciated by Mr. Stephen Hargraves had such a very
ominous sound that the new trainer, who was evidently a shrewd,
observant fellow, took his cigar from his mouth on purpose to stare at
him. The white face, lighted up by a pair of red eyes with a dim
glimmer in them, was by no means the most agreeable of countenances;
but Mr. Conyers looked at the man for some moments, holding him by the
collar of his coat in order to do so with more deliberation; then,
pushing the softy away with an affably contemptuous gesture, he said,
laughing:
"You're a character, my friend, it strikes me, and not too safe a
character either. I'm dashed if I should like to offend you. There's a
shilling for your trouble, my man," he added, tossing the money into
Steeve's extended palm with careless dexterity.
"I suppose I can leave my portmanteau here till to-morrow, ma'am?"
he said, turning to the woman at the lodge. "I'd carry it down to the
house myself, if I was n't lame."
He was such a handsome fellow, and had such an easy, careless
manner, that the simple Yorkshirewoman was quite subdued by his
fascinations.
"Leave it here, sir, and welcome," she said, courtesying, "and my
master shall take it to the house for you as soon as he comes in.
Begging your pardon, sir, but I suppose you're the new gentleman that's
expected in the stables?"
"Precisely."
"Then I was to tell you, sir, that they've fitted up the north lodge
for you; but you was to please go straight to the house, and the
housekeeper was to make you comfortable and give you a bed for
to-night."
Mr. Conyers nodded, thanked her, wished her good-night, and limped
slowly away, through the shadows of the evening, and under the shelter
of the overarching trees. He stepped aside from the broad
carriage-drive on to the dewy turf that bordered it, choosing the
softest, mossiest places, with a sybarite's instinct. Look at him as
he takes his slow way under those glorious branches, in the holy
stillness of the summer sunset, his face sometimes lighted by the low,
lessening rays, sometimes dark with the shadows from the leaves above
his head. He is wonderfully handsome—wonderfully and perfectly
handsome—the very perfection of physical beauty; faultless in
proportion, as if each line in his face and form had been measured by
the sculptor's rule, and carved by the sculptor's chisel. He is a man
about whose beauty there can be no dispute, whose perfection
servant-maids and duchesses must alike confess, albeit they are not
bound to admire; yet it is rather a sensual type of beauty, this
splendor of form and color, unallied to any special charm of
expression. Look at him now, as he stops to rest, leaning against the
trunk of a tree, and smoking his big cigar with easy enjoyment. He is
thinking. His dark blue eyes, deeper in color by reason of the thick
black lashes which fringe them, are half closed, and have a dreamy,
semi-sentimental expression, which might lead you to suppose the man
was musing upon the beauty of the summer sunset. He is thinking of his
losses on the Chester Cup, the wages he is to get from John Mellish,
and the perquisites likely to appertain to the situation. You give him
credit for thoughts to match with his dark, violet-hued eyes, and the
exquisite modelling of his mouth and chin; you give him a mind as
æsthetically perfect as his face and figure, and you recoil on
discovering what a vulgar every-day sword may lurk under that beautiful
scabbard. Mr. James Conyers is, perhaps, no worse than other men of his
station, but he is decidedly no better. He is only very much handsomer;
and you have no right to be angry with him because his opinions and
sentiments are exactly what they would have been if he had had red hair
and a pug nose. With what wonderful wisdom has George Eliot told us
that people are not any better because they have long eye-lashes! Yet
it must be that there is something anomalous in this outward beauty and
inward ugliness; for, in spite of all experience, we revolt against it,
and are incredulous to the last, believing that the palace which is
outwardly so splendid can scarcely be ill furnished within. Heaven help
the woman who sells her heart for a handsome face, and awakes, when the
bargain has been struck, to discover the foolishness of such an
exchange.
It took Mr. Conyers a long while to walk from the lodge to the
house. I do not know how, technically, to describe his lameness. He had
fallen, with his horse, in the Prussian steeple-chase, which had so
nearly cost him his life, and his left leg had been terribly injured.
The bones had been set by wonderful German surgeons, who put the
shattered leg together as if it had been a Chinese puzzle, but who,
with all their skill, could not prevent the contraction of the sinews,
which had left the jockey lamed for life, and no longer fit to ride in
any race whatever. He was of the middle height, and weighed something
over eleven stone, and had never ridden except in Continental
steeple-chases.
Mr. James Conyers paused a few paces from the house, and gravely
contemplated the irregular pile of buildings before him.
"A snug crib," he muttered; "plenty of tin hereabouts, I should
think, from the look of the place."
Being ignorant of the geography of the neighborhood, and being,
moreover, by no means afflicted by an excess of modesty, Mr. Conyers
went straight to the principal door, and rang the bell sacred to
visitors and the family.
He was admitted by a grave old man-servant, who, after deliberately
inspecting his brown shooting-coat, colored shirt-front, and felt hat,
asked him, with considerable asperity, what he was pleased to want.
Mr. Conyers explained that he was the new trainer, and that he
wished to see the housekeeper; but he had hardly finished doing so when
a door in an angle of the hall was softly opened, and Mrs. Walter
Powell peeped out of the snug little apartment sacred to her hours of
privacy.
"Perhaps the young man will be so good as to step in here,"
addressing herself apparently to space, but indirectly to James Conyers.
The young man took off his hat, uncovering a mass of luxuriant brown
curls, and limped across the hall in obedience to Mrs. Powell's
invitation.
"I dare say I shall be able to give you any information you require."
James Conyers smiled, wondering whether the bilious-looking party,
as he mentally designated Mrs. Powell, could give him any information
about the York summer meeting; but he bowed politely, and said he
merely wanted to know where he was to hang out—he stopped and
apologized—where he was to sleep that night, and whether there were
any letters for him. But Mrs. Powell was by no means inclined to let
him off so cheaply. She set to work to pump him, and labored so
assiduously that she soon exhausted that very small amount of
intelligence which he was disposed to afford her, being perfectly aware
of the process to which he was subjected, and more than equal to the
lady in dexterity. The ensign's widow, therefore, ascertained little
more than that Mr. Conyers was a perfect stranger to John Mellish and
his wife, neither of whom he had ever seen.
Having failed to gain much by this interview, Mrs. Powell was
anxious to bring it to a speedy termination.
"Perhaps you would like a glass of wine after your walk?" she said;
"I'll ring for some, and I can inquire at the same time about your
letters. I dare say you are anxious to hear from the relatives you have
left at home."
Mr. Conyers smiled for the second time. He had neither had a home
nor any relatives to speak of since the most infantine period of his
existence, but had been thrown upon the world a sharp-witted adventurer
at seven or eight years old. The "relatives" for whose communication he
was looking out so eagerly were members of the humbler class of bookmen
with whom he did business.
The servant despatched by Mrs. Powell returned with a decanter of
sherry and about half a dozen letters for Mr. Conyers.
"You'd better bring the lamp, William," said Mrs. Powell, as the man
left the room, "for I'm sure you'll never be able to read your letters
by this light," she added politely to Mr. Conyers.
The fact was, that Mrs. Powell, afflicted by that diseased curiosity
of which I have spoken, wanted to know what kind of correspondents
these were whose letters the trainer was so anxious to receive, and
sent for the lamp in order that she might get the full benefit of any
scraps of information to be got at by rapid glances and dexterously
stolen peeps.
The servant brought a brilliant camphene lamp, and Mr. Conyers, not
at all abashed by Mrs. Powell's condescension, drew his chair close to
the table, and, after tossing off a glass of sherry, settled himself to
the perusal of his letters.
The ensign's widow, with some needle-work in her hand, sat directly
opposite to him at the small round table, with nothing but the pedestal
of the lamp between them.
James Conyers took up the first letter, examined the superscription
and seal, tore open the envelope, read the brief communication upon
half a sheet of note-paper, and thrust it into his waistcoat-pocket.
Mrs. Powell, using her eyes to the utmost, saw nothing but a few lines
in a scratchy, plebeian handwriting, and a signature which, seen at a
disadvantage upside down, did n't look unlike "Johnson." The second
envelope contained only a tissue-paper betting-list; the third held a
dirty scrap of paper with a few words scrawled in pencil; but at sight
of the uppermost envelope of the remaining three Mr. James Conyers
started as if he had been shot. Mrs. Powell looked from the face of the
trainer to the superscription of the letter, and was scarcely less
surprised than Mr. Conyers. The superscription was in the handwriting
of Aurora Mellish.
It was a peculiar hand—a hand about which there could be no
mistake; not an elegant Italian hand, sloping, slender, and feminine,
but large and bold, with ponderous up-strokes and down-strokes, easy to
recognize at a greater distance than that which separated Mrs. Powell
from the trainer. There was no room for any doubt. Mrs. Mellish had
written to her husband's servant, and the man was evidently familiar
with her hand, yet surprised at receiving her letter.
He tore open the envelope, and read the contents eagerly twice over,
frowning darkly as he read.
Mrs. Powell suddenly remembered that she had left part of her
needle-work upon a chiffonnier behind the young man's chair, and rose
quietly to fetch it. He was so much engrossed by the letter in his hand
that he was not aware of the pale face which peered for one brief
moment over his shoulder, as the faded, hungry eyes stole a glance at
the writing on the page.
The letter was written on the first side of a sheet of note-paper,
with only a few words carried over to the second page. It was this
second page which Mrs. Powell saw. The words written at the top of the
leaf were these: "Above all, express no surprise.—A."
There was no ordinary conclusion to the letter; no other signature
than this big capital A.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE TRAINER'S MESSENGER.
Mr. James Conyers made himself very much at home at Mellish Park.
Poor Langley, the invalid trainer, who was a Yorkshireman, felt himself
almost bewildered by the easy insolence of the town-bred trainer. He
looked so much too handsome and dashing for his office that the grooms
and stable-boys bowed down to him, and paid court to him as they had
never done to simple Langley, who had been very often obliged to
enforce his commands with a horsewhip or a serviceable leather strap.
James Conyers' handsome face was a capital with which that gentleman
knew very well how to trade, and he took the full amount of interest
that was to be got for it without compunction. I am sorry to be obliged
to confess that this man, who had sat in the artists' studios and the
life academies for Apollo and Antinous, was selfish to the backbone;
and, so long as he was well fed, and clothed, and housed, and provided
for, cared very little whence the food and clothing came, or who kept
the house that sheltered him, or filled the purse which he jingled in
his trowsers-pocket. Heaven forbid that I should be called upon for his
biography. I only know that he sprang from the mire of the streets,
like some male Aphrodite rising from the mud; that he was a blackleg in
the gutter at four years of age, and a welsher in the matter of marbles
and hardbake before his fifth birthday. Even then he was for ever
reaping the advantage of a handsome face; for tender-hearted matrons,
who would have been deaf to the cries of a snub-nosed urchin, petted
and compassionated the pretty boy.
In his earliest childhood he learned therefore to trade upon his
beauty, and to get the most that he could for that merchandise; and he
grew up utterly unprincipled, and carried his handsome face out into
the world to help him on to fortune. He was extravagant, lazy,
luxurious, and selfish; but he had that easy, indifferent grace of
manner which passes with shallow observers for good-nature. He would
not have gone three paces out of his way to serve his best friend; but
he smiled and showed his handsome white teeth with equal liberality to
all his acquaintance, and took credit for being a frank,
generous-hearted fellow on the strength of that smile. He was skilled
in the uses of that gilt gingerbread of generosity which so often
passes current for sterling gold. He was dexterous in the handling of
those cogged dice which have all the rattle of the honest ivories. A
slap on the back, a hearty shake of the hand, often went as far from
him as the loan of a sovereign from another man; and Jim Conyers was
firmly believed in by the doubtful gentlemen with whom he associated as
a good-natured fellow who was nobody's enemy but his own. He had that
superficial Cockney cleverness which is generally called knowledge of
the world—knowledge of the worst side of the world—and utter
ignorance of all that is noble upon earth, it might perhaps be more
justly called; he had matriculated in the streets of London, and
graduated on the race-course; he had never read any higher literature
than the Sunday papers and the Racing Calendar, but he contrived
to make a very little learning go a long way, and was generally spoken
of by his employers as a superior young man, considerably above his
station.
Mr. Conyers expressed himself very well contented with the rustic
lodge which had been chosen for his dwelling-house. He condescendingly
looked on while the stable-lads carried the furniture selected for him
by the housekeeper from the spare servants' rooms from the house to the
lodge, and assisted in the arrangement of the tiny rustic chambers,
limping about in his shirt-sleeves, and showing himself wonderfully
handy with a hammer and a pocket full of nails. He sat upon a table and
drank beer with such charming affability that the stable-lads were as
grateful to him as if he had treated them to that beverage. Indeed,
seeing the frank cordiality with which James Conyers smote the lads
upon the back, and prayed them to be active with the can, it was almost
difficult to remember that he was not the giver of the feast, and that
it was Mr. John Mellish who would have to pay the brewer's bill. What,
among all the virtues which adorn this earth, can be more charming
than the generosity of upper servants! With what hearty hospitality
they pass the bottle! how liberally they throw the seven-shilling
gunpowder into the teapot! how unsparingly they spread the twenty-penny
fresh butter on the toast! and what a glorious welcome they give to the
droppers-in of the servants' hall! It is scarcely wonderful that the
recipients of their bounty forget that it is the master of the
household who will be called upon for the expenses of the banquet, and
who will look ruefully at the total of the quarter's housekeeping.
It was not to be supposed that so dashing a fellow as Mr. James
Conyers could, in the lodging-house-keeper's patois, "do for"
himself. He required a humble drudge to black his boots, make his bed,
boil his kettle, cook his dinner, and keep the two little chambers at
the lodge in decent order. Casting about in a reflective mood for a
fitting person for this office, his recreant fancy hit upon Steeve
Hargraves, the softy. He was sitting upon the sill of an open window in
the little parlor of the lodge, smoking a cigar and drinking out of a
can of beer, when this idea came into his head. He was so tickled by
the notion that he took his cigar from his mouth in order to laugh at
his case.
"The man's a character," he said, still laughing, "and I'll have him
to wait upon me. He's been forbid the place, has he? turned out neck
and crop because my Lady Highropes horsewhipped him. Never mind that; I'll give him leave to come back, if it's only for the fun of the
thing."
He limped out upon the high-road half an hour after this, and went
into the village to find Steeve Hargraves. He had little difficulty in
doing this, as everybody knew the softy, and a chorus of boys
volunteered to fetch him from the house of the doctor, in whose service
he did odd jobs, and brought him to Mr. Conyers five minutes afterward,
looking very hot and dirty, but as pale of complexion as usual.
Stephen Hargraves agreed very readily to abandon his present
occupation, and to wait upon the trainer, in consideration of five
shillings a week and his board and lodging; but his countenance fell
when he discovered that Mr. Conyers was in the service of John Mellish,
and lived on the outskirts of the Park.
"You're afraid of setting foot upon his estate, are you?" said the
trainer, laughing. "Never mind, Steeve, I give you leave to
come, and I should like to see the man or woman in that house who'll
interfere with any whim of mine. I give you leave. You
understand."
The softy touched his cap, and tried to look as if he understood;
but it was very evident that he did not understand, and it was some
time before Mr. Conyers could persuade him that his life would be safe
within the gates of Mellish Park; but he was ultimately induced to
trust himself at the north lodge, and promised to present himself there
in the course of the evening.
Now, Mr. James Conyers had exerted himself as much in order to
overcome the cowardly objections of this rustic clown as he could have
done if Steeve Hargraves had been the most accomplished body-servant in
the three ridings. Perhaps there was some deeper motive than any regard
for the man himself in this special preference for the softy; some
lurking malice, some petty spite, the key to which was hidden in his
own breast. If, while standing smoking in the village street, chaffing the softy for the edification of the lookers-on, and
taking so much trouble to secure such an ignorant and brutish
esquire—if one shadow of the future, so very near at hand, could have
fallen across his path, surely he would have instinctively recoiled
from the striking of that ill-omened bargain.
But James Conyers had no superstition; indeed, he was so pleasantly
free from that weakness as to be a disbeliever in all things in heaven
and on earth, except himself and his own merits; so he hired the softy,
for the fun of the thing, as he called it, and walked slowly back to
the Park gates to watch for the return of Mr. and Mrs. Mellish, who
were expected that afternoon.
The woman at the lodge brought him out a chair, and begged him to
rest himself under the portico. He thanked her with a pleasant smile,
and sat down among the roses and honeysuckles, and lighted another
cigar.
"You'll find the north lodge dull, I'm thinking, sir," the woman
said, from the open window, where she had reseated herself with her
needle-work.
"Well, it is n't very lively, ma'am, certainly," answered Mr.
Conyers, "but it serves my purpose well enough. The place is lonely
enough for a man to be murdered there and nobody be any the wiser; but,
as I have nothing to lose, it will answer well enough for me."
He might, perhaps, have said a good deal more about the place, but
at this moment the sound of wheels upon the high-road announced the
return of the travellers, and two or three minutes afterward the
carriage dashed through the gate, and past Mr. James Conyers.
Whatever power this man might have over Aurora, whatever knowledge
of a compromising secret he might have obtained and traded upon, the
fearlessness of her nature showed itself now as always, and she never
flinched at the sight of him. If he had placed himself in her way on
purpose to watch the effect of his presence, he must have been
disappointed; for, except that a cold shadow of disdain passed over her
face as the carriage drove by him, he might have imagined himself
unseen. She looked pale and careworn, and her eyes seemed to have grown
larger since her illness; but she held her head as erect as ever, and
had still the air of imperial grandeur which constituted one of her
chief charms.
"So that is Mr. Mellish," said Conyers, as the carriage disappeared.
"He seems very fond of his wife."
"Yes, sure; and he is, too. Fond of her! Why, they say there is n't
another such couple in all Yorkshire. And she's fond of him, too, bless
her handsome face! But who would n't be fond of Master John?"
Mr. Conyers shrugged his shoulders; these patriarchal habits and
domestic virtues had no particular charm for him.
"She had plenty of money, had n't she?" he asked, by way of bringing
the conversation into a more rational channel.
"Plenty of money! I should think so. They say her pa gave her fifty
thousand pounds down on her wedding-day; not that our master wants
money; he's got enough, and to spare."
"Ah! to be sure," answered Mr. Conyers; "that's always the way of
it. The banker gave her fifty thousand, did he? If Miss Floyd had
married a poor devil, now, I don't suppose her father would have given
her fifty sixpences."
"Well, no; if she'd gone against his wishes, I don't suppose he
would. He was here in the spring—a nice, white-haired old gentleman,
but failing fast."
"Failing fast. And Mrs. Mellish will come into a quarter of a
million, at his death, I suppose. Good afternoon, ma'am. It's a queer
world." Mr. Conyers took up his stick, and limped away under the trees,
repeating this ejaculation as he went. It was a habit with this
gentleman to attribute the good fortune of other people to some
eccentricity in the machinery of life, by which he, the only really
deserving person in the world, had been deprived of his natural rights.
He went through the wood into a meadow where some of the horses under
his charge were at grass, and spent upward of an hour lounging about
the hedge-rows, sitting on gates, smoking his pipe, and staring at the
animals, which seemed about the hardest work he had to do in his
capacity of trainer. "It is n't a very hard life, when all's said and
done," he thought, as he looked at a group of mares and foals, who, in
their eccentric diversions, were performing a species of Sir Roger de
Coverly up and down the meadow. "It is n't a very hard life; for as
long as a fellow swears hard and fast at the lads, and gets rid of
plenty of oats, he's right enough. These country gentlemen always judge
a man's merits by the quantity of corn they have to pay for. Feed their
horses as fat as pigs, and never enter 'em except among such a set of
screws as an active pig could beat, and they'll swear by you. They'd
think more of having a horse win the Margate plate, or the Hampstead
Heath sweepstakes, than if he ran a good fourth in the Derby. Bless
their innocent hearts! I should think fellows with plenty of money and
no brains must have been invented for the good of fellows with plenty
of brains and no money; and that's how we contrive to keep our
equilibrium in the universal see-saw."
Mr. James Conyers, puffing lazy clouds of transparent blue smoke
from his lips, and pondering thus, looked as sentimental as if he had
been ruminating upon the last three pages of the Bride of Abydos,
or the death of Paul Dombey. He had that romantic style of beauty
peculiar to dark blue eyes and long black lashes, and he could not
wonder what he should have for dinner without a dreamy pensiveness in
the purple shadows of those deep blue orbs. He had found the
sentimentality of his beauty almost of greater use to him than the
beauty itself. It was this sentimentality which always put him at an
advantage with his employers. He looked like an exiled prince doing
menial service in bitterness of spirit and a turned-down collar. He
looked like Lara returned to his own domains to train the horses of a
usurper. He looked, in short, like anything but what he was—a selfish,
good-for-nothing, lazy scoundrel, who was well up in the useful art of
doing the minimum of work, and getting the maximum of wages.
He strolled slowly back to his rustic habitation, where he found the
softy waiting for him; the kettle boiling upon a handful of bright
fire, and some tea-things laid out upon the little round table. Mr.
Conyers looked rather contemptuously at the humble preparations.
"I've mashed the tea for 'ee," said the softy; "I thought you'd like
a coop."
The trainer shrugged his shoulders.
"I can't say I am particularly attached to the cat-lap," he said,
laughing; "I've had rather too much of it when I've been in
training—half-and-half, warm tea, and cold-drawn castor-oil. I'll send
you into Doncaster for some spirits to-morrow, my man—or to-night,
perhaps," he added, reflectively, resting his elbow upon the table and
his chin in the hollow of his hand.
He sat for some time in this thoughtful attitude, his retainer,
Steeve Hargraves, watching him intently all the while, with that half
wondering, half admiring stare with which a very ugly creature—a
creature so ugly as to know it is ugly—looks at a very handsome one.
At the close of his reverie, Mr. Conyers took out a clumsy silver
watch, and sat for a few minutes staring vacantly at the dial.
"Close upon six," he muttered at last. "What time do they dine at
the house, Steeve?"
"Seven o'clock," answered the softy.
"Seven o'clock. Then you'd have time to run there with a message, or
a letter, and catch 'em just as they're going in to dinner."
The softy stared aghast at his new master.
"A message or a letter," he repeated, "for Mr. Mellish?"
"No; for Mrs. Mellish."
"But I dare n't," exclaimed Stephen Hargraves; "I dare n't go nigh
the house, least of all to speak to her. I don't forget the day she
horsewhipped me. I've never seen her since, and I don't want to see
her. You think I am a coward, don't 'ee?" he said, stopping suddenly,
and looking at the trainer, whose handsome lips were curved into a
contemptuous smile. "You think I'm a coward, don't 'ee, now?" he
repeated.
"Well, I do n't think you are over valiant," answered Mr. Conyers,
"to be afraid of a woman, though she was the veriest devil that ever
played fast and loose with a man."
"Shall I tell you what it is I'm afraid of?" said Steeve Hargraves,
hissing the words through his closed teeth in that unpleasant whisper
peculiar to him. "It is n't Mrs. Mellish. It's myself. It's this
"—he grasped something in the loose pocket of his trowsers as he
spoke—"it's this. I'm afraid to trust myself anigh her, for
fear I should spring upon her, and cut her throat from ear to ear. I've
seen her in my dreams sometimes, with her beautiful white throat laid
open, and streaming oceans of blood; but, for all that, she's always
had the broken whip in her hand, and she's always laughed at me. I've
had many a dream about her, but I've never seen her dead or quiet, and
I've never seen her without the whip."
The contemptuous smile died away from the trainer's lips as Steeve
Hargraves made this revelation of his sentiments, and gave place to a
darkly thoughtful expression, which overshadowed the whole of his face.
"I've no such wonderful love for Mrs. Mellish myself," he said; "but
she might live to be as old as Methuselah for aught I care, if
she'd"—he muttered something between his teeth, and walked up the
little staircase to his bedroom, whistling a popular tune as he went.
He came down again with a dirty-looking leather desk in his hand,
which he flung carelessly on to the table. It was stuffed with
crumpled, untidy-looking letters and papers, from among which he had
considerable difficulty in selecting a tolerably clean sheet of
note-paper.
"You'll take a letter to Mrs. Mellish, my friend," he said to
Stephen, stooping over the table and writing as he spoke, "and you'll
please to deliver it safely into her own hands. The windows will all be
open this sultry weather, and you can watch till you see her in the
drawing-room; and when you do, contrive to beckon her out, and give her
this."
He had folded the sheet of paper by this time, and had sealed it
carefully in an adhesive envelope.
"There's no need of any address," he said, as he handed the letter
to Steeve Hargraves; "you know who it's for, and you won't give it to
anybody else. There, get along with you. She'll say nothing to you,
man, when she sees who the letter comes from."
The softy looked darkly at his new employer; but Mr. James Conyers
rather piqued himself upon a quality which he called determination, but
which his traducers designated obstinacy, and he made up his mind that
no one but Steeve Hargraves should carry the letter.
"Come," he said, "no nonsense, Mr. Stephen. Remember this: if I
choose to employ you, and if I choose to send you on any errand
whatsoever, there's no one in that house will dare to question my right
to do it. Get along with you."
He pointed as he spoke, with the stem of his pipe, to the Gothic
roof and ivied chimneys of the old house gleaming among a mass of
foliage. "Get along with you, Mr. Stephen, and bring me an answer to
that letter," he added, lighting his pipe, and seating himself in his
favorite attitude upon the windowsill—an attitude which, like
everything about him, was a half careless, half defiant protest of his
superiority to his position. "You need n't wait for a written answer.
Yes or no will be quite enough, you may tell Mrs. Mellish."
The softy whispered something half inaudible between his teeth; but
he took the letter, and, pulling his shabby rabbit-skin cap over his
eyes, walked slowly off in the direction to which Mr. Conyers had
pointed, with a half contemptuous action, a few moments before.
"A queer fish," muttered the trainer, lazily watching the awkward
figure of his attendant; "a queer fish; but it's rather hard if I can't
manage him. I've twisted his betters round my little finger
before to-day."
Mr. Conyers forgot that there are some natures which, although
inferior in everything else, are strong by reason of their
stubbornness, and not to be twisted out of their natural crookedness by
any trick of management or skilfulness of handling.
The evening was sunless, but sultry; there was a lowering darkness
in the leaden sky, and an unnatural stillness in the atmosphere that
prophesied the coming of a storm. The elements were taking breath for
the struggle, and lying silently in wait against the wreaking of their
fury. It would come by and by, the signal for the outburst, in a long,
crackling peal of thunder, that would shake the distant hills and
flutter every leaf in the wood.
The trainer looked with an indifferent eye at the ominous aspect of
the heavens. "I must go down to the stables, and send some of the boys
to get the horses under shelter," he said; "there'll be a storm before
long." He took his stick and limped out of the cottage, still smoking;
indeed, there were very few hours in the day, and not many during the
night, in which Mr. Conyers was unprovided with his pipe or cigar.
Steeve Hargraves walked very slowly along the narrow pathway which
led across the Park to the flower-garden and lawn before the house.
This north side of the Park was wilder and less well-kept than the
rest; but the thick undergrowth swarmed with game, and the young hares
flew backward and forward across the pathway, startled by the softy's
shambling tread. while every now and then the partridges rose in pairs
from the tangled grass, and skimmed away under the low roof of foliage.
"If I was to meet Mr. Mellish's keeper here, he'd look at me black
enough, I dare say," muttered the softy, "though I a'n't after the
game. Looking at a pheasant's high treason in his mind, curse him."
He put his hands low down in his pockets, as if scarcely able to
resist the temptation to wring the neck of a splendid cock-pheasant
that was strutting through the high grass, with a proud serenity of
manner that implied a knowledge of the game-laws. The trees on the
north side of the Park formed a species of leafy wall which screened
the lawn, so that, coming from this northern side, the softy emerged at
once from the shelter into the smooth grass bordering this lawn, which
was separated from the Park by an invisible fence.
As Steeve Hargraves, still sheltered from observation by the trees,
approached this place, he saw that his errand was shortened, for Mrs.
Mellish was leaning upon a low iron gate, with the dog Bow-wow, the dog
that he had beaten, at her side.
He had left the narrow pathway and struck in among the undergrowth,
in order to make a shorter cut to the flower-garden, and as he came
from under the shelter of the low branches which made a leafy cave
about him, he left a long track of parted grass behind him, like the
track of the footstep of a tiger, or the trail of a slow, ponderous
serpent creeping toward its prey.
Aurora looked up at the sound of the shambling footsteps, and, for
the second time since she had beaten him, she encountered the gaze of
the softy. She was very pale, almost as pale as her white dress, which
was unenlivened by any scrap of color, and which hung about her in
loose folds that gave a statuesque grace to her figure. She was dressed
with such evident carelessness that every fold of muslin seemed to tell
how far away her thoughts had been when that hasty toilet was made. Her
black brows contracted as she looked at the softy.
"I thought Mr. Mellish had dismissed you," she said, "and that you
had been forbidden to come here."
"Yes, ma'am, Muster Mellish did turn me out of the house I'd lived
in, man and boy, nigh upon forty year, but I've got a new place now,
and my new master sent me to you with a letter."
Watching the effect of his words, the softy saw a leaden change come
over the pale face of his listener.
"What new master?" she asked.
Steeve Hargraves lifted his hand and pointed across his shoulder.
She watched the slow motion of that clumsy hand, and her eyes seemed to
grow larger as she saw the direction to which it pointed.
"Your new master is the trainer, James Conyers, the man who lives at
the north lodge?" she said.
"Yes, ma'am."
"What does he want with you?" she asked.
"I keep his place in order for him, ma'am, and run errands for him;
and I've brought a letter."
"A letter? Ah! yes, give it me."
The softy handed her the envelope. She took it slowly, without
removing her eyes from his face, but watching him with a fixed and
earnest look that seemed as if it would have fathomed something beneath
the dull red eyes which met hers—a look that betrayed some doubtful
terror hidden in her own breast, and a vague desire to penetrate the
secrets of his.
She did not look at the letter, but held it half crushed in the hand
hanging by her side.
"You can go," she said.
"I was to wait for an answer."
The black brows contracted again, and this time a bright gleam of
fury kindled in the great black eyes.
"There is no answer," she said, thrusting the letter into the bosom
of her dress, and turning to leave the gate; "there is no answer, and
there shall be none till I choose. Tell your master that."
"It was n't to be a written answer," persisted the softy; "it was to
be yes or no, that's all; but I was to be sure and wait for it."
The half-witted creature saw some feeling of hate and fury in her
face beyond her contemptuous hatred of himself, and took a savage
pleasure in tormenting her. She struck her foot impatiently upon the
grass, and, plucking the letter from her breast, tore open the
envelope, and read the few lines it contained. Few as they were, she
stood for nearly five minutes with the open letter in her hand,
separated from the softy by the iron fence, and lost in thought. The
silence was only broken during this pause by an occasional growl from
the mastiff, who lifted his heavy lip and showed his feeble teeth for
the edification of his old enemy.
She tore the letter into a hundred morsels, and flung it from her
before she spoke. "Yes," she said at last; "tell your master that."
Steeve Hargraves touched his cap, and went back through the grassy
trail he had left, to carry this message to the trainer.
"She hates me bad enough," he muttered, as he stopped once to look
back at the quiet white figure on the lawn, "but she hates him worse."
CHAPTER XVIII.
OUT IN THE RAIN.
The second dinner-bell rang five minutes after the softy had left
Aurora, and Mr. John Mellish came out upon the lawn to look for his
wife. He came whistling across the grass, and whisking the roses with
his pocket-hand-kerchief in very gayety of heart. He had quite
forgotten the anguish of that miserable morning after the receipt of
Mr. Pastern's letter. He had forgotten all but that his Aurora was the
loveliest and dearest of women, and that he trusted her with the
boundless faith of his big, honest heart. "Why should I doubt such a
noble, impetuous creature?" he thought; "does n't every feeling and
every sentiment write itself upon, her lovely, expressive face in
characters the veriest fool could read? If I please her, what bright
smiles light up in her black eyes! If I vex her—as I do, poor awkward
idiot that I am, a hundred times a day—how the two black arches
contract over her pretty impertinent nose, while the red lips pout
defiance and disdain! Shall I doubt her because she keeps one secret
from me, and freely tells me I must for ever remain ignorant of it,
when an artful woman would try to set my mind at rest with some shallow
fiction invented to deceive me? Heaven bless her! no doubt of her shall
ever darken my life again, come what may."
It was easy for Mr. Mellish to make this mental vow, believing fully
that the storm was past, and that lasting fair weather had set in.
"Lolly, darling," he said, winding his great arm round his wife's
waist, "I thought I had lost you."
She looked up at him with a sad smile.
"Would it grieve you much, John," she said, in a low voice, "if you
were really to lose me?"
He started as if he had been struck, and looked anxiously at her
pale face.
"Would it grieve me, Lolly!" he repeated; "not for long; for the
people who came to your funeral would come to mine. But, my darling, my
darling, what can have made you ask this question? Are you ill,
dearest? You have been looking pale and tired for the last few days,
and I have thought nothing of it. What a careless wretch I am!"
"No, no, John," she said, "I don't mean that. I know you would
grieve dear, if I were to die. But suppose something were to happen
which would separate us for ever—something which would compel me to
leave this place never to return to it—what then?"
"What then, Lolly?" answered her husband, gravely. "I would rather
see your coffin laid in the empty niche beside my mother's in the vault
yonder"—he pointed in the direction of the parish church, which was
close to the gates of the Park—"than I would part with you thus. I
would rather know you to be dead and happy than I would endure any
doubt about your fate. Oh, my darling, why do you speak of these
things? I could n't part with you—I could n't. I would rather take you
in my arms and plunge with you into the pond in the wood; I would
rather send a bullet into your heart, and see you lying murdered at my
feet."
"John, John, my dearest and truest," she said, her face lighting up
with a new brightness, like the sudden breaking of the sun through a
leaden cloud, "not another word, dear; we will never part. Why should
we? There is very little upon this wide earth that money can not buy,
and it shall help to buy our happiness. We will never part, darling,
never."
She broke into a joyous laugh as she watched his anxious,
half-wondering face.
"Why, you foolish John, how frightened you look!" she said. "Have
n't you discovered yet that I like to torment you now and then with
such questions as these, just to see your big blue eyes open to their
widest extent? Come, dear; Mrs. Powell will look white thunder at us
when we go in, and make some meek conventional reply to our apologies
for this delay, to the effect that she does n't care in the least how
long she waits for dinner, and that, on the whole, she would rather
never have any dinner at all. Is n't it strange, John, how that woman
hates me?"
"Hates you, dear, when you're so kind to her!"
"But she hates me for being kind to her, John. If I were to give her
my diamond necklace, she'd hate me for having it to give. She hates us
because we're rich, and young, and handsome," said Aurora, laughing,
"and the very opposite of her namby-pamby, pale-faced self."
It was strange that from this moment Aurora seemed to regain her
natural gayety of spirits, and to be what she had been before the
receipt of Mr. Pastern's letter. Whatever dark cloud had hovered over
her head since the day upon which that simple epistle had caused such a
terrible effect, that threatening shadow seemed to have been suddenly
removed. Mrs. Walter Powell was not slow to perceive this change. The
eyes of love, clear-sighted though they may be, are dull indeed beside
the eyes of hate. Those are never deceived. Aurora had wandered
out of the drawing-room, listless and dispirited, to stroll wearily
upon the lawn—Mrs. Powell, seated in one of the windows, had watched
her every movement, and had seen her in the distance speaking to some
one (she had been unable to distinguish the softy from her post of
observation)—and this same Aurora returned to the house almost another
creature. There was a look of determination about the beautiful mouth
(which female critics called too wide), a look not usual to the rosy
lips, and a resolute brightness in the eyes, which had some
significance surely, Mrs. Powell thought, if she could only have found
the key to that hidden meaning. Ever since Aurora's brief illness the
poor woman had been groping for this key—groping in mazy darknesses
which baffled her utmost powers of penetration. Who and what was this
groom, that Aurora should write to him, as she most decidedly had
written? Why was he to express no surprise, and what cause could there
be for his expressing any surprise in the simple economy of Mellish
Park? The mazy darknesses were more impenetrable than the blackest
night, and Mrs. Powell wellnigh gave up all hope of ever finding any
clew to the mystery. And now, behold, a new complication had arisen in
Aurora's altered spirits. John Mellish was delighted with this
alteration. He talked and laughed until the glasses near him vibrated
with his noisy mirth. He drank so much sparkling Moselle that his
butler Jarvis (who had grown gray in the service of the old squire, and
had poured out Master John's first glass of Champagne) refused at last
to furnish him with any more of that beverage, offering him in its
stead some very expensive Hock, the name of which was in fourteen
unpronounceable syllables, and which John tried to like, but did n't.
"We'll fill the house with visitors for the shooting-season, Lolly,
darling," said Mr. Mellish. "If they come on the first of September,
they'll all be comfortably settled for the Leger. The dear old dad will
come of course, and trot about on his white pony like the best of men
and bankers in Christendom. Captain and Mrs. Bulstrode will come too;
and we shall see how our little Lucy looks, and whether solemn Talbot
beats her in the silence of the matrimonial chamber. Then there's
Hunter, and a host of fellows; and you must write me a list of any nice
people you'd like to ask down here, and we'll have a glorious
autumn—won't we, Lolly?"
"I hope so, dear," said Mrs. Mellish, after a little pause, and a
repetition of John's eager question. She had not been listening very
attentively to John's plans for the future, and she startled him rather
by asking him a question very wide from the subject upon which he had
been speaking.
"How long do the fastest vessels take going to Australia, John?" she
asked, quietly.
Mr. Mellish stopped with his glass in his hand to stare at his wife
as she asked this question.
"How long do the fastest vessels take to go to Australia?" he
repeated. "Good gracious me, Lolly, how should I know? Three weeks or a
month—no, I mean three months; but, in mercy's name, Aurora, why do
you want to know?"
"The average length of the voyage is, I believe, about three months;
but some fast-sailing packets do it in seventy, or even in sixty-eight
days," interposed Mrs. Powell, looking sharply at Aurora's abstracted
face from under cover of her white eyelashes.
"But why, in goodness name, do you want to know, Lolly?" repeated
John Mellish. "You don't want to go to Australia, and you don't know
anybody who's going to Australia?"
"Perhaps Mrs. Mellish is interested in the Female Emigration
movement," suggested Mrs. Powell: "it is a most delightful work."
Aurora replied neither to the direct nor the indirect question. The
cloth had been removed (for no modern customs had ever disturbed the
conservative economy of Mellish Park), and Mrs. Mellish sat, with a
cluster of pale cherries in her hand, looking at the reflection of her
own face in the depths of the shining mahogany.
"Lolly!" exclaimed John Mellish, after watching his wife for some
minutes, "you are as grave as a judge. What can you be thinking of?"
She looked up at him with a bright smile, and rose to leave the
dining-room.
"I'll tell you one of these days, John," she said. "Are you coming
with us, or are you going out upon the lawn to smoke?"
"If you'll come with me, dear," he answered, returning her smile
with a frank glance of unchangeable affection, which always beamed in
his eyes when they rested on his wife. "I'll go out and smoke a cigar
if you'll come with me, Lolly."
"You foolish old Yorkshireman," said Mrs. Mellish, laughing, "I
verily believe you'd like me to smoke one of your choice Manillas, by
way of keeping you company."
"No, darling, I'd never wish to see you do anything that did n't
square—that was n't compatible," interposed Mr. Mellish gravely,
"with the manners of the noblest lady, and the duties of the truest
wife in England. If I love to see you ride across country with a red
feather in your hat, it is because I think that the good old sport of
English gentlemen was meant to be shared by their wives rather than by
people whom I would not like to name, and because there is a fair
chance that the sight of your Spanish hat and scarlet plume at the meet
may go some way toward keeping Miss Wilhelmina de Lancy (who was born
plain Scroggins, and christened Sarah) out of the field. I think our
British wives and mothers might have the battle in their own hands, and
win the victory for themselves and their daughters, if they were a
little braver in standing to their ground—if they were not quite so
tenderly indulgent to the sins of eligible young noblemen, and, in
their estimate of a man's qualifications for the marriage state, were
not so entirely guided by the figures in his banker's book. It's a sad
world, Lolly, but John Mellish, of Mellish Park, was never meant to set
it right."
Mr. Mellish stood on the threshold of a glass door which opened to a
flight of steps leading to the lawn as he delivered himself of this
homily, the gravity of which was quite at variance with the usual tenor
of his discourse. He had a cigar in his hand, and was going to light
it, when Aurora stopped him.
"John, dear," she said, "my most unbusiness-like of darlings, have
you forgotten that poor Langley is so anxious to see you, that he may
give up your old accounts before the new trainer takes the stable
business into his hands? He was here half an hour before dinner, and
begged that you would see him to-night."
Mr. Mellish shrugged his shoulders.
"Langley's as honest a fellow as ever breathed," he said. "I don't
want to look into his accounts. I know what the stable costs me yearly
on an average, and that's enough."
"But for his satisfaction, dear."
"Well, well, Lolly, to-morrow morning, then."
"No, dear, I want you to ride out with me to-morrow."
"To-morrow evening."
"'You meet the captains at the Citadel,'" said Aurora, laughing;
"that is to say, you dine at Holmbush with Colonel Pevensey. Come,
darling, I insist on your being business-like for once in a way; come
to your sanctum sanctorum, and we'll send for Langley, and look
into the accounts."
The pretty tyrant linked her arm in his, and led him to the other
end of the house, and into the very room in which she had swooned away
at the hearing of Mr. Pastern's letter. She looked thoughtfully out at
the dull evening sky as she closed the windows. The storm had not yet
come, but the ominous clouds still brooded low over the earth, and the
sultry atmosphere was heavy and airless. Mrs. Mellish made a wonderful
show of her business habits, and appeared to be very much interested in
the mass of corn-chandlers', veterinary surgeons', saddlers', and
harness-makers' accounts with which the old trainer respectfully
bewildered his master. But about ten minutes after John had settled
himself to his weary labor Aurora threw down the pencil with which she
had been working a calculation (by a process of so wildly original a
nature as to utterly revolutionize Cocker, and annihilate the hackneyed
notion that twice two are four), and floated lightly out of the room,
with some vague promise of coming back presently, leaving Mr. Mellish
to arithmetic and despair.
Mrs. Walter Powell was seated in the drawing-room reading when
Aurora entered the apartment with a large black lace shawl wrapped
about her head and shoulders. Mrs. Mellish had evidently expected to
find the room empty, for she started and drew back at the sight of the
pale-faced widow, who was seated in a distant window, making the most
of the last faint rays of summer twilight. Aurora paused for a moment a
few paces within the door, and then walked deliberately across the room
toward the farthest window from that at which Mrs. Powell was seated.
"Are you going out in the garden this dull evening, Mrs. Mellish?"
asked the ensign's widow.
Aurora stopped half way between the window and the door to answer
her.
"Yes," she said coldly.
"Allow me to advise you not to go far. We are going to have a storm."
"I don't think so."
"What, my dear Mrs. Mellish, not with that thunder-cloud yonder?"
"I will take my chance of being caught in it, then. The weather has
been threatening all the afternoon. The house is insupportable
to-night."
"But you will not surely go far?"
Mrs. Mellish did not appear to overhear this remonstrance. She
hurried through the open window, and out upon the lawn, striking
northward toward that little iron gate across which she had talked to
the softy.
The arch of the leaden sky seemed to contract above the tree-tops in
the Park, shutting in the earth as if with a roof of hot iron, after
the fashion of those cunningly contrived metal torture-chambers which
we read of; but the rain had not yet come.
"What can take her into the garden on such an evening as this?"
thought Mrs. Powell, as she watched the white dress receding in the
dusky twilight. "It will be dark in ten minutes, and she is not usually
so fond of going out alone."
The ensign's widow laid down the book in which she had appeared so
deeply interested, and went to her own room, where she selected a
comfortable gray cloak from a heap of primly-folded garments in her
capacious wardrobe. She muffled herself in this cloak, hurried down
stairs with a soft but rapid step, and went out into the garden through
a little lobby near John Mellish's room. The blinds in the little sanctum were not drawn down, and Mrs. Powell could see the master
of the house bending over his paper under the light of a reading-lamp,
with the rheumatic trainer sitting by his side. It was by this time
quite dark, but Aurora's white dress was faintly visible upon the other
side of the lawn.
Mrs. Mellish was standing beside the little iron gate when the
ensign's widow emerged from the house. The white dress was motionless
for some time, and the pale watcher, lurking under the shade of a long
veranda, began to think that her trouble was wasted, and that perhaps,
after all, Aurora had no special purpose in this evening ramble.
Mrs. Walter Powell felt cruelly disappointed. Always on the watch
for some clew to the secret whose existence she had discovered, she had
fondly hoped that even this unseasonable ramble might be some link in
the mysterious chain she was so anxious to fit together. But it
appeared that she was mistaken. The unseasonable ramble was very likely
nothing more than one of Aurora's caprices—a womanly foolishness
signifying nothing.
No! The white dress was no longer motionless, and in the unnatural
stillness of the hot night Mrs. Powell heard the distant, scrooping
noise of a hinge revolving slowly, as if guided by a cautious hand.
Mrs. Mellish had opened the iron gate, and had passed to the other side
of the invisible barrier which separated the gardens from the Park. In
another moment she had disappeared under the shadow of the trees which
made a belt about the lawn.
Mrs. Powell paused, almost terrified by her unlooked-for discovery.
What, in the name of all that was darkly mysterious, could Mrs.
Mellish have to do between nine and ten o'clock on the north side of
the Park—the wildly-kept, deserted north side, in which, from year's
end to year's end, no one but the keepers ever walked.
The blood rushed hotly up to Mrs. Powell's pale face as she suddenly
remembered that the disused, dilapidated lodge upon this north side had
been given to the new trainer as a residence. Remembering this was
nothing, but remembering this in connection with that mysterious letter
signed "A" was enough to send a thrill of savage, horrible joy through
the dull veins of the dependent. What should she do? Follow Mrs.
Mellish, and discover where she was going? How far would this be a safe
thing to attempt?
She turned back and looked once more through the windows of John's
room. He was still bending over the papers, still in an apparently
hopeless confusion of mind. There seemed little chance of his business
being finished very quickly. The starless night and her dark dress
alike sheltered the spy from observation.
"If I were close behind her, she would never see me," she thought.
She struck across the lawn to the iron gate, and passed into the
Park. The brambles and the tangled undergrowth caught at her dress as
she paused for a moment looking about her in the summer night.
There was no trace of Aurora's white figure among the leafy alleys
stretching in wild disorder before her.
"I'll not attempt to find the path she took," thought Mrs. Powell;
"I know where to find her."
She groped her way into the narrow footpath leading to the lodge.
She was not sufficiently familiar with the place to take the short cut
which the softy had made for himself through the grass that afternoon,
and she was some time walking from the iron gate to the lodge.
The front windows of this rustic lodge faced the road and the
disused north gates; the back of the building looked toward the path
down which Mrs. Powell went, and the two small windows in this back
wall were both dark.
The ensign's widow crept softly round to the front, looked about her
cautiously, and listened. There was no sound but the occasional rustle
of a leaf, tremulous even in the still atmosphere, as if by some
internal prescience of the coming storm. With a slow, careful footstep,
she stole toward the little rustic window, and looked into the room
within.
She had not been mistaken when she had said that she knew where to
find Aurora.
Mrs. Mellish was standing with her back to the window. Exactly
opposite to her sat James Conyers, the trainer, in an easy attitude,
and with his pipe in his mouth. The little table was between them, and
the one candle which lighted the room was drawn close to Mr. Conyers'
elbow, and had evidently been used by him for the lighting of his pipe.
Aurora was speaking. The eager listener could hear her voice, but not
her words; and she could see by the trainer's face that he was
listening intently. He was listening intently; but a dark frown
contracted his handsome eyebrows, and it was very evident that he was
not too well satisfied with the bent of the conversation.
He looked up when Aurora ceased speaking, shrugged his shoulders,
and took his pipe out of his mouth. Mrs. Powell, with her pale face
close against the window-pane, watched him intently.
He pointed with a careless gesture to an empty chair near Aurora,
but she shook her head contemptuously, and suddenly turned toward the
window; so suddenly that Mrs. Powell had scarcely time to recoil into
the darkness before Aurora had unfastened the iron latch and flung the
narrow casement open.
"I can not endure this intolerable heat," she exclaimed,
impatiently; "I have said all I have to say, and need only wait for
your answer."
"You don't give me much time for consideration," he said, with an
insolent coolness which was in strange contrast to the restless
vehemence of her manner. "What sort of answer do you want?"
"Yes or no."
"Nothing more?"
"No, nothing more. You know my conditions; they are all written
here," she added, putting her hand upon an open paper which lay upon
the table; "they are all written clearly enough for a child to
understand. Will you accept them? Yes or no?"
"That depends upon circumstances," he answered, filling his pipe,
and looking admiringly at the nail of his little finger as he pressed
the tobacco into the bowl.
"Upon what circumstances?"
"Upon the inducement which you offer, my dear Mrs. Mellish."
"You mean the price?"
"That's a low expression," he said, laughing; "but I suppose we both
mean the same thing. The inducement must be a strong one which will
make me do all that"—he pointed to the written paper—"and it must
take the form of solid cash. How much is it to be?"
"That is for you to say. Remember what I have told you. Decline
to-night, and I telegraph to my father to-morrow morning, telling him
to alter his will."
"Suppose the old gentleman should be carried off in the interim, and
leave that pleasant sheet of parchment standing as it is. I hear that
he's old and feeble; it might be worth while calculating the odds upon
such an event. I've risked my money on a worst chance before to-night."
She turned upon him with so dark a frown as he said this that the
insolently heartless words died upon his lips, and left him looking at
her gravely.
"Egad," he said, "you're as great a devil as ever you were. I doubt
if that is n't a good offer after all. Give me ten thousand down, and
I'll take it."
"Ten thousand pounds!"
"I ought to have said twenty, but I've always stood in my own light."
Mrs. Powell, crouching down beneath the open casement, had heard
every word of this brief dialogue; but at this juncture, half-forgetful
of all danger in her eagerness to listen, she raised her head until it
was nearly on a level with the window-sill. As she did so, she recoiled
with a sudden thrill of terror. She felt a puff of hot breath upon her
cheek, and the garments of a man rustling against her own.
She was not the only listener.
The second spy was Stephen Hargraves, the softy.
"Hush!" he whispered, grasping Mrs. Powell by the wrist, and pinning
her in her crouching attitude by the muscular force of his horny hand;
"it's only me, Steeve the Softy, you know; the stable-helper that she
" (he hissed out the personal pronoun with such a furious impetus that
it seemed to whistle sharply through the stillness)—"the fondy that
she horsewhipped. I know you, and I know you're here to listen. He sent
me into Doncaster to fetch this" (he pointed to a bottle under his
arm); "he thought it would take me four or five hours to go and get
back; but I ran all the way, for I knew there was summat oop."
He wiped his streaming face with the ends of his coarse neckerchief
as he finished speaking. His breath came in panting gasps, and Mrs.
Powell could hear the laborious beating of his heart in the stillness.
"I won't tell o' you," he said, "and you won't tell o' me. I've got
the stripes upon my shoulder where she cut me with the whip to this
day; I look at 'm sometimes, and they help to keep me in mind. She's a
fine madam, a'n't she, and a great lady too? Ay, sure she is; but she
comes to meet her husband's servant on the sly, after dark, for all
that. Maybe the day is n't far off when she'll be turned away
from these gates, and warned off this ground, and the merciful Lord
send that I live to see it. Hush!"
With her wrist still pinioned in his strong grasp, he motioned her
to be silent, and bent his pale face forward, every feature rigid in
the listening expectancy of his hungry gaze.
"Listen," he whispered; "listen! Every fresh word damns her deeper
than the last."
The trainer was the first to speak after this pause in the dialogue
within the cottage. He had quietly smoked out his pipe, and had emptied
the ashes of his tobacco upon the table before he took up the thread of
the conversation at the point at which he had dropped it.
"Ten thousand pounds," he said; "that is the offer, and I think it
ought to be taken freely. Ten thousand down, in Bank of England notes
(fives and tens; higher figures might be awkward), or sterling coin of
the realm. You understand; ten thousand down. That's my
alternative; or I leave this place to-morrow morning, with all
belonging to me."
"By which course you would get nothing," said Mrs. John Mellish,
quietly.
"Should n't I? What does the chap in the play get for his trouble
when the blackamoor smothers his wife? I should get nothing—but my
revenge upon a tiger-cat whose claws have left a mark upon me that I
shall carry to my grave." He lifted his hair with a careless gesture of
his hand, and pointed to a scar upon his forehead—a white mark, barely
visible in the dim light of the tallow-candle. "I'm a good-natured,
easy-going fellow, Mrs. John Mellish, but I don't forget. Is it to be
the ten thousand pounds, or war to the knife?"
Mrs. Powell waited eagerly for Aurora's answer; but before it came a
round, heavy rain-drop pattered upon the light hair of the ensign's
widow. The hood of her cloak had fallen back, leaving her head
uncovered. This one large drop was the warning of the coming storm. The
signal peal of thunder rumbled slowly and hoarsely in the distance, and
a pale flash of lightning trembled upon the white faces of the two
listeners.
"Let me go," whispered Mrs. Powell, "let me go; I must get back to
the house before the rain begins."
The softy slowly relaxed his iron grip upon her wrist. He had held
it unconsciously in his utter abstraction to all things except the two
speakers in the cottage.
Mrs. Powell rose from her knees, and crept noiselessly away from the
lodge. She remembered the vital necessity of getting back to the house
before Aurora, and of avoiding the shower. Her wet garments would
betray her if she did not succeed in escaping the coming storm. She was
of spare, wizen figure, encumbered with no superfluous flesh, and she
ran rapidly along the narrow sheltered pathway leading to the iron gate
through which she had followed Aurora.
The heavy rain-drops fell at long intervals upon the leaves. A
second and a third peal of thunder rattled along the earth like the
horrible roar of some hungry animal creeping nearer and nearer to its
prey. Blue flashes of faint lightning lit up the tangled intricacies of
the wood, but the fullest fury of the storm had not yet burst forth.
The rain-drops came at shorter intervals as Mrs. Powell passed out
of the wood, through the little iron gate; faster still as she hurried
across the lawn; faster yet as she reached the lobby-door, which she
had left ajar an hour before, and sat down panting upon a little bench
within, to recover her breath before she went any farther. She was
still sitting on this bench, when the fourth peal of thunder shook the
low roof above her head, and the rain dropped from the starless sky
with such a rushing impetus that it seemed as if a huge trap-door had
been opened in the heavens, and a celestial ocean let down to flood the
earth.
"I think my lady will be nicely caught," muttered Mrs. Walter Powell.
She threw her cloak aside upon the lobby-bench, and went through a
passage leading to the hall. One of the servants was shutting the
hall-door.
"Have you shut the drawing-room windows, Wilson?" she asked.
"No, ma'am; I am afraid Mrs. Mellish is out in the rain. Jarvis is
getting ready to go and look for her, with a lantern and the
gig-umbrella."
"Then Jarvis can stop where he is; Mrs. Mellish came in half an hour
ago. You may shut all the windows, and close the house for the night."
"Yes, ma'am."
"By the by, what o'clock is it, Wilson? My watch is slow."
"A quarter past ten, ma'am, by the dining-room clock."
The man locked the hall-door, and put up an immense iron bar, which
worked with some rather complicated machinery, and had a bell hanging
at one end of it, for the frustration of all burglarious and designing
ruffians.
From the hall the man went to the drawing-room, where he carefully
fastened the long range of windows; from the drawing-room to the lobby;
and from the lobby to the dining-room, where he locked the half-glass
door opening into the garden. This being done, all communication
between the house and the garden was securely cut off.
"He shall know of her goings on, at any rate," thought Mrs. Powell,
as she dogged the footsteps of the servant to see that he did his work.
The Mellish household did not take very kindly to this deputy mistress;
and when the footman went back to the servants' hall, he informed his
colleagues that SHE was pryin' and pokin' about sharper than hever, and
watchin' of a feller like a hold 'ouse-cat. Mr. Wilson was a Cockney,
and had been newly imported into the establishment.
When the ensign's widow had seen the last bolt driven home to its
socket, and the last key turned in its lock, she went back to the
drawing-room and seated herself at the lamp-lit table, with some
delicate morsel of old-maidish fancy-work, which seemed to be the
converse of Penelope's embroidery, as it appeared to advance at night
and retrograde by day. She had hastily smoothed her hair and rearranged
her dress, and she looked as uncomfortably neat as when she came down
to breakfast in the fresh primness of her matutinal toilette.
She had been sitting at her work for about ten minutes when John
Mellish entered the room, emerging weary but triumphant from his
struggle with the simple rules of multiplication and substraction. Mr.
Mellish had evidently suffered severely in the contest. His thick brown
hair was tumbled into a rough mass that stood nearly upright upon his
head, his cravat was untied, and his shirt collar was thrown open for
the relief of his capacious throat; and these and many other marks of
the struggle he bore upon him when he entered the drawing-room.
"I've broken loose from school at last, Mrs. Powell," he said,
flinging his big frame upon one of the sofas, to the imminent peril of
the German spring cushions; "I've broken away before the flag dropped,
for Langley would have liked to keep me there till midnight. He
followed me to the door of this room with fourteen bushels of oats that
was down in the corn-chandler's account and was not down in the book he
keeps to check the corn-chandler. Why the doose don't he put it down in
his book and make it right, then, I ask, instead of bothering me?
What's the good of his keeping an account to check the corn-chandler if
he don't make his account the same as the corn-chandler's? But it's all
over," he added, with a great sigh of relief, "it's all over; and all I
can say is, I hope the new trainer is n't honest."
"Do you know much of the new trainer, Mr. Mellish?" asked Mrs.
Powell, blandly, rather as if she wished to amuse her employer by the
exertion of her conversational powers than for the gratification of any
mundane curiosity.
"Doosed little," answered John indifferently. "I have n't even seen
the fellow yet; but John Pastern recommended him, and he's sure to be
all right; besides, Aurora knows the man; he was in her father's
service once."
"Oh, indeed!" said Mrs. Powell, giving the two insignificant words a
significant little jerk; "oh, indeed! Mrs. Mellish knows him, does she?
Then of course he is a trustworthy person. He's a remarkably handsome
young man."
"Remarkably handsome, is he?" said Mr. Mellish, with a careless
laugh. "Then I suppose all the maids will be falling in love with him,
and neglecting their work to look out of the windows that open on to
the stable-yard, hey? That's the sort of thing when a man has a
handsome groom, a'n't it? Susan and Sarah, and all the rest of 'em,
take to cleaning the windows, and wearing new ribbons in their caps?"
"I don't know anything about that, Mr. Mellish," answered the
ensign's widow, simpering over her work as if the question they were
discussing was so very far away that it was impossible for her to be
serious about it; "but my experience has thrown me into a very large
number of families." (She said this with perfect truth, as she had
occupied so many situations that her enemies had come to declare she
was unable to remain in any one household above a twelvemonth, by
reason of her employer's discovery of her real nature.) "I have
occupied positions of trust and confidence," continued Mrs. Powell,
"and I regret to say that I have seen much domestic misery arise from
the employment of handsome servants, whose appearance and manners are
superior to their station. Mr. Conyers is not at all the sort of person
I should like to see in a household in which I had the charge of young
ladies."
A sick, half-shuddering faintness crept through John's herculean
frame as Mrs. Powell expressed herself thus; so vague a feeling that he
scarcely knew whether it was mental or physical, any better than he
knew what it was that he disliked in this speech of the ensign's widow.
The feeling was as transient as it was vague. John's honest blue eyes
looked wonderingly round the room.
"Where's Aurora?" he said; "gone to bed?"
"I believe Mrs. Mellish has retired to rest," Mrs. Powell answered.
"Then I shall go too. The place is as dull as a dungeon without
her," said Mr. Mellish, with agreeable candor. "Perhaps you'll be good
enough to make me a glass of brandy and water before I go, Mrs. Powell,
for I've got the cold shivers after those accounts."
He rose to ring the bell; but, before he had gone three paces from
the sofa, an impatient knocking at the closed outer shutters of one of
the windows arrested his footsteps.
"Who, in mercy's name, is that?" he exclaimed, staring at the
direction from which the noise came, but not attempting to respond to
the summons.
Mrs. Powell looked up to listen, with a face expressive of nothing
but innocent wonder.
The knocking was repeated more loudly and impatiently than before.
"It must be one of the servants," muttered John; "but why does n't
he go round to the back of the house? I can't keep the poor devil out
upon such a night as this, though," he added, good-naturedly,
unfastening the window as he spoke. The sashes opened inward, the
Venetian shutters outward. He pushed these shutters open, and looked
out into the darkness and the rain.
Aurora, shivering in her drenched garments, stood a few paces from
him, with the rain beating down straight and heavily upon her head.
Even in that obscurity her husband recognized her.
"My darling," he cried, "is it you? You out at such a time, and on
such a night! Come in, for mercy's sake; you must be drenched to the
skin."
She came into the room; the wet hanging in her muslin dress streamed
out upon the carpet on which she trod, and the folds of her lace shawl
clung tightly about her figure.
"Why did you let them shut the windows?" she said, turning to Mrs.
Powell, who had risen, and was looking the picture of lady-like
uneasiness and sympathy. "You knew that I was in the garden."
"Yes, but I thought you had returned, my dear Mrs. Mellish," said
the ensign's widow, busying herself with Aurora's wet shawl, which she
attempted to remove, but which Mrs. Mellish plucked impatiently away
from her. "I saw you go out, certainly, and I saw you leave the lawn in
the direction of the north lodge, but I thought you had returned some
time since."
The color faded out of John Mellish's face.
"The north lodge!" he said. "Have you been to the north lodge?"
"I have been in the direction of the north lodge," Aurora
answered, with a sneering emphasis upon the words. "Your information
is perfectly correct, Mrs. Powell, though I did not know you had done
me the honor of watching my actions."
Mr. Mellish did not appear to hear this. He looked from his wife to
his wife's companion with a half-bewildered expression—an expression
of newly-awakened doubt, of dim, struggling perplexity, which was very
painful to see.
"The north lodge!" he repeated; "what were you doing at the north
lodge, Aurora?"
"Do you wish me to stand here in my wet clothes while I tell you?"
asked Mrs. Mellish, her great black eyes blazing up with indignant
pride. "If you want an explanation for Mrs. Powell's satisfaction, I
can give it here; if only for your own, it will do as well up stairs."
She swept toward the door, trailing her wet shawl after her, but not
less queenly, even in her dripping garments (Semiramide and Cleopatra
may have been out in wet weather); but at the door she paused and
looked back at him.
"I shall want you to take me to London to-morrow, Mr. Mellish," she
said. Then, with one haughty toss of her beautiful head, and one
bright flash of her glorious eyes, which seemed to say, "Slave, obey
and tremble!" she disappeared, leaving Mr. Mellish to follow her,
meekly, wonderingly, fearfully, with terrible doubts and anxieties
creeping, like venomous living creatures, stealthily into his heart.
CHAPTER XIX.
MONEY MATTERS.
Archibald Floyd was very lonely at Felden Woods without his
daughter. He took no pleasure in the long drawing-room, or the
billiard-room and library, or the pleasant galleries, in which there
were all manner of easy corners, with abutting bay-windows,
damask-cushioned oaken benches, china vases as high as tables, all
enlivened by the alternately sternly masculine and simperingly feminine
faces of those ancestors whose painted representations the banker had
bought in Wardour-street. (Indeed, I fear those Scottish warriors,
those bewigged worthies of the Northern Circuit, those taper-waisted
ladies with pointed stomachers, tucked-up petticoats, pannier hoops,
and blue-ribbon bedizened crooks, had been painted to order, and that
there were such items in the account of the Wardour-street rococo
merchant as, "To one knight banneret, killed at Bosworth, £25 5s.")
The old banker, I say, grew sadly weary of his gorgeous mansion, which
was of little avail to him without Aurora.
People are not so very much happier for living in handsome houses,
though it is generally considered such a delightful thing to occupy a
mansion which would be large enough for a hospital, and take your
simple meal at the end of a table long enough to accommodate a board of
railway directors. Archibald Floyd could not sit beside both the
fireplaces in his long drawing-room, and he felt strangely lonely
looking from the easy-chair on the hearth-rug, through a vista of
velvet-pile and satin-damask, walnut-wood, buhl, malachite, china,
parian, crystal, and ormolu, at that solitary second hearth-rug and
those empty easy-chairs. He shivered in his dreary grandeur. His
five-and-forty by thirty feet of velvet-pile might have been a patch of
yellow sand in the great Sahara for any pleasure he derived from its
occupation. The billiard-room, perhaps, was worse; for the cues and
balls were every one made precious by Aurora's touch; and there was a
great fine drawn seam upon the green cloth, which marked the spot where
Miss Floyd had ripped it open what time she made her first juvenile
essay at billiards.
The banker locked the doors of both these splendid apartments, and
gave the keys to his housekeeper.
"Keep the rooms in order, Mrs. Richardson," he said, "and keep them
thoroughly aired; but I shall only use them when Mr. and Mrs. Mellish
come to me."
And, having shut up these haunted chambers, Mr. Floyd retired to
that snug little study in which he kept his few relics of the sorrowful
past.
It may be said that the Scottish banker was a very stupid old man,
and that he might have invited the county families to his gorgeous
mansion; that he might have summoned his nephews and their wives, with
all grand-nephews and nieces appertaining, and might thus have made the
place merry with the sound of fresh young voices, and the long
corridors noisy with the patter of restless little feet. He might have
lured literary and artistic celebrities to his lonely hearth-rug, and
paraded the lions of the London season upon his velvet-pile. He might
have entered the political arena, and have had himself nominated for
Beckenham, Croydon, or West Wickham. He might have done almost
anything; for he had very nearly as much money as Aladdin, and could
have carried dishes of uncut diamonds to the father of any princess
whom he might take it into his head to marry. He might have done almost
anything, this ridiculous old banker; yet he did nothing but sit
brooding over his lonely hearth—for he was old and feeble, and he sat
by the fire even in the bright summer weather—thinking of the daughter
who was far away.
He thanked God for her happy home, for her devoted husband, for her
secure and honorable position; and he would have given the last drop of
his blood to obtain for her these advantages; but he was, after all,
only mortal, and he would rather have had her by his side.
Why did he not surround himself with society, as brisk Mrs.
Alexander urged, when she found him looking pale and care-worn?
Why? Because society was not Aurora. Because all the brightest
bon-mots of all the literary celebrities who have ever walked this
earth seemed dull to him when compared with his daughter's idlest
babble. Literary lions! Political notabilities! Out upon them! When Sir
Edward Bulwer Lytton and Mr. Charles Dickens should call in Mr.
Makepeace Thackeray and Mr. Wilkie Collins to assist them in writing a
work, in fifteen volumes or so, about Aurora, the banker would be ready
to offer them a handsome sum for the copyright. Until then, he cared
very little for the best book in Mr. Mudie's collection. When the
members of the Legislature should bring their political knowledge to
bear upon Aurora, Mr. Archibald Floyd would be happy to listen to them.
In the interim, he would have yawned in Lord Palmerston's face, or
turned his back upon Earl Russell.
The banker had been a kind uncle, a good master, a warm friend, and
a generous patron; but he had never loved any creature except his wife
Eliza and the daughter she had left to his care. Life is not long
enough to hold many such attachments as these; and the people who love
very intensely are apt to concentrate the full force of their affection
upon one object. For twenty years this black-eyed girl had been the
idol before which the old man had knelt; and now that the divinity is
taken away from him, he falls prostrate and desolate before the empty
shrine. Heaven knows how bitterly this beloved child had made him
suffer, how deeply she had plunged the reckless dagger to the very
core of his loving heart, and how freely, gladly, tearfully, and
hopefully he had forgiven her. But she had never atoned for the past.
It is poor consolation which Lady Macbeth gives to her remorseful
husband when she tells him that "what's done can not be undone;" but it
is painfully and terribly true. Aurora could not restore the year which
she had taken out of her father's life, and which his anguish and
despair had multiplied by ten. She could not restore the equal balance
of the mind which had once experienced a shock so dreadful as to
shatter its serenity, as we shatter the mechanism of a watch when we
let it fall violently to the ground. The watchmaker patches up the
damage, and gives us a new wheel here, and a spring there, and sets the
hands going again, but they never go so smoothly as when the watch was
fresh from the hands of the maker, and they are apt to stop suddenly
with no shadow of warning. Aurora could not atone. Whatever the nature
of that girlish error which made the mystery of her life, it was not to
be undone. She could more easily have baled the ocean dry with a
soup-ladle—and I dare say she would gladly have gone to work to spoon
out the salt water if by so doing she could have undone that by-gone
mischief. But she could not; she could not! Her tears, her penitence,
her affection, her respect, her devotion could do much, but they could
not do this.
The old banker invited Talbot Bulstrode and his young wife to make
themselves at home at Felden, and drive down to the Woods as freely as
if the place had been some country mansion of their own. They came
sometimes, and Talbot entertained his great-uncle-in-law with the
troubles of the Cornish miners, while Lucy sat listening to her
husband's talk with unmitigated reverence and delight. Archibald Floyd
made his guests very welcome upon these occasions, and gave orders that
the oldest and costliest wines in the cellar should be brought out for
the captain's entertainment; but sometimes, in the very middle of
Talbot's discourse upon political economy, the old man would sigh
wearily, and look with a dimly-yearning gaze far away over the
tree-tops in a northward direction, toward that distant Yorkshire
household in which his daughter was the queen.
Perhaps Mr. Floyd had never quite forgiven Talbot Bulstrode for the
breaking off of the match between him and Aurora. The banker had,
certainly, of the two suitors, preferred John Mellish; but he would
have considered it only correct if Captain Bulstrode had retired from
the world upon the occasion of Aurora's marriage, and broken his heart
in foreign exile, rather than advertising his indifference by a union
with poor little Lucy. Archibald looked wonderingly at his fairhaired
niece as she sat before him in the deep bay-window, with the sunshine
upon her amber tresses and the crisp folds of her peach-colored silk
dress, looking for all the world like one of the painted heroines so
dear to the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, and marvelled how it was that
Talbot could have come to admire her. She was very pretty, certainly,
with pink cheeks, a white nose, and rose-colored nostrils, and a
species of beauty which consists in very careful finishing-off and
picking-out of the features; but oh, how tame, how cold, how weak,
beside that Egyptian goddess, that Assyrian queen with the flashing
eyes and the serpentine coils of purple-black hair!
Talbot Bulstrode was very calm, very quiet, but apparently
sufficiently happy. I use that word "sufficiently" advisedly. It is a
dangerous thing to be too happy. Your high-pressure happiness, your
sixty-miles-an-hour enjoyment, is apt to burst up and come to a hard
end. Better the quietest parliamentary train, which starts very early
in the morning, and carries its passengers safe into the terminus when
the shades of night come down, than that rabid, rushing express, which
does the journey in a quarter of the time, but occasionally topples
over a bank, or rides pickaback upon a luggage-train in its fiery
impetuosity.
Talbot Bulstrode was substantially happier with Lucy than he ever
could have been with Aurora. His fair young wife's undemonstrative
worship of him soothed and flattered him. Her gentle obedience, her
entire concurrence in his every thought and whim, set his pride at
rest. She was not eccentric, she was not impetuous. If he left her
alone all day in the snug little house in Half-Moon street which he had
furnished before his marriage, he had no fear of her calling for her
horse and scampering away into Rotten Row, with not so much as a groom
to attend upon her. She was not strong-minded. She could be happy
without the society of Newfoundlands and Skye terriers. She did not
prefer Landseer's dog-pictures above all other examples of modern art.
She might have walked down Regent street a hundred times without being
once tempted to loiter upon the curb-stone and bargain with
suspicious-looking merchants for a "noice leetle dawg." She was
altogether gentle and womanly, and Talbot had no fear to trust her to
her own sweet will, and no need to impress upon her the necessity of
lending her feeble little hands to the mighty task of sustaining the
dignity of the Raleigh Bulstrodes.
She would cling to him sometimes half lovingly, half timidly, and,
looking up with a pretty, deprecating smile into his coldly handsome
face, ask him, falteringly, if he was really, REALLY happy.
"Yes, my darling girl," the Cornish captain would answer, being very
well accustomed to the question, "decidedly, very happy."
His calm business- like tone would rather disappoint poor Lucy, and
she would vaguely wish that her husband had been a little more like the
heroes in the High-Church novels, and a little less devoted to Adam
Smith, McCulloch, and the Cornish mines.
"But you don't love me as you loved Aurora, Talbot?" (There were
profane people who corrupted the captain's Christian name into "Tal;"
but Mrs. Bulstrode was not more likely to avail herself of that
disrespectful abbreviation than she was to address her gracious
sovereign as "Vic.") "But you don't love me as you loved Aurora,
Talbot, dear?" the pleasing voice would urge, so tenderly anxious to be
contradicted.
"Not as I loved Aurora, perhaps, darling."
"Not as much?"
"As much and better, my pet; with a more enduring and a wiser love."
If this was a little bit of a fib when the captain first said it, is
he to be utterly condemned for the falsehood? How could he resist the
loving blue eyes so ready to fill with tears if he had answered coldly;
the softly pensive voice, tremulous with emotion; the earnest face; the
caressing hand laid so lightly upon his coat-collar? He must have been
more than moral had he given any but loving answers to those loving
questions. The day soon came when his answers were no longer tinged
with so much as the shadow of falsehood. His little wife crept
stealthily, almost imperceptibly into his heart; and if he remembered
the fever-dream of the past, it was only to rejoice in the tranquil
security of the present.
Talbot Bulstrode and his wife were staying at Felden Woods for a few
days during the burning July weather, and sat down to dinner with Mr.
Floyd upon the day succeeding the night of the storm. They were
disturbed in the very midst of that dinner by the unexpected arrival of
Mr. and Mrs. Mellish, who rattled up to the door in a hired vehicle,
just as the second course was being placed upon the table.
Archibald Floyd recognized the first murmur of his daughter's voice,
and ran out into the hall to welcome her.
She showed no eagerness to throw herself into her father's arms, but
stood looking at John Mellish with a weary, absent expression, while
the stalwart Yorkshireman allowed himself to be gradually disencumbered
of a chaotic load of travelling-bags, sun-umbrellas, shawls, magazines,
newspapers, and overcoats.
"My darling, my darling!" exclaimed the banker, "what a happy
surprise, what an unexpected pleasure!"
She did not answer him, but, with her arms about his neck, looked
mournfully into his face.
"She would come," said Mr. John Mellish, addressing himself
generally; "she would come. The doose knows why! But she said she must
come, and what could I do but bring her? If she asked me to take her to
the moon, what could I do but take her? But she would n't bring any
luggage to speak of, because we're going back to-morrow."
"Going back to-morrow!" repeated Mr. Floyd; "impossible."
"Bless your heart!" cried John, "what's impossible to Lolly? If she
wanted to go to the moon, she'd go, don't I tell you? She'd have a
special engine, or a special balloon, or a special something or other,
and she'd go. When we were in Paris she wanted to see the big fountains
play, and she told me to write to the emperor and ask him to have them
set going for her. She did, by Jove!"
Lucy Bulstrode came forward to bid her cousin welcome; but I fear
that a sharp, jealous pang thrilled through that innocent heart at the
thought that those fatal black eyes were again brought to bear upon
Talbot's life.
Mrs. Mellish put her arms about her cousin as tenderly as if she had
been embracing a child.
"You here, dearest Lucy!" she said. "I am so very glad."
"He loves me," whispered little Mrs. Bulstrode, "and I never, never
can tell you how good he is."
"Of course not, my darling," answered Aurora, drawing her cousin
aside while Mr. Mellish shook hands with his father-in-law and Talbot
Bulstrode. "He is the most glorious of princes, the most perfect of
saints, is he not? and you worship him all day; you sing silent hymns
in his praise, and perform high mass in his honor, and go about telling
his virtues upon an imaginary rosary. Ah! Lucy, how many kinds of love
there are; and who shall say which is the best or highest? I see plain,
blundering John Mellish yonder with unprejudiced eyes; I know his every
fault, I laugh at his every awkwardness. Yes, I laugh now, for he is
dropping those things faster than the servants can pick them up."
She stopped to point to poor John's chaotic burden.
"I see all this as plainly as I see the deficiencies of the servant
who stands behind my chair; and yet I love him with all my heart and
soul, and I would not have one fault corrected, or one virtue
exaggerated, for fear it should make him different to what he is."
Lucy Bulstrode gave a little half-resigned sigh.
"What a blessing that my poor cousin is happy," she thought; "and
yet how can she be otherwise than miserable with that absurd John
Mellish?"
What Lucy meant perhaps was this. How could Aurora be otherwise than
wretched in the companionship of a gentleman who had neither a straight
nose nor dark hair. Some women never outlive that school-girl
infatuation for straight noses and dark hair. Some girls would have
rejected Napoleon the Great because he was n't "tall," or would have
turned up their noses at the author of Childe Harold if they had
happened to see him in a stand-up collar. If Lord Byron had never
turned down his collars, would his poetry have been as popular as it
was. If Mr. Alfred Tennyson were to cut his hair, would that operation
modify our opinion of The Queen of the May? Where does that
marvellous power of association begin and end? Perhaps there may have
been a reason for Aurora's contentment with her commonplace prosaic
husband. Perhaps she had learned at a very early period of her life
that there are qualities even more valuable than exquisitely modelled
features or clustering locks. Perhaps, having begun to be foolish very
early, she had outstripped her contemporaries in the race, and had
early learned to be wise.
Archibald Floyd led his daughter and her husband into the
dining-room, and the dinner-party sat down against with the two
unexpected guests, and the second course was served, and the lukewarm
salmon brought in again for Mr. and Mrs. Mellish.
Aurora sat in her old place on her father's right hand. In the old
girlish days Miss Floyd had never occupied the bottom of the table, but
had loved best to sit close to that foolishly doting parent, pouring
out his wine for him in defiance of the servants, and doing other
loving offices which were deliciously inconvenient to the old man.
To-day Aurora seemed especially affectionate. That fondly clinging
manner had all its ancient charm to the banker. He put down his glass
with a tremulous hand to gaze at his darling child, and was dazzled
with her beauty, and drunken with the happiness of having her near him.
"But, my darling," he said, by and by, "what do you mean by talking
about going back to Yorkshire to-morrow?"
"Nothing, papa, except that I must go," answered Mrs.
Mellish, determinedly.
"But why come, dear, if you could only stop one night?"
"Because I wanted to see you, dearest father, and to talk to you
about—about money matters."
"That's it," exclaimed John Mellish, with his mouth half full of
salmon and lobster-sauce. "That's it! Money matters! That's all I can
get out of her. She goes out late last night, and roams about the
garden, and comes in wet through and through, and say she must come to
London about money matters. What should she want with money matters? If
she wants money, she can have as much as she wants. She shall write the
figures, and I'll sign the check; or she shall have a dozen blank
checks to fill in just as she pleases. What is there upon this earth
that I'd refuse her? If she dipped a little too deep, and put more
money than she could afford upon the bay filly, why does n't she come
to me, instead of bothering you about money matters? You know I said
so in the train, Aurora, ever so many times. Why bother your poor papa
about it?"
The poor papa looked wonderingly from his daughter to his daughter's
husband. What did it all mean? Trouble, vexation, weariness of spirit,
humiliation, disgrace?
Ah! Heaven help that enfeebled mind whose strength has been
shattered by one great shock. Archibald Floyd dreaded the token of a
coming storm in every chance cloud on the summer's sky.
"Perhaps I may prefer to spend my own money, Mr. John
Mellish," answered Aurora, "and pay any foolish bets I have chosen to
make out of my own purse, without being under an obligation to
any one."
Mr. Mellish returned to his salmon in silence.
"There is no occasion for a great mystery, papa," resumed Aurora; "I
want some money for a particular purpose, and I have come to consult
with you about my affairs. There is nothing very extraordinary in that,
I suppose?"
Mrs. John Mellish tossed her head, and flung this sentence at the
assembly as if it had been a challenge. Her manner was so defiant that
even Talbot and Lucy felt called upon to respond with a gentle
dissenting murmur.
"No, no, of course not; nothing more natural," muttered the captain;
but he was thinking all the time, "Thank God I married the other one."
After dinner the little party strolled out of the drawing-room
windows on to the lawn, and away toward that iron bridge upon which
Aurora had stood, with her dog by her side, less than two years ago, on
the occasion of Talbot Bulstrode's second visit to Felden Woods.
Lingering upon that bridge on this tranquil summer's evening, what
could the captain do but think of that September day, barely two years
agone? Barely two years! not two years! And how much had been done, and
thought, and suffered since! How contemptible was the narrow space of
time! yet what terrible eternities of anguish, what centuries of
heart-break, had been compressed into that pitiful sum of days and
weeks! When the fraudulent partner in some house of business puts the
money which is not his own upon a Derby favorite, and goes home at
night a loser, it is strangely difficult for that wretched defaulter to
believe that it is not twelve hours since he travelled the road to
Epsom confident of success, and calculating how he should invest his
winnings. Talbot Bulstrode was very silent, thinking of the influence
which this family of Felden Woods had had upon his destiny. His little
Lucy saw that silence and thoughtfulness, and, stealing softly to her
husband, linked her arm in his. She had a right to do it now—yes, to
pass her little soft white hand under his coat sleeve, and even look
up, almost boldly, in his face.
"Do you remember when you first came to Felden, and we stood upon
this very bridge?" she asked; for she too had been thinking of that
far-away time in the bright September of '57. "Do you remember, Talbot,
dear?"
She had drawn him away from the banker and his children in order to
ask this all-important question.
"Yes, perfectly, darling. As well as I remember your graceful figure
seated at the piano in the long drawing-room, with the sunshine on your
hair."
"You remember that! you remember me!" exclaimed Lucy,
rapturously.
"Very well, indeed."
"But I thought—that is, I know—that you were in love with Aurora
then."
"I think not."
"You only think not."
"How can I tell!" cried Talbot. "I freely confess that my first
recollection connected with this place is of a gorgeous black-eyed
creature, with scarlet in her hair; and I can no more disassociate her
image from Felden Woods than I can, with my bare right hand, pluck up
the trees which give the place its name. But if you entertain one
distrustful thought of that pale shadow of the past, you do yourself
and me a grievous wrong. I made a mistake, Lucy; but, thank Heaven, I
saw it in time."
It is to be observed that Captain Bulstrode was always peculiarly
demonstrative in his gratitude to Providence for his escape from the
bonds which were to have united him to Aurora. He also made a great
point of the benign compassion in which he heldJohn Mellish. But, in
despite of this, he was apt to be rather captious and quarrelsomely
disposed toward the Yorkshireman; and I doubt if John's little
stupidities and weaknesses were, on the whole, very displeasing to him.
There are some wounds which never heal. The jagged flesh may reunite;
cooling medicines may subdue the inflammation; even the scar left by
the dagger-thrust may wear away, until it disappears in that gradual
transformation which every atom of us is supposed by physiologists to
undergo; but the wound has been, and to the last hour of our
lives there are unfavorable winds which can make us wince with the old
pain.
Aurora treated her cousin's husband with the calm cordiality which
she might have felt for a brother. She bore no grudge against him for
the old desertion, for she was happy with her husband—happy with the
man who loved and believed in her, surviving every trial of his simple
faith. Mrs. Mellish and Lucy wandered among the flower-beds by the
waterside, leaving the gentlemen on the bridge.
"So you are very, very happy, my Lucy?" said Aurora.
"Oh, yes, yes, dear. How could I be otherwise. Talbot is so good to
me. I know, of course, that he loved you first, and that he does n't
love me quite—in the same way, you know—perhaps, in fact—not as
much." Lucy Bulstrode was never tired of harping on this unfortunate
minor string. "But I am very happy. You must come and see us, Aurora,
dear. Our house is so pretty!"
Mrs. Bulstrode hereupon entered into a detailed description of the
furniture and decorations in Half-Moon street, which is perhaps
scarcely worthy of record. Aurora listened rather absently to the long
catalogue of upholstery, and yawned several times before her cousin had
finished.
"It's a very pretty house, I dare say, Lucy," she said at last, "and
John and I will be very glad to come and see you some day. I wonder,
Lucy, if I were to come in any trouble or disgrace to your door,
whether you would turn me away?"
"Trouble! disgrace!" repeated Lucy, looking frightened.
"You would n't turn me away, Lucy, would you? No; I know you better
than that. You'd let me in secretly, and hide me away in one of the
servants' bedrooms, and bring me food by stealth, for fear the captain
should discover the forbidden guest beneath his roof. You'd serve two
masters, Lucy, in fear and trembling."
Before Mrs. Bulstrode could make any answer to this extraordinary
speech, the approach of the gentlemen interrupted the feminine
conference.
It was scarcely a lively evening, this July sunset at Felden Woods.
Archibald Floyd's gladness in his daughter's presence was something
damped by the peculiarity of her visit; John Mellish had some shadowy
remnants of the previous night's disquietude hanging about him; Talbot
Bulstrode was thoughtful and moody; and poor little Lucy was tortured
by vague fears of her brilliant cousin's influence. I don't suppose
that any member of that "attenuated" assembly felt very much regret
when the great clock in the stable-yard struck eleven, and the jingling
bedroom candlesticks were brought into the room.
Talbot and his wife were the first to say good-night. Aurora
lingered at her father's side, and John Mellish looked doubtfully at
his dashing white sergeant, waiting to receive the word of command.
"You may go, John," she said; "I want to speak to papa."
"But I can wait, Lolly."
"On no account," answered Mrs. Mellish, sharply. "I am going into
papa's study to have a quiet confabulation with him. What end would be
gained by your waiting? you've been yawning in our faces all the
evening. You're tired to death, I know, John; so go at once, my
precious pet, and leave papa and me to discuss our money matters." She
pouted her rosy lips, and stood upon tiptoe, while the big Yorkshireman
kissed her.
"How you do henpeck me, Lolly!" he said, rather sheepishly.
"Good-night, sir. God bless you! Take care of my darling."
He shook hands with Mr. Floyd, parting from him with that
half-affectionate, half-reverent manner which he always displayed to
Aurora's father. Mrs. Mellish stood for some moments silent and
motionless, looking after her husband, while her father, watching her
looks, tried to read their meaning.
How quiet are the tragedies of real life! That dreadful scene
between the Moor and his Ancient takes place in the open street of
Cyprus. According to modern usage, I can not fancy Othello and Iago
debating about poor Desdemona's honesty in St. Paul's churchyard, or
even in the market-place of a country town; but perhaps the Cyprus
street was a dull one, a cul-de-sac, it may be, or at least a
deserted thoroughfare, something like that in which Monsieur Melnotte
falls upon the shoulder of General Damas and sobs out his lamentations.
But our modern tragedies seem to occur in-doors, and in places where we
should least look for scenes of horror. Even while I write this the
London flaneursare staring all agape at a shop-window in a
crowded street as if every pitiful feather, every poor shred of ribbon
in that milliner's window had a mystical association with the terrors
of a room up stairs. But to the ignorant passers-by how commonplace the
spot must seem; how remote in its every-day associations from the
terrors of life's tragedy!
Any chance traveller driving from Beckenham to West Wickham would
have looked, perhaps enviously, at the Felden mansion, and sighed to be
lord of that fair expanse of park and garden; yet I doubt if in the
county of Kent there was any creature more disturbed in mind than
Archibald Floyd, the banker. Those few moments during which Aurora
stood in thoughtful silence were as so many hours to his anxious mind.
At last she spoke.
"Will you come to the study, papa?" she said; "this room is so big,
and so dimly lighted, I always fancy there are listeners in the
corners."
She did not wait for an answer, but led the way to a room upon the
other side of the hall—the room in which she and her father had been
so long closeted together upon the night before her departure for
Paris. The crayon portrait of Eliza Floyd looked down upon Archibald
and his daughter. The face wore so bright and genial a smile that it
was difficult to believe it was the face of the dead.
The banker was the first to speak.
"My darling girl," he said, "what is it you want of me?"
"Money, papa. Two thousand pounds."
She checked his gesture of surprise, and resumed before he could
interrupt her:
"The money you settled upon me on my marriage with John Mellish is
invested in our own bank, I know. I know, too, that I can draw upon my
account when and how I please; but I thought that if I wrote a check
for two thousand pounds the unusual amount might attract attention, and
it might possibly fall into your hands. Had this occurred, you would
perhaps have been alarmed, at any rate astonished. I thought it best,
therefore, to come to you myself and ask you for the money, especially
as I must have it in notes."
Archibald Floyd grew very pale. He had been standing while Aurora
spoke, but as she finished he dropped into a chair near his little
office-table, and, resting his elbow upon an open desk, leaned his head
on his hand.
"What do you want the money for, my dear?" he asked, gravely.
"Never mind what, papa. It is my own money, is it not, and I may
spend it as I please?"
"Certainly, my dear, certainly," he answered, with some slight
hesitation. "You shall spend whatever you please. I am rich enough to
indulge any whim of yours, however foolish, however extravagant. But
your marriage settlement was rather intended for the benefit of your
children—than—than for—anything of this kind, and I scarcely know if
you are justified in touching it without your husband's permission,
especially as your pin-money is really large enough to enable you to
gratify any reasonable wish."
The old man pushed his gray hair away from his forehead with a weary
action and a tremulous hand. Heaven knows that even in that desperate
moment Aurora took notice of the feeble hand and the whitening hair.
"Give me the money, then, papa," she said. "Give it me from
your own purse. You are rich enough to do that."
"Rich enough! Yes, if it were twenty times the sum," answered the
banker, slowly. Then, with a sudden burst of passion, he exclaimed,
"Oh, Aurora, Aurora, why do you treat me so badly? Have I been so cruel
a father that you can't confide in me. Aurora, why do you want this
money?"
She clasped her hands tightly together, and stood looking at him for
a few moments irresolutely.
"I can not tell you," she said, with grave determination. "If I were
to tell you—what—what I think of doing, you might thwart me in my
purpose. Father! father!" she cried, with a sudden change in her voice
and manner, "I am hemmed in on every side by difficulty and danger, and
there is only one way of escape—except death. Unless I take that one
way, I must die. I am very young—too young and happy, perhaps, to die
willingly. Give me the means of escape."
"You mean this sum of money?"
"Yes."
"You have been pestered by some connection—some old associate
of—his?"
"No."
"What then?"
"I can not tell you."
They were silent for some moments. Archibald Floyd looked
imploringly at his child, but she did not answer that earnest gaze. She
stood before him with a proudly downcast look; the eyelids drooping
over the dark eyes, not in shame, not in humiliation, only in the stern
determination to avoid being subdued by the sight of her father's
distress.
"Aurora," he said at last, "why not take the wisest and the safest
step? Why not tell John Mellish the truth? The danger would disappear;
the difficulty would be overcome. If you are persecuted by this low
rabble, who so fit as he to act for you? Tell him, Aurora—tell him
all!"
"No, no, no!"
She lifted her hands, and clasped them upon her pale face.
"No, no; not for all this wide world!" she cried.
"Aurora," said Archibald Floyd, with a gathering sternness upon his
face, which overspread the old man's benevolent countenance like some
dark cloud, "Aurora—God forgive me for saying such words to my own
child—but I must insist upon your telling me that this is no new
infatuation, no new madness, which leads you to—" He was unable to
finish his sentence.
Mrs. Mellish dropped her hands from before her face, and looked at
him with her eyes flashing fire, and her cheeks in a crimson blaze.
"Father," she cried, "how dare you ask me such a question? New
infatuation! New madness! Have I suffered so little, do you think, from
the folly of my youth? Have I paid so small a price for the mistake of
my girlhood that you should have cause to say these words to me
to-night? Do I come of so bad a race," she said, pointing indignantly
to her mother's portrait, "that you should think so vilely of me? Do
I—"
Her tragical appeal was rising to its climax, when she dropped
suddenly at her father's feet, and burst into a tempest of sobs.
"Papa, papa, pity me," she cried, "pity me!"
He raised her in his arms, and drew her to him, and comforted her,
as he had comforted her for the loss of a Scotch terrier-pup twelve
years before, when she was small enough to sit on his knee, and nestle
her head in his waistcoat.
"Pity you, my dear!" he said. "What is there I would not do for you
to save you one moment's sorrow? If my worthless life could help you;
if—"
"You will give me the money, papa?" she asked, looking up at him
half coaxingly through her tears.
"Yes, my darling, to-morrow morning."
"In bank-notes?"
"In any manner you please. But, Aurora, why see these people? Why
listen to their disgraceful demands? Why not tell the truth?"
"Ah! why, indeed!" she said, thoughtfully. "Ask me no questions,
dear papa, but let me have the money to-morrow, and I promise you that
this shall be the very last you hear of my old troubles."
She made this promise with such perfect confidence that her father
was inspired with a faint ray of hope.
"Come, darling papa," she said, "your room is near mine; let us go
up stairs together."
She entwined her arms in his, and led him up the broad staircase,
only parting from him at the door of his room.
Mr. Floyd summoned his daughter into the study early the next
morning, while Talbot Bulstrode was opening his letters, and Lucy
strolling up and down the terrace with John Mellish.
"I have telegraphed for the money, my darling," the banker said.
"One of the clerks will be here with it by the time we have finished
breakfast."
Mr. Floyd was right. A card inscribed with the name of a Mr. George
Martin was brought to him during breakfast.
"Mr. Martin will be good enough to wait in my study," he said.
Aurora and her father found the clerk seated at the open window,
looking admiringly through festoons of foliage, which clustered round
the frame of the lattice, into the richly-cultivated garden. Felden
Woods was a sacred spot in the eyes of the junior clerks in Lombard
street, and a drive to Beckenham in a Hansom cab on a fine summer's
morning, to say nothing of such chance refreshment as pound-cake and
old Madeira, or cold fowl and Scotch ale, was considered no small treat.
Mr. George Martin, who was laboring under the temporary affliction
of being only nineteen years of age, rose in a confused flutter of
respect and surprise, and blushed very violently at sight of Mrs.
Mellish.
Aurora responded to his reverential salute with such a pleasant nod
as she might have bestowed upon the younger dogs in the stable-yard,
and seated herself opposite to him at the little table by the window.
It was such an excruciatingly narrow table that Aurora's muslin dress
rustled against the drab trowsers of the junior clerk as Mrs. Mellish
sat down.
The young man unlocked a little morocco pouch which he wore
suspended from a strap across his shoulder, and produced a roll of
crisp notes; so crisp, so white and new, that, in their unsullied
freshness, they looked more like notes on the Bank of Elegance than the
circulating medium of this busy, money-making nation.
"I have brought the cash for which you telegraphed, sir," said the
clerk.
"Very good, Mr. Martin," answered the banker. "Here is my check
ready written for you. The notes are—"
"Twenty fifties, twenty-five twenties, fifty tens," the clerk said,
glibly.
Mr. Floyd took the little bundle of tissue-paper, and counted the
notes with the professional rapidity which he still retained.
"Quite correct," he said, ringing the bell, which was speedily
answered by a simpering footman. "Give this gentleman some lunch. You
will find the Madeira very good," he added, kindly, turning to the
blushing junior; "it's a wine that is dying out, and by the time you're
my age, Mr. Martin, you won't be able to get such a glass as I can
offer you to-day. Good-morning."
Mr. George Martin clutched his hat nervously from the empty chair on
which he had placed it, knocked down a heap of papers with his elbow,
bowed, blushed, and stumbled out of the room, under convoy of the
simpering footman, who nourished a profound contempt for the young men
from the h'office.
"Now, my darling," said Mr. Floyd, "here is the money. Though, mind,
I protest against—"
"No, no, papa, not a word," she interrupted; "I thought that was all
settled last night."
He sighed, with the same weary sigh as on the night before, and,
seating himself at his desk, dipped a pen into the ink.
"What are you going to do, papa?"
"I'm only going to take the numbers of the notes."
"There is no occasion."
"There is always occasion to be business-like," said the old man,
firmly, as he checked the numbers of the notes one by one upon a sheet
of paper with rapid precision.
Aurora paced up and down the room impatiently while this operation
was going forward.
"How difficult it has been to me to get this money!" she exclaimed.
"If I had been the wife and daughter of two of the poorest men in
Christendom, I could scarcely have had more trouble about this two
thousand pounds. And now you keep me here while you number the notes,
not one of which is likely to be exchanged in this country."
"I learned to be business-like when I was very young, Aurora,"
answered Mr. Floyd, "and I have never been able to forget my old
habits."
He completed his task in defiance of his daughter's impatience, and
handed her the packet of notes when he had done.
"I will keep the list of numbers, my dear," he said. "If I were to
give it to you, you would most likely lose it."
He folded the sheet of paper, and put it in a drawer of his desk.
"Twenty years hence, Aurora," he said, "should I live so long, I
should be able to produce this paper, if it were wanted."
"Which it never will be, you dear methodical papa," answered Aurora.
"My troubles are ended now. Yes," she added, in a graver tone, "I pray
God that my troubles may be ended now."
She encircled her arms about her father's neck, and kissed him
tenderly.
"I must leave you, dearest, to-day," she said; "you must not ask me
why—you must ask me nothing. You must only love and trust me—as my
poor John trusts me—faithfully, hopefully, through everything."
CHAPTER XX.
CAPTAIN PRODDER.
While the Doncaster express was carrying Mr. and Mrs. Mellish
northward, another express journeyed from Liverpool to London with its
load of passengers.
Among these passengers there was a certain broad-shouldered and
rather bull-necked individual, who attracted considerable attention
during the journey, and was an object of some interest to his
fellow-travellers and the railway officials at the two or three
stations where the train stopped.
He was a man of about fifty years of age, but his years were worn
very lightly, and only recorded by some wandering streaks and patches
of gray among his thick blue-black stubble of hair. His complexion,
naturally dark, had become of such a bronzed and coppery tint by
perpetual exposure to meridian suns, tropical hot winds, the fiery
breath of the simoon, and the many other inconveniences attendant upon
an out-door life, as to cause him to be frequently mistaken for the
inhabitant of some one of those countries in which the complexion of
the natives fluctuates between burnt sienna, Indian red, and Vandyke
brown. But it was rarely long before he took an opportunity to rectify
this mistake, and to express that hearty contempt and aversion for all furriners which is natural to the unspoiled and unsophisticated
Briton.
Upon this particular occasion he had not been half an hour in the
society of his fellow-passengers before he had informed them that he
was a native of Liverpool, and the captain of a merchant vessel,
trading, in a manner of speaking, he said, everywhere; that he had run
away from his father and his home at a very early period of his life,
and had shifted for himself in different parts of the globe ever since;
that his Christian name was Samuel, and his surname Prodder, and that
his father had been, like himself, a captain in the merchant service.
He chewed so much tobacco, and drank so much fiery Jamaica rum from a
pocket-pistol in the intervals of his conversation, that the
first-class compartment in which he sat was odorous with the compound
perfume. But he was such a hearty, loud-spoken fellow, and there was
such a pleasant twinkle in his black eyes, that the passengers (with
the exception of one crusty old lady) treated him with great
good-humor, and listened very patiently to his talk.
"Chewin' a'n't smokin,' you know, is it?" he said, with a great
guffaw, as he cut himself a terrible block of Cavendish; "and railway
companies a'n't got any laws against that. They can put a fellow's pipe
out, but he can chew his quid in their faces; though I won't say which
is wust for their carpets, neither."
I am sorry to be compelled to confess that this brown-visaged
merchant-captain, who said wust and chewed Cavendish tobacco,
was uncle to Mrs. John Mellish, of Mellish Park; and that the motive
for this very journey was neither more nor less than his desire to
become acquainted with his niece.
He imparted this fact—as well as much other information relating to
himself, his tastes, habits, adventures, opinions, and sentiments—to
his travelling companions in the course of the journey.
"Do you know for why I'm going to London by this identical train?"
he asked generally, as the passengers settled themselves into their
places after taking refreshment at Rugby.
The gentlemen looked over their newspapers at the talkative sailor,
and a young lady looked up from her book, but nobody volunteered to
speculate an opinion upon the mainspring of Mr. Prodder's actions.
"I'll tell you for why," resumed the merchant-captain, addressing
the assembly as if in answer to their eager questioning. "I'm going to
see my niece, which I have never seen before. When I ran away from
father's ship, the Ventur'some, nigh upon forty years ago, and
went aboard the craft of a captain by the name of Mobley, which was a
good master to me for many a day, I had a little sister as I had left
behind at Liverpool, which was dearer to me than my life." He paused to
refresh himself with rather a demonstrative sip from the pocket-pistol.
"But if you," he continued generally, "if you had a
father that'd fetch you a clout of the head as soon as look at you, you'd run away, perhaps, and so did I. I took the opportunity to be
missin' one night as father was settin' sail from Yarmouth Harbor; and,
not settin' that wonderful store by me which some folks do by their
only sons, he shipped his anchor without stoppin' to ask many
questions, and left me hidin' in one of the little alleys which cut the
town of Yarmouth through and across like they cut the cakes they make
there. There was many in Yarmouth that knew me, and there was n't one
that did n't say, 'Sarve him right,' when they heard how I'd given
father the slip, and the next day Cap'en Mobley gave me a berth as
cabin-boy about the Mariar Anne."
Mr. Prodder again paused to partake of refreshment from his portable
spirit store, and this time politely handed the pocket-pistol to the
company.
"Now, perhaps you'll not believe me," he resumed, after his friendly
offer had been refused, and the wicker-covered vessel replaced in his
capacious pocket—"you won't perhaps believe me when I tell you, as I
tell you candid, that up to last Saturday week I never could find the
time nor the opportunity to go back to Liverpool, and ask after the
little sister that I'd left no higher than the kitchen-table, and that
had cried fit to break her poor little heart when I went away. But
whether you believe it or whether you don't, it's as true as gospel,"
cried the sailor, thumping his ponderous fist upon the padded elbow of
the compartment in which he sat; "it's as true as gospel. I've coasted
America, North and South. I've carried West-Indian goods to the East
Indies, and East-Indian goods to the West Indies. I've traded in
Norwegian goods between Norway and Hull. I've carried Sheffield goods
from Hull to South America. I've traded between all manner of countries
and all manner of docks; but somehow or other I've never had the time
to spare to go on shore at Liverpool, and find out the narrow little
street in which I left my sister Eliza, no higher than the table, more
than forty years ago, until last Saturday was a week. Last Saturday was
a week I touched at Liverpool with a cargo of furs and
poll-parrots—what you may call fancy goods; and I said to my mate, I
said, 'I'll tell you what I'll do, Jack; I'll go ashore and see my
little sister Eliza.' "
He paused once more, and a softening change came over the brightness
of his black eyes. This time he did not apply himself to the
pocket-pistol. This time he brushed the back of his brown hand across
his eye-lashes, and brought it away with a drop or two of moisture
glittering upon the bronzed skin. Even his voice was changed when he
continued, and had mellowed to a richer and more mournful depth, until
it very much resembled the melodious utterance which twenty-one years
before had assisted to render Miss Eliza Percival the popular tragedian
of the Preston and Bradford circuit.
"God forgive me," continued the sailor, in that altered voice; "but
throughout my voyages I'd never thought of my sister Eliza but in two
ways—sometimes one, sometimes t'other. One way of thinking of her, and
expecting to see her, was as the little sister that I'd left, not
altered by so much as one lock of her hair being changed from the
identical curl into which it was twisted the morning she cried and
clung about me on board the Ventur'some, having come aboard to
wish father and me good-by. Perhaps I oftenest thought of her in this
way. Anyhow, it was in this way, and no other, that I always saw her in
my dreams. The other way of thinking of her, and expectin' to see her,
was as a handsome, full-grown, buxom married woman, with a troop of
saucy children hanging on to her apron-string, and every one of 'em
askin' what Uncle Samuel had brought 'em from foreign parts. Of course
this fancy was the most rational of the two; but the other fancy, of
the little child with the long, black, curly hair, would come to me
very often, especially at night, when all was quiet aboard, and when I
took the wheel in a spell while the helmsman turned in. Lord bless you,
ladies and gentlemen, many a time of a starlight night, when we've been
in them latitudes where the stars are brighter than common. I've seen
the floating mists upon the water take the very shape of that light
figure of a little girl in a white pinafore, and come skipping toward
me across the waves. I don't mean that I've seen a ghost, you know, but
I mean that I could have seen one if I'd had the mind, and that I've
seen as much of a one as folks ever do see upon this earth—the ghosts
of their own memories and their own sorrows, mixed up with the mists of
the sea or the shadows of the trees wavin' back'ard and for'ard in the
moonlight, or a white curtain agen a window, or something of that sort.
Well, I was such a precious old fool with these fancies and
fantigs"—Mr. Samuel Prodder seemed rather to pride himself upon the
latter word, as something out of the common—"that when I went ashore
at Liverpool last Saturday was a week, I could n't keep my eyes off the
little girls in white pinafores as passed me by in the streets,
thinkin' to see my Eliza skippin' along, with her black curls flyin' in
the wind, and a bit of chalk, to play hop-scotch with, in her hand; so
I was obliged to say to myself, quite serious, 'Now, Samuel Prodder,
the little girl you're a lookin' for must be fifty years of age, if
she's a day, and it's more than likely that she's left off playin'
hop-scotch and wearin' white pinafores by this time.' If I had n't kept
repeatin' this, internally like, all the way I went, I should have
stopped half the little girls in Liverpool to ask 'em if their name was
Eliza, and if they'd ever had a brother as ran away and was lost. I had
only one thought of how to set about findin' her, and that was to walk
straight to the back street in which I remembered leavin' her forty
years before. I'd no thought that those forty years could make any more
change than to change her from a girl to a woman, and it seemed almost
strange to me that they could make as much change as that. There was
one thing I never thought of; and if my heart beat loud and quick when
I knocked at the little front door of the very identical house in which
we'd lodged, it was with nothing but hope and joy. The forty years that
had sent railways spinning all over England had n't made much
difference in the old house; it was forty years dirtier, perhaps, and
forty years shabbier, and it stood in the very heart of the town
instead of on the edge of the open country; but, exceptin' that, it was
pretty much the same; and I expected to see the same landlady come to
open the door, with the same dirty artificial flowers in her cap, and
the same old slippers down at heel scrapin' after her along the bit of
oil-cloth. It gave me a kind of a turn when I did n't see this
identical landlady, though she'd have been turned a hundred years old
if she'd been alive; and I might have prepared myself for the
disappointment if I'd thought of that, but I had n't; and when the door
was opened by a young woman with sandy hair, brushed backward as if
she'd been a Chinese, and no eyebrows to speak of, I did feel
disappointed. The young woman had a baby in her arms—a black-eyed
baby, with its eyes opened so wide that it seemed as if it had been
very much surprised with the look of things on first comin' into the
world, and had n't quite recovered itself yet; so I thought to myself,
as soon as I clapped eyes on the little one, why, as sure as a gun,
that's my sister Eliza's baby, and my sister Eliza's married, and lives
here still. But the young woman had never heard the name of Prodder,
and did n't think there was anybody in the neighborhood as ever had. I
felt my heart, which had been beatin' louder and quicker every minute,
stop all of a sudden when she said this, and seem to drop down like a
dead weight; but I thanked her for her civil answers to my questions,
and went on to the next house to inquire there. I might have saved
myself the trouble, for I made the same inquiries at every house on
each side of the street, going straight from door to door, till the
people thought I was a sea-farin' tax-gatherer; but nobody had ever
heard the name of Prodder, and the oldest inhabitant in the street had
n't lived there ten years. I was quite disheartened when I left the
neighborhood, which had once been so familiar, and which seemed so
strange, and small, and mean, and shabby now. I'd had so little thought
of failing to find Eliza in the very house in which I'd left her, that
I'd made no plans beyond. So I was brought to a dead stop; and I went
back to the tavern where I'd left my carpet-bag, and I had a chop
brought me for my dinner, and I sat with my knife and fork before me
thinkin' what I was to do next. When Eliza and I had parted, forty
years before, I remembered father leaving her in charge of a sister of
my mother's (my poor mother had been dead a year), and I thought to
myself, the only chance there is left for me now is to find Aunt Sarah."
By the time Mr. Prodder arrived at this stage of his narrative his
listeners had dropped off gradually, the gentlemen returning to their
newspapers, and the young lady to her book, until the merchant-captain
found himself reduced to communicate his adventures to one good-natured
looking young fellow, who seemed interested in the brown-faced sailor,
and encouraged him every now and then with an assenting nod or a
friendly "Ay, ay, to be sure."
"The only chance I can see, ses I," continued Mr. Prodder, "is to
find Aunt Sarah. I found Aunt Sarah. She'd been keepin' a shop in the
general line when I went away forty years ago, and she was keepin' the
same shop in the general line when I came back last Saturday week; and
there was the same fly-blown handbills of ships that was to sail
immediate, and that had sailed two years ago, accordin' to the date
upon the bills; and the same wooden sugar-loaves wrapped up in white
paper; and the same lattice-work gate, with a bell that rang as loud as
if it was meant to give the alarm to all Liverpool as well as to my
Aunt Sarah in the parlor behind the shop. The poor old soul was
standing behind the counter, serving two ounces of tea to a customer
when I went in. Forty years had made so much change in her that I
should n't have known her if I had n't known the shop. She wore black
curls upon her forehead, and a brooch like a brass butterfly in the
middle of the curls, where the parting ought to have been; and she wore
a beard; and the curls were false, but the beard was n't; and her voice
was very deep, and rather manly, and she seemed to me to have grown
manly altogether in the forty years that I'd been away. She tied up the
two ounces of tea, and then asked me what I pleased to want. I told her
that I was little Sam, and that I wanted my sister Eliza."
The merchant-captain paused and looked out of the window for upward
of five minutes before he resumed his story. When he did resume it, he
spoke in a very low voice, and in short, detached sentences, as if he
could n't trust himself with long ones, for fear he should break down
in the middle of them.
"Eliza had been dead one-and-twenty years. Aunt Sarah told me all
about it. She'd tried the artificial flower-makin', and she had n't
liked it. And she turned play-actress. And when she was nine-and-twenty
she'd married—she'd married a gentleman that had no end of money, and
she'd gone to live at a fine place somewhere in Kent. I've got the name
of it wrote down in my memorandum-book. But she'd been a good and
generous friend to Aunt Sarah; and Aunt Sarah was to have gone to Kent
to see her, and to stop all the summer with her. But while aunt was
getting ready to go for that very visit, my sister Eliza died, leaving
a daughter behind her, which is the niece that I'm going to see. I sat
down upon the three-legged wooden stool against the counter, and hid my
face in my hands; and I thought of the little girl that I'd seen
playin' at hopscotch forty years before, until I thought my heart would
burst; but I did n't shed a tear. Aunt Sarah took a big brooch out of
her collar, and showed me a ring of black hair behind a bit of glass,
with a gold frame round it. 'Mr. Floyd had this brooch made a purpose
for me,' she said; 'he has always been a liberal gentleman to me, and
he comes down to Liverpool once in two or three years, and takes tea
with me in yon back parlor; and I've no call to keep a shop, for he
allows me a handsome income; but I should die of the mopes if it was
n't for the business.' There was Eliza's name and the date of her death
engraved upon the back of the brooch. I tried to remember where I'd
been, and what I'd been doing that year. But I could n't, sir. All the
life that I looked back upon seemed muddled and mixed up, like a dream;
and I could only think of the little sister I'd said good-by to aboard
the Ventur'some forty years before. I got round by little and
little, and I was able half an hour afterward to listen to Aunt Sarah's
talk. She was nigh upon seventy, poor old soul, and she'd always been a
good one to talk. She asked me if it was n't a great thing for the
family that Eliza had made such a match; and if I was n't proud to
think that my niece was a young heiress, that spoke all manner of
languages, and rode in her own carriage; and if that ought n't to be a
consolation to me? But I told her that I'd rather have found my sister
married to the poorest man iu Liverpool, and alive and well, to bid me
welcome back to my native town. Aunt Sarah said if those were my
religious opinions, she did n't know what to say to me. And she showed
me a picture of Eliza's tomb in Beckenham church-yard, that had been
painted expressly for her by Mr. Floyd's orders. Floyd was the name of
Eliza's husband. And then she showed me a picture of Miss Floyd, the
heiress, at the age of ten, which was the image of Eliza, all but the
pinafore; and it's that very Miss Floyd that I'm going to see."
"And I dare say," said the kind listener, "that Miss Floyd will be
very much pleased to see her sailor uncle."
"Well, sir, I think she will," answered the captain. "I don't say it
from any pride I take in myself, Lord knows; for I know I'm a rough and
ready sort of a chap, that 'ud be no great ornament in a young lady's
drawing-room; but if Eliza's daughter's anything like Eliza, I know
what she'll say and what she'll do as well as if I see her saying it
and doing it. She'll clap her pretty little hands together, and she'll
clasp her arms round my neck, and she'll say, 'Lor, uncle, I am so
glad to see you.' And when I tell her that I was her mother's only
brother, and that me and her mother was very fond of one another,
she'll burst out a cryin', and she'll hide her pretty face upon my
shoulder, and she'll sob as if her dear little heart was going to break
for love of the mother that she never saw. That's what she'll do," said
Captain Prodder, "and I don't think the truest born lady that ever was
could do any better."
The good-natured traveller heard a good deal more from the captain
of his plans for going to Beckenham to claim his niece's affections, in
spite of all the fathers in the world.
"Mr. Floyd's a good man, I dare say, sir," he said; "but he's kept
his daughter apart from her aunt Sarah, and it's but likely he'll try
to keep her from me. But if he does, he'll find he's got a toughish
customer to deal with in Captain Samuel Prodder."
The merchant-captain reached Beckenham as the evening shadows were
deepening among the Felden oaks and beeches, and the long rays of red
sunshine fading slowly out in the low sky. He drove up to the old
red-brick mansion in a hired fly, and presented himself at the
hall-door just as Mr. Floyd was leaving the dining-room to finish the
evening in his lonely study.
The banker paused to glance with some slight surprise at the
loosely-clad, weather-beaten looking figure of the sailor, and
mechanically put his hand among the gold and silver in his pocket. He
thought the seafaring man had come to present some petition for himself
and his comrades. A life-boat was wanted somewhere on the Kentish
coast, perhaps, and this good-tempered looking, bronze-colored man had
come to collect funds for the charitable work.
He was thinking this, when, in reply to the town-bred footman's
question, the sailor uttered the name of Prodder; and in the one moment
of its utterance his thoughts flew back over one-and-twenty years, and
he was madly in love with a beautiful actress, who owned blushingly to
that plebeian cognomen. The banker's voice was faint and husky as he
turned to the captain and bade him welcome to Felden Woods.
"Step this way, Mr. Prodder," he said, pointing to the open door of
the study. "I am very glad to see you. I—I—have often heard of you.
You are my dead wife's runaway brother."
Even amid his sorrowful recollection of that brief happiness of the
past, some natural alloy of pride had its part, and he closed the
study-door carefully before he said this.
"God bless you, sir," he said, holding out his hand to the sailor.
"I see I am right. Your eyes are like Eliza's. You and yours will
always be welcome beneath my roof. Yes, Samuel Prodder—you see I know
your Christian name—and when I die you will find that you have not
been forgotten."
The captain thanked his brother-in-law heartily, and told him that
he neither asked nor wished for anything except permission to see his
niece, Aurora Floyd.
As he made this request, he looked toward the door of the little
room, evidently expecting that the heiress might enter at any moment.
He looked terribly disappointed when the banker told him that Aurora
was married, and lived near Doncaster; but that, if he had happened to
come ten hours earlier, he would have found her at Felden Woods.
Ah! who has not heard those common words? Who has not been told
that, if they had come sooner, or gone earlier, or hurried their pace,
or slackened it, or done something that they have not done, the whole
course of life would have been otherwise? Who has not looked back
regretfully at the past, which, differently fashioned, would have made
the present other than it is? We think it hard that we can not take the
fabric of our life to pieces, as a mantua-maker unpicks her work, and
make up the stuff another way. How much waste we might save in the
cloth, how much better a shape we might make the garment, if we only
had the right to use our scissors and needle again, and refashion the
past by the experience of the present.
"To think, now, that I should have been comin' yesterday!" exclaimed
the captain, "but put off my journey because it was a Friday! If I'd
only knowed!"
Of course, Captain Prodder, if you had only known what it was not
given you to know, you would, no doubt, have acted more prudently; and
so would many other people. If Mr. William Palmer had known that
detection was to dog the footsteps of crime, and the gallows to follow
at the heels of detection, he would most likely have hesitated long
before he mixed the strychnine pills for the friend whom, with cordial
voice, he was entreating to be of good cheer. If the speculators upon
this year's Derby had known that Caractacus was to be the winner, they
would scarcely have hazarded their money upon Buckstone and the
Marquis. We spend the best part of our lives in making mistakes, and
the poor remainder in reflecting how very easily we might have avoided
them.
Mr. Floyd explained, rather lamely perhaps, how it was that the
Liverpool spinster had never been informed of her grand-niece's
marriage with Mr. John Mellish; and the merchant-captain announced his
intention of starting for Doncaster early the next morning.
"Don't think that I want to intrude upon your daughter, sir," he
said, as if perfectly acquainted with the banker's nervous dread of
such a visit. "I know her station's high above me, though she's my own
sister's only child; and I make no doubt that those about her would be
ready enough to turn up their noses at a poor old salt that has been
tossed and tumbled about in every variety of weather for this forty
year. I only want to see her once in a way, and to hear her say,
perhaps, 'Lor, uncle, what a rum old chap you are!' There!" exclaimed
Samuel Prodder, suddenly, "I think, if I could only once hear her call
me uncle, I could go back to sea and die happy, though I never came
ashore again."
CHAPTER XXI.
"HE ONLY SAID I AM A-WEARY."
Mr. James Conyers found the long summer's day hang rather heavily
upon his hands at Mellish Park, in the society of the rheumatic
ex-trainer, the stable-boys, and Steeve Hargraves, the softy, and with
no literary resources except the last Saturday's Bell's Life,
and sundry flimsy sheets of shiny, slippery tissue-paper, forwarded
him by post from King Charles' Croft, in the busy town of Leeds.
He might have found plenty of work to do in the stables, perhaps, if
he had had a mind to do it; but after the night of the storm there was
a perceptible change in his manner, and the showy pretence of being
very busy, which he had made on his first arrival at the Park, was now
exchanged for a listless and undisguised dawdling and an unconcerned
indifference, which caused the old trainer to shake his gray head, and
mutter to his hangers-on that the new chap warn't up to mooch, and was
evidently too grand for his business.
Mr. James cared very little for the opinion of these simple
Yorkshiremen; and he yawned in their faces, and stifled them with his
cigar-smoke, with a dashing indifference that harmonized well with the
gorgeous tints of his complexion and the lustrous splendor of his lazy
eyes. He had taken the trouble to make himself very agreeable on the
day succeeding his arrival, and had distributed his hearty slaps on the
shoulder and friendly digs in the ribs right and left, until he had
slapped and dug himself into considerable popularity among the friendly
rustics, who were ready to be bewitched by his handsome face and flashy
manner. But after his interview with Mrs. Mellish in the cottage by the
north gates, he seemed to abandon all desire to please, and to grow
suddenly restless and discontented—so restless and so discontented
that he felt inclined even to quarrel with the unhappy softy, and led
his red-haired retainer a sufficiently uncomfortable life with his
whims and vagaries.
Stephen Hargraves bore this change in his new master's manner with
wonderful patience. Rather too patiently, perhaps; with that slow,
dogged, uncomplaining patience of those who keep something in reserve
as a set-off against present forbearance, and who invite rather than
avoid injury, rejoicing in anything which swells the great account, to
be squared in future storm and fury. The softy was a man who could
hoard his hatred and vengeance, hiding the bad passions away in the
dark corners of his poor shattered mind, and bringing them out in the
dead of the night to "kiss and talk to," as the Moor's wife kissed and
conversed with the strawberry-embroidered cambric. There must surely
have been very little "society" at Cyprus, or Mrs. Othello could
scarcely have been reduced to such insipid company.
However it might be, Steeve bore Mr. Conyers' careless insolence so
very meekly that the trainer laughed at his attendant for a
poor-spirited hound, whom a pair of flashing black eyes and a lady's
toy riding-whip could frighten out of the poor remnant of wit left in
his muddled brain. He said something to this effect when Steeve
displeased him once, in the course of the long, temper-trying summer's
day, and the softy turned away with something very like a chuckle of
savage pleasure in acknowledgment of the compliment. He was more
obsequious than ever after it, and was humbly thankful for the ends of
cigars which the trainer liberally bestowed upon him, and went into
Doncaster for more spirits and more cigars in the course of the day,
and fetched and carried as submissively as that craven-spirited hound
to which his employer had politely compared him.
Mr. Conyers did not even make a pretence of going to look at the
horses on this blazing 5th of July, but lolled on the window-sill, with
his lame leg upon a chair, and his back against the frame-work of the
little casement, smoking, drinking, and reading his price-lists all
through the sunny day. The cold brandy and water which he poured,
without half an hour's intermission, down his handsome throat, seemed
to have far less influence upon him than the same amount of liquid
would have had upon a horse. It would have put the horse out of
condition, perhaps, but it had no effect whatever upon the trainer.
Mrs. Powell, walking for the benefit of her health, in the north
shrubberies, and incurring imminent danger of a sun-stroke for the same
praiseworthy reason, contrived to pass the lodge, and to see Mr.
Conyers lounging, dark and splendid, on the window-sill, exhibiting a
kitcat of his handsome person framed in the clustering foliage which
hung about the cottage walls. She was rather embarrassed by the
presence of the softy, who was sweeping the door-step, and who gave her
a glance of recognition as she passed—a glance which might perhaps
have said, "We know his secrets, you and I, handsome and insolent as he
is; we know the paltry price at which he can be bought and sold. But we
keep our counsel—we keep our counsel till time ripens the bitter fruit
upon the tree, though our fingers itch to pluck it while it is still
green."
Mrs. Powell stopped to give the trainer good-day, expressing as much
surprise at seeing him at the north lodge as if she had been given to
understand that he was travelling to Kamtchatka; but Mr. Conyers cut
her civilities short with a yawn, and told her, with easy familiarity,
that she would be conferring a favor upon him by sending him that
morning's Times as soon as the daily papers arrived at the Park.
The ensign's widow was too much under the influence of the graceful
impertinence of his manner to resist it as she might have done, and
returned to the house, bewildered and wondering, to comply with his
request. So through the oppressive heat of the summer's day the trainer
smoked, drank, and took his ease, while his dependent and follower
watched him with a puzzled face, revolving vaguely and confusedly in
his dull, muddled brain the events of the previous night.
But Mr. James Conyers grew weary at last even of his own ease; and
that inherent restlessness which caused Rasselas to tire of his happy
valley, and sicken for the free breezes on the hill-tops and the clamor
of the distant cities, arose in the bosom of the trainer, and grew so
strong that he began to chafe at the rural quiet of the north lodge,
and to shuffle his poor lame leg wearily from one position to another
in sheer discontent of mind, which, by one of those many subtle links
between spirit and matter that tell us we are mortal, communicated
itself to his body, and gave him that chronic disorder which is
popularly called "the fidgets"—an unquiet fever, generated amid the
fibres of the brain, and finding its way by that physiological
telegraph, the spinal marrow, to the remotest station on the human
railway.
Mr. James suffered from this common complaint to such a degree that,
as the solemn strokes of the church clock vibrated in sonorous music
above the tree-tops of Mellish Park in the sunny evening atmosphere, he
threw down his pipe with an impatient shrug of the shoulders, and
called to the softy to bring him his hat and walking-stick.
"Seven o'clock," he muttered; "only seven o'clock. I think there
must have been twenty-four hours in this blessed summer's day."
He stood looking from the little casement window with a discontented
frown contracting his handsome eyebrows, and a peevish expression
distorting his full, classically-moulded lips as he said this. He
glanced through the little casement, made smaller by its clustering
frame of roses and clematis, jessamine and myrtle, and looking like the
port-hole of a ship that sailed upon a sea of summer verdure. He
glanced through the circular opening left by that scented frame-work of
leaves and blossoms into the long glades, where the low sunlight was
flickering upon waving fringes of fern. He followed with his listless
glance the wandering intricacies of the underwood, until they led his
weary eyes away to distant patches of blue water, slowly changing to
opal and rose-color in the declining light. He saw all these things
with a lazy apathy, which had no power to recognize their beauty, or to
inspire one latent thrill of gratitude to Him who had made them. He had
better have been blind; surely he had better have been blind.
He turned his back upon the evening sunshine, and looked at the
white face of Steeve Hargraves, the softy, with every whit as much
pleasure as he had felt in looking at Nature in her loveliest aspect.
"A long day," he said; "an infernally tedious, wearisome day. Thank
God, it's over."
Strange that, as he uttered this impious thanksgiving, no subtle
influence of the future crept through his veins to chill the slackening
pulses of his heart, and freeze the idle words upon his lips. If he had
known what was so soon to come; if he had known, as he thanked God for
the death of one beautiful summer's day, never to be born again, with
its twelve hours of opportunity for good or evil, surely he would have
grovelled on the earth, stricken with a sudden terror, and wept aloud
for the shameful history of the life which lay behind him.
He had never shed tears but once since his childhood, and then those
tears were scalding drops of baffled rage and vengeful fury at the
utter defeat of the greatest scheme of his life.
"I shall go into Doncaster to-night, Hargraves," he said to the
softy, who stood deferentially awaiting his master's pleasure, and
watching him, as he had watched him all day, furtively but incessantly;
"I shall spend the evening in Doncaster, and—and—see if I can pick up
a few wrinkles about the September meeting; not that there's anything
worth entering among this set of screws, Lord knows," he added, with
undisguised contempt for poor John's beloved stable. "Is there a
dog-cart, or a trap of any kind, I can drive over in?" he asked of the
softy.
Mr. Hargraves said that there was a Newport Pagnell, which was
sacred to Mr. John Mellish, and a gig that was at the disposal of any
of the upper servants when they had occasion to go into Doncaster, as
well as a covered van, which some of the lads drove into the town every
day for the groceries and other matters required at the house.
"Very good," said Mr. Conyers; "you may run down to the stables, and
tell one of the boys to put the fastest pony of the lot into the
Newport Pagnell, and to bring it up here, and to look sharp."
"But nobody but Muster Mellish rides in the Newport Pagnell,"
suggested the softy, with an accent of alarm.
"What of that, you cowardly hound?" cried the trainer,
contemptuously. "I'm going to drive it to-night, don't you hear? D—n
his Yorkshire insolence! Am I to be put down by him? It's his
handsome wife that he takes such pride in, is it? Lord help him! Whose
money bought the dog-cart, I wonder? Aurora Floyd's, perhaps. And I'm
not to ride in it, I suppose, because it's my lord's pleasure to drive
his black-eyed lady in the sacred vehicle. Look you here, you brainless
idiot, and understand me, if you can," cried Mr. James Conyers, in a
sudden rage, which crimsoned his handsome face, and lit up his lazy
eyes with a new fire—"look you here, Stephen Hargraves; if it was n't
that I'm tied hand and foot, and have been plotted against and thwarted
by a woman's cunning at every turn, I could smoke my pipe in yonder
house, or in a better house this day."
He pointed with his finger to the pinnacled roof, and the reddened
windows glittering in the evening sun, visible far away among the trees.
"Mr. John Mellish!" he said. "If his wife was n't such a she-devil
as to be too many guns for the cleverest man in Christendom, I'd soon
make him sing small. Fetch the Newport Pagnell," he cried,
suddenly, with an abrupt change of tone; "fetch it, and be quick. I'm
not safe to myself when I talk of this. I'm not safe when I think how
near I was to half a million of money," he muttered under his breath.
He limped out into the open air, fanning himself with the wide brim
of his felt hat, and wiping the perspiration from his forehead.
"Be quick," he cried, impatiently, to his deliberate attendant, who
had listened eagerly to every word of his master's passionate talk, and
who now stood watching him even more intently than before; "be quick,
man, can't you? I don't pay you five shillings a week to stare at me.
Fetch the trap. I've worked myself into a fever, and nothing but a
rattling drive will set me right again."
The softy shuffled off as rapidly as it was within the range of his
ability to walk. He had never been seen to run in his life, but had a
slow, sidelong gait, which had some faint resemblance to that of the
lower reptiles, but very little in common with the motions of his
fellow-men.
Mr. James Conyers limped up and down the little grassy lawn in front
of the north lodge. The excitement which had crimsoned his face
gradually subsided as he vented his disquietude in occasional impatient
exclamations. "Two thousand pound," he muttered; "a pitiful, paltry two
thousand. Not a twelvemonth's interest on the money I ought to have
had—the money I should have had, if—"
He stopped abruptly, and growled something like an oath between his
set teeth as he struck his stick with angry violence into the soft
grass. It is especially hard when we are reviling our bad fortune, and
quarrelling with our fate, to find at last, on wandering backward to
the source of our ill luck, that the primary cause of all has been our
own evil-doing. It was this that made Mr. Conyers stop abruptly in his
reflections upon his misfortunes, and break off with a smothered oath,
and listen impatiently for the wheels of the Newport Pagnell.
The softy appeared presently, leading the horse by the bridle. He
had not presumed to seat himself in the sacred vehicle, and he stared
wonderingly at James Conyers as the trainer tumbled about the
chocolate-cloth cushions, arranging them afresh for his own ease and
comfort. Neither the bright varnish of the dark brown panels, nor the
crimson crest, nor the glittering steel ornaments on the neat harness,
nor any of the exquisitely finished appointments of the light vehicle,
provoked one word of criticism from Mr. Conyers. He mounted as easily
as his lame leg would allow him, and, taking the reins from the softy,
lighted his cigar, preparatory to starting.
"You need n't sit up for me to-night," he said, as he drove into the
dusty high-road; "I shall be late."
Mr. Hargraves shut the iron gates with a loud clanking noise upon
his new master.
"But I shall, though," he muttered, looking askant through the bars
at the fast-disappearing Newport Pagnell, which was now little more
than a black spot in a white cloud of dust; "but I shall sit up,
though. You'll come home drunk, I lay." (Yorkshire is so preeminently a
horse-racing and betting county, that even simple country folk who have
never wagered a sixpence in the quiet course of their lives say "I lay"
where a Londoner would say "I dare say.") "You'll come home drunk, I
lay; folks generally do from Doncaster; and I shall hear some more of
your wild talk. Yes, yes," he said, in a slow, reflecting tone, "it's
very wild talk, and I can't make top nor tail of it yet—not yet; but
it seems to me somehow as if I knew what it all meant, only I can't put
it together—I can't put it together. There's something missin', and
the want of that something hinders me putting it together."
He rubbed his stubble of coarse red hair with his two strong,
awkward hands, as if he would fain have rubbed some wanting
intelligence into his head.
"Two thousand pound," he said, walking slowly back to the
cottage—"two thousand pound. It's a power of money. Why it's two
thousand pound that the winner gets by the great race at Newmarket, and
there's all the gentlefolks ready to give their ears for it. There's
great lords fighting and struggling against each other for it; so it's
no wonder a poor fond chap like me thinks summat about it."
He sat down upon the step of the lodge-door to smoke the cigar-ends
which his benefactor had thrown him in the course of the day; but he
still ruminated upon this subject, and he still stopped sometimes,
between the extinction of one cheroot stump and the illuminating of
another, to mutter, "Two thousand pound. Twenty hundred pound. Forty
times fifty pound," with an unctuous chuckle after the enunciation of
each figure, as if it was some privilege even to be able to talk of
such vast sums of money. So might some doting lover, in the absence of
his idol, murmur the beloved name to the summer breeze.
The last crimson lights upon the patches of blue water died out
beneath the gathering darkness; but the softy sat, still smoking, and
still ruminating, till the stars were light in the purple vault above
his head. A little after ten o'clock he heard the rattling of wheels
and the tramp of horses' hoofs upon the high-road, and, going to the
gate, he looked out through the iron bars. As the vehicle dashed by the
north gates, he saw that it was one of the Mellish-Park carriages which
had been sent to the station to meet John and his wife.
"A short visit to Loon'on," he muttered. "I lay she's been to fetch
the brass."
The greedy eyes of the half-witted groom peered through the iron
bars at the passing carriage, as if he would have fain looked through
its opaque panels in search of that which he had denominated "the
brass." He had a vague idea that two thousand pounds would be a great
bulk of money, and that Aurora would carry it in a chest or a bundle
that might be perceptible through the carriage-window.
"I'll lay she's been to fetch t' brass," he repeated, as he crept
back to the lodge-door.
He resumed his seat upon the door-step, his cigar-ends, and his
reverie, rubbing his head very often, sometimes with one hand,
sometimes with both, but always as if he were trying to rub some
wanting sense or power of perception into his wretched brains.
Sometimes he gave a short restless sigh, as if he had been trying all
this time to guess some difficult enigma, and was on the point of
giving it up.
It was long after midnight when Mr. James Conyers returned, very
much the worse for brandy and water and dust. He tumbled over the
softy, still sitting on the step of the open door, and then cursed Mr.
Hargraves for being in the way.
"B't s'nc'y'h'v ch's'n t' s't 'p," said the trainer, speaking a
language entirely composed of consonants, "y' m'y dr'v' tr'p b'ck t'
st'bl's."
By which rather obscure speech he gave the softy to understand that
he was to take the dog-cart back to Mr. Mellish's stable-yard.
Steeve Hargraves did his drunken master's bidding, and, leading the
horse homeward through the quiet night, found a cross boy with a
lantern in his hand waiting at the gate of the stable-yard, and by no
means disposed for conversation, except, indeed, to the extent of the
one remark that he, the cross boy, hoped the new trainer was n't going
to be up to this game every night, and hoped the mare, which had been
bred for a racer, had n't been ill used.
All John Mellish's horses seemed to have been bred for racers, and
to have dropped gradually from prospective winners of the Derby, Oaks,
Chester Cup, Great Ebor, Yorkshire Stakes, Leger, and Doncaster Cup, to
say nothing of minor victories in the way of Northumberland Plates,
Liverpool Autumn Cups, and Curragh Handicaps, through every variety of
failure and defeat, into the everyday ignominy of harness. Even the van
which carried groceries was drawn by a slim-legged, narrow-chested,
high-shouldered animal, called the "Yorkshire Childers," and bought, in
its sunny colthood, at a great price by poor John.
Mr. Conyers was snoring aloud in his little bedroom when Steeve
Hargraves returned to the lodge. The softy stared wonderingly at the
handsome face brutalized by drink, and the classical head flung back
upon the crumpled pillow in one of those wretched positions which
intoxication always chooses for its repose. Steeve Hargraves rubbed his
head harder even than before as he looked at the perfect profile, the
red, half-parted lips, the dark fringe of lashes on the faintly
crimson-tinted cheeks.
"Perhaps I might have been good for summat if I'd been like
you,
" he said, with a half-savage melancholy. "I should n't have been
ashamed of myself then. I should n't have crept into dark corners to
hide myself, and think why I was n't like other people, and what a
bitter, cruel shame it was that I was n't like 'em. You've no
call to hide yourself from other folks; nobody tells you to get out of
the way for an ugly hound, as you told me this morning, hang you. The
world's smooth enough for you."
So may Caliban have looked at Prospero, with envy and hate in his
heart, before going to his obnoxious tasks of dish-washing and
trencher-scraping.
He shook his fist at the unconscious sleeper as he finished
speaking, and then stooped to pick up the trainer's dusty clothes,
which were scattered upon the floor.
"I suppose I'm to brush these before I go to bed," he muttered,
"that my lord may have 'em ready when he wakes in th' morning."
He took the clothes on his arm and the light in his hand, and went
down to the lower room, where he found a brush, and set to work
sturdily, enveloping himself in a cloud of dust, like some ugly Arabian génie who was going to transform himself into a handsome prince.
He stopped suddenly in his brushing by and by, and crumpled the
waistcoat in his hand.
"There's some paper," he exclaimed. "A paper sewed up between stuff
and linin'."
He omitted the definite article before each of the substantives, as
is a common habit with his countrymen when at all excited.
"A bit o' paper," he repeated, "between stuff and linin'. I'll rip
t' waistcoat open and see what 't is."
He took his clasp-knife from his pocket, carefully unripped a part
of one of the seams in the waistcoat, and extracted a piece of paper
folded double—a decent-sized square of rather thick paper, partly
printed, partly written.
He leaned over the light with his elbows on the table, and read the
contents of this paper, slowly and laboriously, following every word
with his thick forefinger, sometimes stopping a long time upon one
syllable, sometimes trying back half a line or so, but always plodding
patiently with his ugly forefinger.
When he came to the last word, he burst suddenly into a loud
chuckle, as if he had just succeeded in guessing that difficult enigma
which had puzzled him all the evening.
"I know it all now," he said. "I can put it all together now, his
words, and hers, and the money. I can put it all together, and make out
the meaning of it. She's going to give him the two thousand pound to go
away from here and say nothing about this."
He refolded the paper, replaced it carefully in its hiding-place
between the stuff and lining of the waistcoat, then searched in his
capacious pocket for a fat leathern book, in which, among all sorts of
odds and ends, there were some needles and a tangled skein of black
thread. Then, stooping over the light, he slowly sewed up the seam
which he had ripped open, dexterously and neatly enough, in spite of
the clumsiness of his big fingers.
CHAPTER XXII.
STILL CONSTANT.
Mr. James Conyers took his breakfast in his own apartment upon the
morning of his visit to Doncaster, and Stephen Hargraves waited upon
him, carrying him a basin of muddy coffee, and enduring his ill humor
with the long-suffering which seemed peculiar to this hump-backed,
low-voiced stable-helper.
The trainer rejected the coffee, and called for a pipe, and lay
smoking half the summer morning, with the scent of the roses and
honeysuckle floating into his close chamber, and the July sunshine
glorifying the sham roses and blue lilies that twisted themselves in
floricultural monstrosity about the cheap paper on the walls.
The softy cleaned his master's boots, set them in the sunshine to
air, washed the breakfast things, swept the door-step, and then seated
himself upon it to ruminate, with his elbows on his keens and his hands
twisted in his coarse red hair. The silence of the summer atmosphere
was only broken by the drowsy hum of the insects in the wood, and the
occasional dropping of some early-blighted leaf.
Mr. Conyers' temper had been in no manner improved by his night's
dissipation in the town of Doncaster. Heaven knows what entertainment
he had found in those lonely streets, the grass-grown market-place and
tenantless stalls, or that dreary and hermetically-sealed building,
which looks like a prison on three sides and a chapel on the fourth,
and which, during the September meeting, bursts suddenly into life and
light with huge posters flaring against its gaunt walls, and a bright
blue-ink announcement of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Mathews, or Mr. and Mrs.
Charles Kean, for five nights only. Normal amusement in the town of
Doncaster between those two oases in the year's dreary circle, the
spring and autumn meetings, there is none; but of abnormal and special
entertainment there may be much, only known to such men as Mr. James
Conyers, to whom the most sinuous alley is a pleasant road, so long as
it leads, directly or indirectly, to the betting-man's god—Money.
However this might be, Mr. Conyers bore upon him all the symptoms of
having, as the popular phrase has it, made a night of it. His eyes were
dim and glassy; his tongue hot and furred, and uncomfortably large for
his parched mouth; his hand so shaky that the operation which he
performed with a razor before his looking-glass was a toss-up between
suicide and shaving. His heavy head seemed to have been transformed
into a leaden box full of buzzing noises; and after getting half
through his toilet, he gave it up for a bad job, and threw himself upon
the bed he had just left, a victim to that biliary derangement which
inevitably follows an injudicious admixture of alcoholic and malt
liquors.
"A tumbler of Hockheimer," he muttered, "or even the third-rate
Chablis they give one at a table d'hôte, would freshen me up a
little; but there's nothing to be had in this abominable place except
brandy and water."
He called to the softy, and ordered him mix a tumbler of the
last-named beverage, cold and weak.
Mr. Conyers drained the cool and lucid draught, and flung himself
back upon the pillow with a sigh of relief. He knew that he would be
thirsty again in five or ten minutes and that the respite was a brief
one; but still it was a respite.
"Have they come home?" he asked.
"Who?"
"Mr. and Mrs. Mellish, you idiot!" answered the trainer, fiercely.
"Who else should I bother my head about? Did they come home last night
while I was away?"
The softy told his master that he had seen one of the carriages
drive past the north gates at a little after ten o'clock upon the
preceding night, and that he supposed it contained Mr. and Mrs. Mellish.
"Then you'd better go up to the house and make sure," said Mr.
Conyers; "I want to know."
"Go up to th' house?"
"Yes, coward! yes, sneak! Do you suppose that Mrs. Mellish will eat
you?"
"I don't suppose naught o' t' sort," answered the softy, sulkily,
"but I'd rather not go."
"But I tell you I want to know," said Mr. Conyers; "I want to know
if Mrs. Mellish is at home, and what she's up to, and whether there are
any visitors at the house, and all about her. Do you understand?"
"Yes; it's easy enough to understand, but it's rare and difficult to
do," replied Steeve Hargraves. "How am I to find out? Who's to tell me?"
"How do I know?" cried the trainer impatiently; for Stephen
Hargrave's slow, dogged stupidity was throwing the dashing James
Conyers into a fever of vexation. "How do I know? Don't you see that
I'm too ill to stir from this bed? I'd go myself if I was n't. And
can't you go and do what I tell you, without standing arguing there
until you drive me mad?"
Steeve Hargraves muttered some sulky apology, and shuffled out of
the room. Mr. Conyers' handsome eyes followed him with a dark frown. It
is not a pleasant state of health which succeeds a drunken debauch; and
the trainer was angry with himself for the weakness which had taken him
to Doncaster upon the preceding evening, and thereby inclined to vent
his anger upon other people.
There is a great deal of vicarious penance done in this world.
Lady's-maids are apt to suffer for the follies of their mistresses, and
Lady Clara Vere de Vere's French abigail is extremely likely to have to
atone for young Laurence's death by patient endurance of my lady's ill
temper, and much unpicking and remaking of bodices, which would have
fitted her ladyship well enough in any other state of mind than the
remorseful misery which is engendered of an evil conscience. The ugly
gash across young Laurence's throat, to say nothing of the cruel
slanders circulated after the inquest, may make life almost unendurable
to the poor, meek nursery-governess who educates Lady Clara's younger
sisters; and the younger sisters themselves, and mamma and papa, and my
lady's youthful confidantes, and even her haughtiest adorers, all have
their share in the expiation of her ladyship's wickedness. For she will
not—or she can not—meekly own that she has been guilty, and
shut herself away from the world, to make her own atonement, and work
her own redemption. So she thrusts the burden of her sins upon other
people's shoulders, and travels the first stage to captious and
disappointed old-maidism.
The commercial gentlemen who make awkward mistakes in the city, the
devotees of the turf whose misfortunes keep them away from Mr.
Tattersall's premises on a settling-day, can make innocent women and
children carry the weight of their sins, and suffer the penalties of
their foolishness. Papa still smokes his Cabanas at fourpence
half-penny apiece, or his mild Turkish at nine shillings a pound, and
still dines at the "Crown and Sceptre" in the drowsy summer weather,
when the bees are asleep in the flowers at Morden College, and the
fragrant hay newly stacked in the meadows beyond Blackheath. But mamma
must wear her faded silk, or have it dyed, as the case may be; and the
children must forego the promised happiness, the wild delight of sunny
rambles on a shingly beach, bordered by yellow sands that stretch away
to hug an ever-changeful and yet ever-constant ocean in their tawny
arms. And not only mamma and the little ones, but other mothers and
other little ones, must help in the heavy sum of penance for the
defaulter's iniquities. The baker may have calculated upon receiving
that long-standing account, and may have planned a new gown for his
wife, and a summer treat for his little ones, to be paid for by the
expected money; and the honest tradesman, soured by the disappointment
of having to disappoint those he loves, is likely to be cross to them
in the bargain, and even to grudge her Sunday out to the household
drudge who waits at his little table. The influence of the strong man's
evil deed slowly percolates through insidious channels of which he
never knows or dreams. The deed of folly or of guilt does its fatal
work when the sinner who committed it has forgotten his wickedness. Who
shall say where or when the results of one man's evil-doing shall
cease? The seed of sin engenders no common root, shooting straight
upward through the earth, and bearing a given crop. It is the germ of a
foul running weed, whose straggling suckers travel underground, beyond
the ken of mortal eye, beyond the power of mortal calculation. If Louis
XV had been a conscientious man, terror and murder, misery and
confusion, might never have reigned upon the darkened face of beautiful
France. If Eve had rejected the fatal fruit, we might all have been in
Eden to-day.
Mr. James Conyers, then, after the manner of mankind, vented his
spleen upon the only person who came in his way, and was glad to be
able to despatch the softy upon an unpleasant errand, and make his
attendant as uncomfortable as he was himself.
"My head rocks as if I was on board a steam-packet," he muttered, as
he lay alone in his little bedroom, "and my hand shakes so that I can't
hold my pipe steady while I fill it. I'm in a nice state to have to
talk to her. As if it was n't as much as I can do at the best of
times to be a match for her."
He flung aside his pipe half filled, and turned his head wearily
upon the pillow. The hot sun and the buzz of the insects tormented him.
There was a big blue-bottle fly blundering and wheeling about among the
folds of the dimity bed-curtains—a fly which seemed the very genius of
delirium tremens; but the trainer was too ill to do more than swear at
his purple-winged tormentor.
He was awakened from a half doze by the treble voice of a small
stable-boy in the room below. He called out angrily for the lad to come
up and state his business. His business was a message from Mr. John
Mellish, who wished to see the trainer immediately.
Mr. Mellish," muttered James Conyers to himself. "Tell your
master I'm too ill to stir, but that I'll wait upon him in the
evening," he said to the boy. "You can see I'm ill, it you've got any
eyes, and you can say that you found me in bed."
The lad departed with these instructions, and Mr. Conyers returned
to his own thoughts, which appeared to be by no means agreeable to him.
To drink spirituous liquors and play all-fours in the sanded
tap-room of a sporting public is no doubt a very delicious occupation,
and would be altogether Elysian and unobjectionable if one could always
be drinking spirits and playing all-fours. But as the finest picture
ever painted by Raphael or Rubens is but a dead blank of canvas upon
the reverse, so there is generally a disagreeable other side to
all the pleasures of earth, and a certain reaction after card-playing
and brandy-drinking which is more than equivalent in misery to the
pleasures which have preceded it. Mr. Conyers, tossing his hot head
from side to side upon a pillow which seemed even hotter, took a very
different view of life to that which he had expounded to his boon
companions only the night before in the tap-room of the "Lion and
Lamb," Doncaster.
"I should liked to have stopped over the Leger," he muttered, "for I
meant to make a hatful of money out of the Conjurer; for if what they
say at Richmond is anything like truth, he's safe to win. But there's
no going against my lady when her mind's made up. It's take it or leave
it—yes or no—and be quick about it."
Mr. Conyers garnished his speech with two or three expletives common
enough among the men with whom he had lived, but not to be recorded
here, and, closing his eyes, fell into a doze—a half-waking,
half-sleeping torpidity, in which he felt as if his head had become a
ton-weight of iron, and was dragging him backward through the pillow
into a bottomless abyss.
While the trainer lay in this comfortless semi-slumber, Stephen
Hargraves walked slowly and sulkily through the wood on his way to the
invisible fence, from which point he meant to reconnoitre the premises.
The irregular façade of the old house fronted him across the
smooth breadth of lawn, dotted and broken by parti-colored flower-beds;
by rustic clumps of gnarled oak supporting mighty clusters of vivid
scarlet geraniums, all aflame in the sunshine; by trellised arches
laden with trailing roses of every varying shade, from palest blush to
deepest crimson; by groups of evergreens, whose every leaf was rich in
beauty and luxuriance, whose every tangled garland would have made a
worthy chaplet for a king.
The softy, in the semi-darknesses of his soul, had some glimmer of
that light which was altogether wanting in Mr. James Conyers. He felt
that these things were beautiful. The broken lines of the ivy-covered
house-front, Gothic here, Elizabethan there, were in some manner
pleasant to him. The scattered rose-leaves on the lawn; the flickering
shadows of the evergreens upon the grass; the song of a skylark too
lazy to soar, and content to warble among the bushes; the rippling
sound of a tiny water-fall far away in the wood, made a language of
which he only understood a few straggling syllables here and there, but
which was not altogether a meaningless jargon to him, as it was to the
trainer, to whose mind Holborn Hill would have conveyed as much of the
sublime as the untrodden pathways of the Jungfrau. The softy dimly
perceived that Mellish Park was beautiful, and he felt a fiercer hatred
against the person whose influence had ejected him from his old home.
The house fronted the south, and the Venetian shutters were all
closed upon this hot summer's day. Stephen Hargraves looked for his old
enemy Bow-wow, who was likely enough to be lying on the broad stone
steps before the hall-door; but there was no sign of the dog's presence
anywhere about. The hall-door was closed, and the Venetian shutters,
under the rose and clematis shadowed veranda which sheltered John
Mellish's room, were also closed. The softy walked round by the fence
which encircled the lawn to another iron gate which opened close to
John's room and which was so completely overshadowed by a clump of
beeches as to form a safe point of observation. This gate had been left
ajar by Mr. Mellish himself, most likely, for that gentleman had a
happy knack of forgetting to shut the doors and gates which he opened:
and the softy, taking courage from the stillness around and about the
house, ventured into the garden, and crept stealthily toward the closed
shutters before the windows of Mr. Mellish's apartment, with much of
the manner which might distinguish some wretched mongrel cur who trusts
himself within earshot of a mastiff's kennel.
The mastiff was out of the way on this occasion, for one of the
shutters was ajar: and when Stephen Hargraves peeped cautiously into
the room, he was relieved to find it empty. John's elbow-chair was
pushed a little way from the table, which was laden with open
pistol-cases and breech-loading revolvers. These, with two or three
silk handkerchiefs, a piece of chamois leather, and a bottle of oil,
bore witness that Mr. Mellish had been beguiling the morning by the
pleasing occupation of inspecting and cleaning the fire-arms, which
formed the chief ornaments of his study.
It was his habit to begin this operation with great preparation, and
altogether upon a gigantic scale; to reject all assistance with scorn;
to put himself in a violent perspiration at the end of half an hour,
and to send one of the servants to finish the business, and restore the
room to its old order.
The softy looked with a covetous eye at the noble array of guns and
pistols. He had that innate love of these things which seems to be
implanted in every breast, whatever its owner's state or station. He
had hoarded his money once to buy himself a gun; but when he had saved
the five-and-thirty shillings demanded by a certain pawnbroker of
Doncaster for an old-fashioned musket, which was almost as heavy as a
small cannon, his courage failed him, and he could not bring himself to
part with the precious coins, whose very touch could send a thrill of
rapture through the slow current of his blood. No, he could not
surrender such a sum of money to the Doncaster pawnbroker even for the
possession of his heart's desire; and as the stern money-lender refused
to take payment in weekly instalments of sixpences, Stephen was fain to
go without the gun, and to hope that some day or other Mr. John Mellish
would reward his services by the gift of some disused fowling-piece by
Forsythe or Manton. But there was no hope of such happiness now. A new
dynasty reigned at Mellish, and a black-eyed queen, who hated him, had
forbidden him to sully her domain with the traces of his shambling
foot. He felt that he was in momentary peril upon the threshold of that
sacred chamber, which, during his long service at Mellish Park, he had
always regarded as a very temple of the beautiful; but the sight of
fire-arms upon the table had a magnetic attraction for him, and he drew
the Venetian shutters a little way farther ajar, and slid himself in
through the open window. Then, flushed and trembling with excitement,
he dropped into John's chair, and began to handle the precious
implements of warfare upon pheasants and partridges, and to turn them
about in his big, clumsy hands.
Delicious as the guns were, and delightful though it was to draw one
of the revolvers up to his shoulder, and take aim at an imaginary
pheasant, the pistols were even still more attractive, for with them he
could not refrain from taking imaginary aim at his enemies; sometimes
at James Conyers, who had snubbed and abused him, and had made the
bread of dependence bitter to him; very often at Aurora; once or twice
at poor John Mellish; but always with a darkness upon his pallid face
which would have promised little mercy had the pistol been loaded and
the enemy near at hand.
There was one pistol, a small one, and an odd one apparently, for he
could not find its fellow, which took a peculiar hold upon his fancy.
It was as pretty as a lady's toy, and small enough to be carried in a
lady's pocket; but the hammer snapped upon the nipple, when the softy
pulled the trigger, with a sound that evidently meant mischief.
"To think that such a little thing as this could kill a big man like
you," muttered Mr. Hargraves, with a jerk of his head in the direction
of the north lodge.
He had this pistol still in his hand when the door was suddenly
opened, and Aurora Mellish stood upon the threshold.
She spoke as she opened the door, almost before she was in the room.
"John, dear," she said, "Mrs. Powell wants to know whether Colonel
Maddison dines here to-day with the Lofthouses."
She drew back with a shudder that shook her from head to foot as her
eyes met the softy's hated face instead of John's familiar glance.
In spite of the fatigue and agitation which she had endured within
the last few days, she was not looking ill. Her eyes were unnaturally
bright, and a feverish color burned in her cheeks. Her manner, always
impetuous, was restless and impatient to-day, as if her nature had been
charged with a terrible amount of electricity, till she were likely at
any moment to explode in some tempest of anger or woe.
"You here!" she exclaimed.
The softy, in his embarrassment, was at a loss for an excuse for his
presence. He pulled his shabby hare-skin cap off, and twisted it round
and round in his great hands, but he made no other recognition of his
late master's wife.
"Who sent you to this room?" asked Mrs. Mellish; "I thought you had
been forbidden this place—the house at least," she added, her face
crimsoning indignantly as she spoke, "although Mr. Conyers may choose
to bring you to the north lodge. Who sent you here?"
"Him," answered Mr. Hargraves, doggedly, with another jerk of his
head toward the trainer's abode.
"James Conyers?"
"Yes."
"What does he want here, then?"
"He told me to come down t' th' house, and see if you and the
master'd come back."
"Then you can go and tell him that we have come back," she said
contemptuously, "and that if he'd waited a little longer, he would have
had no occasion to send his spies after me."
The softy crept toward the window, feeling that his dismissal was
contained in these words, and looking rather suspiciously at the array
of driving and hunting whips over the mantle-piece. Mrs. Mellish might
have a fancy for laying one of these about his shoulders if he happened
to offend her.
"Stop!" she said, impetuously, as he laid his hand upon the shutter
to push it open; "since you are here, you can take a message, or a
scrap of writing," she said, contemptuously, as if she could not bring
herself to call any communication between herself and Mr. Conyers a
note or letter. "Yes; you can take a few lines to your master. Stop
there while I write."
She waved her hand with a gesture which expressed plainly, "Come no
nearer; you are too obnoxious to be endured except at a distance," and
seated herself at John's writing-table.
She scratched two lines with a quill pen upon a slip of paper, which
she folded while the ink was still wet. She looked for an envelope
among her husband's littered paraphernalia of account-books, bills,
receipts, and price-lists, and, finding one after some little trouble,
put the folded paper into it, fastened the gummed flaps with her lips,
and handed the missive to Mr. Hargraves, who had watched her with
hungry eyes, eager to fathom this new stage in the mystery.
Was the two thousand pounds in that envelope? he thought. No, surely
such a sum of money must be a huge pile of gold and silver—a mountain
of glittering coin. He had seen checks sometimes, and bank-notes, in
the hands of Langley, the trainer, and he had wondered how it was that
money could be represented by those pitiful bits of paper.
"I'd rayther have 't i' goold," he thought; "if 't was mine, I'd
have it all i' goold and silver."
He was very glad when he found himself safely clear of the whips and
Mrs. John Mellish, and, as soon as he reached the shelter of the thick
foliage upon the northern side of the Park, he set to work to examine
the packet which had been intrusted to him.
Mrs. Mellish had liberally moistened the adhesive flap of the
envelope, as people are apt to do when they are in a hurry; the
consequence of which carelessness was that the gum was still so wet
that Stephen Hargraves found no difficulty in opening the envelope
without tearing it. He looked cautiously about him, convinced himself
that he was unobserved, and then drew out the slip of paper. It
contained very little to reward him for his trouble—only these few
words, scrawled in Aurora's most careless hand:
"Be on the southern side of the wood, near the turnstile, between
half-past eight and nine."
The softy grinned as he slowly made himself master of this
communication.
"It's oncommon hard wroitin', t' make out th' shapes o' th'
letters," he said, as he finished his task. "Why can't gentlefolks
wroit like Ned Tiller oop at th' Red Lion—printin' loike. It's easier
to read, and a deal prettier to look at."
He refastened the envelope, pressing it down with his dirty thumb to
make it adhere once more, and not much improving its appearance thereby.
"He's one of your rare careless chaps," he muttered, as he surveyed
the letter; "he won't stop t' examine if it's been opened
before. What's insoide were hardly worth th' trouble of openin' it; but
perhaps it's as well to know it too."
Immediately after Stephen Hargraves had disappeared through the open
window, Aurora turned to leave the room by the door, intending to go in
search of her husband.
She was arrested on the threshold by Mrs. Powell, who was standing
at the door, with the submissive and deferential patience of paid
companionship depicted in her insipid face.
"Does Colonel Maddison dine here, my dear Mrs. Mellish?" she
asked meekly, yet with a pensive earnestness which suggested that her
life, or, at any rate, her peace of mind, depended upon the answer. "I
am so anxious to know, for of course it will make a difference
with the fish—and perhaps we ought to have some mulligatawny, or, at
any rate, a dish of curry among the entrées, for these elderly
East-Indian officers are so—"
"I don't know," answered Aurora, curtly. "Were you standing at the
door long before I came out, Mrs. Powell?"
"Oh, no," answered the ensign's widow, "not long. Did you not hear
me knock?"
Mrs. Powell would not have allowed herself to be betrayed into
anything so vulgar as an abbreviation by the torments of the rack, and
would have neatly rounded her periods while the awful wheel was
stretching every muscle of her agonized frame, and the executions
waiting to give the coup de grace.
"Did you not hear me knock?" she asked.
"No," said Aurora, "you did n't knock! Did you?"
Mrs. Mellish made an alarming pause between the two sentences.
"Oh, yes, too-wice," answered Mrs. Powell with as much emphasis as
was consistent with gentility upon the elongated word; "I knocked
too-wice; but you seemed so very much preoccupied that—"
"I did n't hear you," interrupted Aurora: "you should knock rather
louder when you want people to hear, Mrs. Powell. I—I came here
to look for John, and I shall stop to put away his guns. Careless
fellow—he always leaves them lying about."
"Shall I assist you, dear Mrs. Mellish?"
"Oh, no, thank you."
"But pray allow me—guns are so interesting. Indeed, there is
very little either in art or nature which, properly considered, is
not—"
"You had better find Mr. Mellish, and ascertain if the colonel
does dine here, I think, Mrs. Powell," interrupted Aurora, shutting
the lids of the pistol-cases, and replacing them upon their accustomed
shelves.
"Oh, if you wish to be alone, certainly," said the ensign's widow,
looking furtively at Aurora's face bending over the breech-loading
revolvers, and then walking genteelly and noiselessly out of the room.
"Who was she talking to?" thought Mrs. Powell. "I could hear her
voice, but not the other person's. I suppose it was Mr. Mellish: and
yet he is not generally so quiet."
She stopped to look out of a window in the corridor, and found the
solution of her doubts in the shambling figure of the softy making his
way northward, creeping stealthily under shadow of the plantation that
bordered the lawn. Mrs. Powell's faculties were all cultivated to a
state of unpleasant perfection, and she was able, actually as well as
figuratively, to see a great deal farther than most people.
John Mellish was not to be found in the house, and, on making
inquiries of some of the servants, Mrs. Powell learned that he had
strolled up to the north lodge to see the trainer, who was confined to
his bed.
"Indeed!" said the ensign's widow; "then I think, as we really ought
to know about the colonel and the mulligatawny, I will walk to the
north lodge myself and see Mr. Mellish."
She took a sun-umbrella from the stand in the hall, and crossed the
lawn northward at a smart pace, in spite of the heat of the July
noontide. "If I can get there before Hargraves," she thought, "I may
be able to find out why he came to the house."
The ensign's widow did reach the lodge before Stephen Hargraves, who
stopped, as we know, under shelter of the foliage in the loneliest
pathway of the wood to decipher Aurora's scrawl. She found John Mellish
seated with the trainer, in the little parlor of the lodge, discussing
the stable arrangement; the master talking with considerable animation,
the servant listening with a listless nonchalance which had a
certain air of depreciation, not to say contempt, for poor John's
racing-stud. Mr. Conyers had risen from his bed at the sound of his
employer's voice in the little room below, and had put on a dusty
shooting-coat and a pair of shabby slippers, in order to come down and
hear what Mr. Mellish had to say.
"I'm sorry to hear you're ill, Conyers," John said, heartily, with a
freshness in his strong voice which seemed to carry health and strength
in its every tone; "as you were n't well enough to look in at the
house, I thought I'd come over here and talk to you about business. I
want to know whether we ought to take Monte Cristo out of his York
engagement, and if you think it would be wise to let Northern Dutchman
take his chance for the Great Ebor. Hey?"
Mr. Mellish's query resounded through the small room, and made the
languid trainer shudder. Mr. Conyers had all the peevish susceptibility
to discomfort or inconvenience which go to make a man above his
station. Is it a merit to be above one's station, I wonder, that people
make such a boast of their unfitness for honest employments, and sturdy
but progressive labor? The flowers, in the fables, that want to be
trees, always get the worst of it, I remember. Perhaps that is because
they can do nothing but complain. There is no objection to their
growing into trees, if they can, I suppose, but a great objection to
their being noisy and disagreeable because they can't. With the son of
the simple Corsican advocate, who made himself Emperor of France, the
world had every sympathy, but with poor Louis Philippe, who ran away
from a throne at the first shock that disturbed its equilibrium, I
fear, very little. Is it quite right to be angry with the world because
it worships success; for is not success, in some manner, the stamp of
divinity? Self-assertion may deceive the ignorant for a time, but, when
the noise dies away, we cut open the drum, and find that it was
emptiness that made the music. Mr. Conyers contented himself with
declaring that he walked on a road which was unworthy of his footsteps,
but as he never contrived to get an inch farther upon the great highway
of life, there is some reason to suppose that he had his opinion
entirely to himself. Mr. Mellish and his trainer were still discussing
stable matters when Mrs. Powell reached the north lodge. She stopped
for a few minutes in the rustic doorway, waiting for a pause in the
conversation. She was too well-bred to interrupt Mr. Mellish in his
talk, and there was a chance that she might hear something by
lingering. No contrast could be stronger than that presented by the two
men. John, broad-shouldered and stalwart; his short, crisp chestnut
hair brushed away from his square forehead; his bright, open blue eyes
beaming honest sunshine upon all they looked at; his loose gray clothes
neat and well made; his shirt in the first freshness of the morning's
toilet; everything about him made beautiful by the easy grace which is
the peculiar property of the man who has been born a gentleman, and
which neither all the cheap finery which Mr. Moses can sell, nor all
the expensive absurdities which Mr. Tittlebat Titmouse can buy, will
ever bestow upon the parvenu or the vulgarian; the trainer,
handsomer than his master by as much as Antinous in Grecian marble is
handsomer than the substantially-shod and loose-coated young squires in
Mr. Millais's designs; as handsome as it is possible for this human
clay to be, with every feature moulded to the highest type of positive
beauty, and yet every inch of him a boor; his shirt soiled and
crumpled, his hair rough and uncombed; his unshaven chin dark with the
blue bristles of his budding beard, and smeared with the traces of last
night's liquor; his dingy hands supporting this dingy chin, and his
elbows bursting half out of the frayed sleeves of his shabby
shooting-jacket, leaning on the table in an attitude of indifferent
insolence; his countenance expressive of nothing but dissatisfaction
with his own lot, and contempt for the opinions of other people. All
the homilies that could be preached upon the time-worn theme of beauty
and its worthlessness could never argue so strongly as this mute
evidence presented by Mr. Conyers himself in his slouching posture and
his unkempt hair. Is beauty, then, so little, one asks, on looking at
the trainer and his employer? Is it better to be clean, and
well-dressed, and gentlemanly, than to have a classical profile and a
thrice-worn shirt?
Finding very little to interest her in John's stable-talk, Mrs.
Powell made her presence known, and once more asked the all-important
question about Colonel Maddison.
"Yes," John answered, "the old boy is sure to come. Let's have
plenty of chutnee, and boiled rice, and preserved ginger, and all the
rest of the unpleasant things that Indian officers live upon. Have you
seen Lolly?"
Mr. Mellish put on his hat, gave a last instruction to the trainer,
and left the cottage.
"Have you seen Lolly?" he asked again.
"Ye-es," replied Mrs. Powell; "I have only lately left Mrs. Mellish
in your room; she had been speaking to that half-witted
person—Hargraves I think he is called."
"Speaking to him?" cried John; "speaking to him in my room?
Why, the fellow is forbidden to cross the threshold of the house, and
Mrs. Mellish abominates the sight of him. Don't you remember the day he
flogged her dog, you know, and Lolly horse—had hysterics?" added Mr.
Mellish, choking himself with one word and substituting another.
"Oh, yes, I remember that little—ahem—unfortunate occurrence
perfectly," replied Mrs. Powell, in a tone which, in spite of its
amiability, implied that Aurora's escapade was not a thing to be easily
forgotten.
"Then it's not likely, you know, that Lolly would talk to the man.
You must be mistaken, Mrs. Powell."
The ensign's widow simpered, and lifted her eyebrows, gently shaking
her head with a gesture that seemed to say, "Did you ever find me
mistaken?"
"No, no, my dear Mr. Mellish," she said, with a half-playful air of
conviction, "there was no mistake on my part. Mrs. Mellish was talking
to the half-witted person; but you know the person is a sort of servant
to Mr. Conyers, and Mrs. Mellish may have had a message for Mr.
Conyers."
"A message for him!" roared John, stopping suddenly, and
planting his stick upon the ground in a movement of unconcealed
passion; "what messages should she have for him? Why should she
want people fetching and carrying between her and him?"
Mrs. Powell's pale eyes lit up with a faint yellow flame in their
greenish pupils as John broke out thus. "It is coming—it is coming—it
is coming!" her envious heart cried, and she felt that a faint flush of
triumph was gathering in her sickly cheeks.
But in another moment John Mellish recovered his self-command. He
was angry with himself for that transient passion. "Am I going to doubt
her again?" he thought. "Do I know so little of the nobility of her
generous soul that I am ready to listen to every whisper, and terrify
myself with every look?"
They had walked about a hundred yards away from the lodge by this
time. John turned irresolutely, as if half inclined to go back.
"A message for Conyers," he said to Mrs. Powell; "ay, ay, to be
sure. It's likely enough she might want to send him a message, for
she's cleverer at all the stable business than I am. It was she who
told me not to enter Cherry-stone for the Chester Cup, and, egad! I was
obstinate, and I was licked—as I deserved to be, for not listening to
my dear girl."
Mrs. Powell would fain have boxed John's ear, had she been tall
enough to reach that organ. Infatuated fool! would he never open his
dull eyes and see the ruin that was preparing for him?
"You are a good husband, Mr. Mellish, she said, with gentle
melancholy. "Your wife ought to be happy!" she added, with a
sigh which plainly hinted that Mrs. Mellish was miserable.
"A good husband!" cried John; "not half good enough for her. What
can I do to prove that I love her? What can I do? Nothing, except to
let her have her own way; and what a little that seems! Why, if she
wanted to set that house on fire, for the pleasure of making a
bonfire," he added, pointing to the rambling mansion in which his blue
eyes had first seen the light, "I'd let her do it, and look on with her
at the blaze."
"Are you going back to the lodge?" Mrs. Powell asked quietly, not
taking any notice of this outbreak of marital enthusiasm.
They had retraced their steps, and were within a few paces of the
little garden before the north lodge.
"Going back?" said John; "no—yes."
Between his utterance of the negative and the affirmative he had
looked up and seen Stephen Hargraves entering the little garden-gate.
The softy had come by the short cut through the wood. John Mellish
quickened his pace, and followed Steeve Hargraves across the little
garden to the threshold of the door. At the threshold he paused. The
rustic porch was thickly screened by the spreading branches of the
roses and honey-suckle, and John was unseen by those within. He did not
himself deliberately listen; he only waited for a few moments,
wondering what to do next. In those few moments of indecision he heard
the trainer speak to his attendant:
"Did you see her?" he asked.
"Ay, sure, I see her."
"And she gave you a message?"
"No, she gave me this here."
"A letter!" cried the trainer's eager voice: "give it me."
John Mellish heard the tearing of the envelope and the crackling of
the crisp paper, and knew that his wife had been writing to his
servant. He clenched his strong right hand until the nails dug into the
muscular palm; then turning to Mrs. Powell, who stood close behind him,
simpering meekly, as she would have simpered at an earthquake, or a
revolution, or any other national calamity not peculiarly affecting
herself, he said quietly:
"Whatever directions Mrs. Mellish has given are sure to be right; I
won't interfere with them." He walked away from the north lodge as he
spoke, looking straight before him, homeward, as if the unchanging
load-star of his honest heart were beckoning to him across the dreary
Slough of Despond, and bidding him take comfort.
"Mrs. Powell," he said, turning rather sharply upon the ensign's
widow, "I should be very sorry to say anything likely to offend you, in
your character of—of a guest beneath my roof; but I shall take it as a
favor to myself if you will be so good as to remember that I require no
information respecting my wife's movements from you, or from any one.
Whatever Mrs. Mellish does, she does with my full consent, my perfect
approbation. Cæsar's wife must not be suspected, and, by Jove,
ma'am—you'll pardon the expression—John Mellish's wife must not be
watched."
"Watched! information!" exclaimed Mrs. Powell, lifting her pale
eyebrows to the extreme limits allowed by nature. "My dear Mr. Mellish,
when I really only casually remarked, in reply to a question of your
own, that I believed Mrs. Mellish had—"
"Oh yes," answered John, "I understand. There are several ways by
which you can go to Doncaster from this house. You can go across the
fields, or round by Harper's Common, an out-of-the-way, roundabout
route, but you get there all the same, you know, ma'am. I
generally prefer the high-road. It may n't be the shortest way,
perhaps, but it's certainly the straightest."
The corners of Mrs. Powell's thin lower lip dropped perhaps the
eighth of an inch as John made these observations, but she very quickly
recovered her habitual genteel simper, and told Mr. Mellish that he
really had such a droll way of expressing himself as to make his
meaning scarcely so clear as could be wished.
But John had said all that he wanted to say, and walked steadily
onward, looking always toward that quarter in which the polestar might
be supposed to shine, guiding him back to his home.
That home so soon to be desolate! with such ruin brooding above it
as in his darkest doubts, his wildest fears, he had never shadowed
forth.
CHAPTER XXIII.
ON THE THRESHOLD OF DARKER MISERIES.
John went straight to his own apartment to look for his wife; but he
found the guns put back in their usual places, and the room empty.
Aurora's maid, a smartly-dressed girl, came tripping out of the
servants' hall, where the rattling of knives and forks announced that a
very substantial dinner was being done substantial justice to, to
answer John's eager inquiries. She told him that Mrs. Mellish had
complained of a headache, and had gone to her room to lie down. John
went up stairs, and crept cautiously along the carpeted corridor,
fearful of every footfall which might break the repose of his wife. The
door of her dressing-room was ajar; he pushed it softly open, and went
in. Aurora was lying upon the sofa, wrapped in a loose white
dressing-gown, her masses of ebon hair uncoiled and falling about her
shoulders in serpentine tresses that looked like shining blue-black
snakes released from poor Medusa's head to make their escape amid the
folds of her garments. Heaven knows what a stranger sleep may have been
for many a night to Mrs. Mellish's pillow, but she had fallen into a
heavy slumber on this hot summer's day. Her cheeks were flushed with a
feverish crimson, and one small hand lay under her head, twisted in the
tangled masses of her glorious hair.
John bent over her with a tender smile.
"Poor girl," he thought; "Thank God that she can sleep, in spite of
the miserable secrets which have come between us. Talbot Bulstrode left
her because he could not bear the agony that I am suffering now. What
cause had he to doubt her? What cause compared to that which I have had
a fortnight ago—the other night—this morning? And yet—and yet I
trust her, and will trust her, please God, to the very end."
He seated himself in a low easy-chair close beside the sofa upon
which his sleeping wife lay, and, resting his head upon his arm,
watched her, thought of her, perhaps prayed for her, and after a little
while fell asleep, snoring in bass harmony with Aurora's regular
breathing. He slept and snored, this horrible man, in the hour of his
trouble, and behaved himself altogether in a manner most unbecoming in
a hero. But then he is not a hero. He is stout and strongly built, with
a fine broad chest, and unromantically robust health.—There is more
chance of his dying of apoplexy than of fading gracefully in a decline,
or breaking a blood-vessel in a moment of intense emotion. He sleeps
calmly, with the warm July air floating in upon him from the open
window, and comforting him with its balmy breath, and he fully enjoys
that rest of body and mind. Yet even in his tranquil slumber there is a
vague something, some lingering shadow of the bitter memories which
sleep has put away from him, that fills his breast with a dull pain, an
oppressive heaviness, which can not be shaken off. He slept until half
a dozen different clocks in the rambling old house had come to one
conclusion, and declared it to be five in the afternoon; and he awoke
with a start, to find his wife watching him, Heaven knows how intently,
with her black eyes filled with solemn thought, and a strange
earnestness in her face.
"My poor John," she said, bending her beautiful head and resting her
burning forehead upon his hand, "how tired you must have been to sleep
so soundly in the middle of the day! I have been awake for nearly an
hour, watching you."
"Watching me, Lolly—why?"
"And thinking how good you are to me. Oh, John, John, what can I
ever do—what can I ever do to atone to you for all—"
"Be happy, Aurora," he said, huskily, "be happy, and—and send that
man away."
"I will, John; he shall go soon, dear—to-night!"
"What! then that letter was to dismiss him?" asked Mr. Mellish.
"You know that I wrote to him?"
"Yes, darling, it was to dismiss him—say that it was so, Aurora.
Pay him what money you like to keep the secret that he discovered, but
send him away, Lolly, send him away. The sight of him is hateful to me.
Dismiss him, Aurora, or I must do so myself."
He rose in his passionate excitement, but Aurora laid her hand
softly upon his arm.
"Leave all to me," she said, quietly. "Believe me that I will act
for the best. For the best, at least, if you could n't bear to lose me;
and you could n't bear that, could you, John?"
"Lose you! My God, Aurora, why do you say such things to me? I
would n't lose you. Do you hear, Lolly? I would n't. I'd
follow you to the farthest end of the universe; and Heaven take pity
upon those that came between us."
His set teeth, the fierce light in his eyes, and the iron rigidity
of his mouth gave an emphasis to his words which my pen could never
give if I used every epithet in the English language.
Aurora rose from her sofa, and, twisting her hair into a
thickly-rolled mass at the back of her head, seated herself near the
window, and pushed back the Venetian shutter.
"These people dine here to-day, John?" she asked, listlessly.
"The Lofthouses and Colonel Maddison? Yes, darling; and it's ever so
much past five. Shall I ring for your afternoon cup of tea?"
"Yes, dear, and take some with me, if you will."
I'm afraid that in his inmost heart Mr. Mellish did not cherish any
very great affection for the decoctions of bohea and gunpowder with
which his wife dosed him; but he would have dined upon cod-liver oil
had she served the banquet, and he strung his nerves to their extreme
tension at her supreme pleasure, and affected to highly relish the
post-meridian dishes of tea which his wife poured out for him in the
sacred seclusion of her dressing-room.
Mrs. Powell heard the comfortable sound of the chinking of the thin
egg-shell china and the rattling of the spoons as she passed the
half-open door on her way to her own apartment, and was mutely furious
as she thought that love and harmony reigned within the chamber where
the husband and wife sat at tea.
Aurora went down to the drawing-room an hour after this, gorgeous in
maize-colored silk and voluminous flouncings of black lace, with her
hair plaited in a diadem upon her head, and fastened with three diamond
stars which John had bought for her in the Rue de la Paix, and which
were cunningly fixed upon wire springs, which caused them to vibrate
with every chance movement of her beautiful head. You will say,
perhaps, that she was arrayed too gaudily for the reception of an old
Indian officer and a country clergyman and his wife; but if she loved
handsome dresses better than simpler attire, it was from no taste for
display, but rather from an innate love of splendor and expenditure,
which was a part of her expansive nature. She had always been taught to
think of herself as Miss Floyd, the banker's daughter, and she had been
taught also to spend money as a duty which she owed to society.
Mrs. Lofthouse was a pretty little woman, with a pale face and hazel
eyes. She was the youngest daughter of Colonel Maddison, and was, "by
birth, you know, my dear, far superior to poor Mrs. Mellish, who, in
spite of her wealth, is only, etc., etc., etc.," as Margaret Lofthouse
remarked to her female acquaintance. She could not very easily forget
that her father was the younger brother of a baronet, and had
distinguished himself in some terrific manner by blood-thirsty
demolition of Sikhs far away in the untractable East, and she thought
it rather hard that Aurora should possess such cruel advantages through
some pettifogging commercial genius on the part of her Glasgow
ancestors.
But, as it was impossible for honest people to know Aurora without
loving her, Mrs. Lofthouse heartily forgave her her fifty thousand
pounds, and declared her to be the dearest darling in the wide world;
while Mrs. Mellish freely returned her friendliness, and caressed the
little woman as she had caressed Lucy Bulstrode, with a superb yet
affectionate condescension, such as Cleopatra may have had for her
handmaidens.
The dinner went off pleasantly enough. Colonel Maddison attacked the
side-dishes specially provided for him, and praised the Mellish-Park
cook. Mr. Lofthouse explained to Aurora the plan of a new school-house
which Mrs. Mellish was going to build for her husband's parish. She
listened patiently to the rather wearisome details, in which a
bake-house, and a wash-house, and a Tudor chimney seemed the leading
features. She had heard so much of this before; for there was scarcely
a church, or a hospital, or a model lodging-house, or a refuge for any
misery or destitution whatever that had been lately elevated to adorn
this earth for which the banker's daughter had not helped to pay. But
her heart was wide enough for them all, and she was always glad to hear
of the bake-house, and wash-house, and the Tudor chimney all over
again. If she was a little less interested upon this occasion than
usual, Mr. Lofthouse did not observe her inattention, for in the simple
earnestness of his own mind he thought it scarcely possible that the
school-house topic could fail to be interesting. Nothing is so
difficult as to make people understand that you don't care for what
they themselves especially affect. John Mellish could not believe that
the entries for the Great Ebor were not interesting to Mr. Lofthouse,
and the country clergyman was fully convinced that the details of his
philanthropic schemes for the regeneration of his parish could not be
otherwise than delightful to his host. But the master of Mellish Park
was very silent, and sat with his glass in his hand, looking across the
dinner-table and Mrs. Lofthouse's head at the sunlit tree-tops between
the lawn and the north lodge. Aurora, from her end of the table, saw
that gloomy glance, and a resolute shadow darkened her face, expressive
of the strengthening of some rooted purpose deep hidden in her heart.
She sat so long at dessert, with her eyes fixed upon an apricot in her
plate, and the shadow upon her face deepening every moment, that poor
Mrs. Lofthouse was in utter despair of getting the significant look
which was to release her from the bondage of hearing her father's
stories of tiger-shooting and pig-sticking for the two or three
hundredth time. Perhaps she never would have got that feminine signal
had not Mrs. Powell, with a little significant "hem," made some
observation about the sinking sun.
The ensign's widow was one of those people who declare that there is
a perceptible difference in the length of the days upon the
twenty-third or twenty-fourth of June, and who go on announcing the
same fact until the long winter evenings come with the twenty-first of
December, and it is time for them to declare the converse of their late
proposition. It was some remark of this kind that aroused Mrs. Mellish
from her reverie, and caused her to start up suddenly, quite forgetful
of the conventional simpering beck to her guest.
"Past eight!" she said; "no, it's surely not so late?"
"Yes it is, Lolly, "John Mellish answered, looking at his watch, "a
quarter past."
"Indeed! I beg your pardon, Mrs. Lofthouse; shall we go into the
drawing-room?"
"Yes, dear, do," said the clergyman's wife, "and let's have a nice
chat. Papa will drink too much claret if he tells the pig-sticking
stories," she added, in a confidential whisper. "Ask your dear, kind
husband not to let him have too much claret, because he's sure to
suffer with his liver to-morrow, and say that Lofthouse ought to have
restrained him. He always says that it's poor Riginald's fault for not
restraining him."
John looked anxiously after his wife, as he stood with the door in
his hand, while the three ladies crossed the hall. He bit his lip as he
noticed Mrs. Powell's unpleasantly precise figure close at Aurora's
shoulder.
"I think I spoke pretty plainly, though, this morning," he thought,
as he closed the door and returned to his friends.
A quarter past eight; twenty minutes past; five-and-twenty minutes
past. Mrs. Lofthouse was rather a brilliant pianist, and was never
happier than when interpreting Thalberg and Benedict upon her friends'
Collard and Collards. There were old-fashioned people round Doncaster
who believed in Collard and Collard, and were thankful for the melody
to be got out of a good, honest grand, in a solid rosewood case,
unadorned with carved glorification or ormulu fretwork. At
seven-and-twenty minutes past eight Mrs. Lofthouse was seated at
Aurora's piano, in the first agonies of a prelude in six flats; a
prelude which demanded such extraordinary uses of the left hand across
the right, and the right over the left, and such exercise of the thumbs
in all sorts of positions—in which, according to all orthodox theories
of the pre -Thalberg -ite school, no pianist's thumbs should ever be
used—that Mrs. Mellish felt that her friend's attention was not very
likely to wander from the keys.
Within the long, low-roofed drawing-room at Mellish there was a snug
little apartment, hung with innocent rosebud-sprinkled chintzes, and
furnished with maple-wood chairs and tables. Mrs. Lofthouse had not
been seated at the piano more than five minutes when Aurora strolled
from the drawing-room to this inner chamber, leaving her guest with no
audience but Mrs. Powell. She lingered for a moment on the threshold to
look back at the ensign's widow, who sat near the piano in an attitude
of rapt attention.
"She is watching me," thought Aurora, "though her pink eyelids are
drooping over her eyes, and she seems to be looking at the border of
her pocket-handkerchief. She sees me with her chin or her nose,
perhaps. How do I know? She is all eyes! Bah! am I going to be afraid
of her, when I was never afraid of him? What should I
fear except—" her head changed from its defiant attitude to a drooping
posture, and a sad smile curved her crimson lips—"except to make you
unhappy, my dear, my husband. Yes," with a sudden lifting of her
head, and reassumption of its proud defiance, "my own true husband; the
husband who has kept his marriage vow as unpolluted as when first it
issued from his lips!"
I am writing what she thought, remember, not what she said; for she
was not in the habit of thinking aloud, nor did I ever know anybody who
was.
Aurora took up a shawl that she had flung upon the sofa, and threw
it lightly over her head, veiling herself with a cloud of black lace,
through which the restless, shivering diamonds shone out like stars in
a midnight sky. She looked like Hecate, as she stood on the threshold
of the French window, lingering for a moment, with a deep-laid purpose
in her heart, and a resolute light in her eyes. The clock in the
steeple of the village church struck the three-quarters after eight
while she lingered for those few moments. As the last chime died away
in the summer air, she looked up darkly at the evening sky, and walked
with a rapid footstep out upon the lawn toward the southern end of the
wood that bordered the Park.
CHAPTER XXIV.
CAPTAIN PRODDER CARRIES BAD NEWS TO
HIS NIECE'S HOUSE.
While Aurora stood upon the threshold of the open window, a man was
lingering upon the broad stone steps before the door of the entrance
hall, remonstrating with one of John Mellish's servants, who held
supercilious parley with the intruder, and kept him at arm's length
with the contemptuous indifference of a well-bred servant.
The stranger was Captain Samuel Prodder, who had arrived at
Doncaster late in the afternoon, had dined at the "Reindeer," and had
come over to Mellish Park in a gig driven by a hanger-on of that
establishment. The gig and the hanger-on were both in waiting at the
bottom of the steps; and if there had been anything wanting to turn the
balance of the footman's contempt for Captain Prodder's blue coat,
loose shirt-collar, and silver watch-chain, the gig from the "Reindeer"
would have done it.
"Yes, Mrs. Mellish is at home," the gentleman in plush replied,
after surveying the sea-captain with a leisurely and critical air,
which was rather provoking to poor Samuel, "but she's engaged."
"But perhaps she'll put off her engagements for a bit when she hears
who it is as wants to see her," answered the captain, diving into his
capacious pocket. "She'll tell a different story, I dare say, when you
take her that bit of pasteboard."
He handed the man a card, or rather let me say a stiff square of
thick pasteboard, inscribed with his name, so disguised by the
flourishing caprices of the engraver as to be not very easily
deciphered by unaccustomed eyes. The card bore Captain Prodder's
address as well as his name, and informed his acquaintances that he was
part owner of the Nancy Jane, and that all consignments of goods
were to be made to him at, etc., etc.
The footman took the document between his thumb and finger, and
examined it as minutely as if it had been some relic of the Middle
Ages. A new light dawned upon him as he deciphered the information
about the Nancy Jane, and he looked at the captain for the first
time with some approach to human interest in his countenance.
"Is it cigars you want to dispose hoff," he asked, "or bandannas? If
it's cigars, you might come round to our 'all, and show us the
harticle."
"Cigars!" roared Samuel Prodder. "Do you take me for a smuggler,
you—?" Here followed one of those hearty seafaring epithets with which
polite Mr. Chucks was apt to finish his speeches. "I'm your missus's
own uncle; leastways I—I knew her mother when she was a little gal,"
he added, in considerable confusion; for he remembered how far away his
sea-captainship thrust him from Mrs. Mellish and her well-born husband;
"so just take her my card, and look sharp about it, will you?"
"We've a dinner-party," the footman said, coldly, "and I don't know
if the ladies have returned to the drawing-room; but if you're anyways
related to missus—I'll go and see."
The man strolled leisurely away, leaving poor Samuel biting his
nails in mute vexation at having let slip that ugly fact of her
relationship.
"That swab in the same cut coat as Lord Nelson wore aboard the
Victory, will look down upon her now he knows she's niece to a old
sea-captain that carries dry goods on commission, and can't keep his
tongue between his teeth," he thought.
The footman came back while Samuel Prodder was upbraiding himself
for his folly, and informed him that Mrs. Mellish was not to be found
in the house.
"Who's that playin' upon the pianer, then?" asked Mr. Prodder, with
skeptical bluntness.
"Oh, that's the clugyman's wife," answered the man, contemptuously,
"a ciddyvong guvness, I should think, for she plays too well for
a real lady. Missus don't play—leastways only pawlkers, and that sort
of think. Goodnight."
He closed the two half-glass doors upon Captain Prodder without
farther ceremony, and shut Samuel out of his niece's house.
"To think that I played hop-scotch and swopped marbles for hardbake
with this gal's mother," thought the captain, "and that her servant
turns up his nose at me, and shuts the door in my face!"
It was in sorrow rather than in anger that the disappointed sailor
thought this. He had scarcely hoped for anything better. It was only
natural that those about his niece should flout at and contemptuously
entreat him. Let him get to her—let him come only for a moment
face to face with Eliza's child, and he did not fear the issue.
"I'll walk through the Park," he said to the man who had driven him
from Doncaster; "it's a nice evenin', and there's pleasant walks under
the trees to win'ard. You can drive back into the high-road, and wait
for me agen that 'ere turnstile I took notice of as we come along."
The driver nodded, smacked his whip, and drove his elderly gray pony
toward the Park gates. Captain Samuel Prodder went slowly and
deliberately enough—the way that it was appointed for him to go. The
Park was a strange territory to him; but, while driving past the outer
boundaries, he had looked admiringly at chance openings in the wood,
revealing grassy amphitheatres enriched by spreading oaks, whose
branches made a shadowy tracery upon the sunlit turf. He had looked
with a seaman's wonder at the inland beauties of the quiet domain, and
had pondered whether it might not be a pleasant thing for an old sailor
to end his days amid such monotonous woodland tranquillity, far away
from the sound of wreck and tempest, and the mighty voices of the
dreadful deep; and, in his disappointment at not seeing Aurora, it was
some consolation to the captain to walk across the dewy grass in the
evening shadows in the direction where, with a sailor's unerring
topographical instinct, he knew the turnstile must be situated.
Perhaps he had some hope of meeting his niece in the pathway across
the Park. The man had told him that she was out. She could not be far
away, as there was a dinner-party at the house, and she was scarcely
likely to leave her guests. She was wandering about the Park most
likely with some of them.
The shadows of the trees grew darker upon the grass as Captain
Prodder drew nearer to the wood; but it was that sweet summer time in
which there is scarcely one positively dark hour among the twenty-four;
and though the village clock chimed the half-hour after nine as the
sailor entered the wood, he was able to distinguish the outlines of two
figures advancing toward him from the other end of the long arcade,
that led in a slanting direction to the turnstile.
The figures were those of a man and woman—the woman wearing some
light-colored dress, which shimmered in the dusk; the man leaning on a
stick, and obviously very lame.
"It is my niece and one of her visitors?" thought the captain;
"maybe it is. I'll lay by to port of 'em, and let 'em pass me."
Samuel Prodder stepped aside under the shadow of the trees to the
left of the grassy avenue through which the two figures were
approaching, and waited patiently until they drew near enough for him
to distinguish the woman's face. The woman was Mrs. Mellish, and she
was walking on the left of the man, and was therefore nearest to the
captain. Her head was turned away from her companion, as if in utter
scorn and defiance of him, although she was talking to him at that
moment. Her face, proud, pale, and disdainful, was visible to the
seaman in the chill, shadowy light of the newly-risen moon. A low line
of crimson behind the black trunks of a distant group of trees marked
where the sun had left its last track in a vivid streak that looked
like blood.
Captain Prodder gazed in loving wonder at the beautiful face turned
toward him. He saw the dark eyes, with their sombre depth dark in anger
and scorn, and the luminous shimmer of the jewels that shone through
the black veil upon her haughty head. He saw her, and his heart grew
chill at the sight of her pale beauty in the mysterious moonlight.
"It might be my sister's ghost," he thought, "coming upon me in this
quiet place; it's a'most difficult to believe as it's flesh and blood."
He would have advanced, perhaps, and addressed his niece, had he not
been held back by the words which she was speaking as she passed
him—words that jarred painfully upon his heart, telling, as they did,
of anger and bitterness, discord and misery.
"Yes, hate you," she said, in a clear voice, which seemed to vibrate
sharply in the dusk—"hate you, hate you, hate you!" She repeated the
hard phrase, as if there were some pleasure and delight in uttering it,
which in her ungovernable anger she could not deny herself. "What other
words do you expect from me?" she cried with a low, mocking laugh,
which had a tone of deeper misery and more utter hopelessness than any
outbreak of womanly weeping. "Would you have me love you, or respect
you, or tolerate you?" Her voice rose with each rapid question, merging
into an hysterical sob, but never melting into tears. "Would you have
me tell you anything else than what I tell you to-night? I hate and
abhor you. I look upon you as the primary cause of every sorrow I have
ever known, of every tear I have ever shed, of every humiliation I have
ever endured—every sleepless night, every weary day, every despairing
hour I have ever passed. More than this—yes, a thousand, thousand
times more—I look upon you as the first cause of my father's
wretchedness. Yes, even before my own mad folly in believing in you,
and thinking you—what?—Claude Melnotte, perhaps! A curse upon the man
who wrote the play, and the player who acted in it, if it helped to
make me what I was when I met you! I say again, I hate you; your
presence poisons my home, your abhorred shadow haunts my sleep—no, not
my sleep, for how should I ever sleep knowing that you are near?"
Mr. Conyers, being apparently weary of walking, leaned against the
trunk of a tree to listen to the end of this outbreak, looking insolent
defiance at the speaker. But Aurora's passion had reached that point
in which all consciousness of external things passes away in the
complete egoism of anger and hate. She did not see his superciliously
indifferent look; her dilated eyes stared straight before her into the
dark recess from which Captain Prodder watched his sister's only child.
Her restless hands rent the fragile border of her shawl in the strong
agony of her passion. Have you ever seen this kind of woman in a
passion? Impulsive, nervous, sensitive, sanguine; with such a one
passion is a madness—brief, thank Heaven! and expending itself in
sharply cruel words, and convulsive rendings of laces and ribbons, or
coroners' juries might have to sit even oftener than they do. It is
fortunate for mankind that speaking daggers is often quite as great a
satisfaction to us as using them, and that we can threaten very cruel
things without meaning to carry them out. Like the little children who
say, "Won't I just tell your mother?" and the terrible editors who
write, "Won't I give you a castigation in the Market-Deeping Spirit
of the Times, or the Walton-on-the-Naze Athenæum?"
"If you are going to give us much more of this sort of thing," said
Mr. Conyers, with aggravating stolidity, "perhaps you won't object to
my lighting a cigar?"
Aurora took no notice of his quiet insolence; but Captain Prodder,
involuntarily clenching his fist, bounded a step forward in his
retreat, and shook the leaves of the underwood about his legs.
"What's that?" exclaimed the trainer.
"My dog, perhaps," answered Aurora; "he's about here with me."
"Curse the purblind cur," muttered Mr. Conyers, with an unlighted
cigar in his mouth. He struck a lucifer match against the bark of a
tree, and the vivid sulphurous light shone full upon his handsome face.
"A rascal," thought Captain Prodder; "a good-looking, heartless
scoundrel. What's this between my niece and him? He is n't her husband,
surely, for he don't look like a gentleman. But if he a'n't her
husband, who is he?"
The sailor scratched his head in his bewilderment. His senses had
been almost stupefied by Aurora's passionate talk, and he had only a
confused feeling that there was trouble and wretchedness of some kind
or other around and about his niece.
"If I thought he'd done anything to injure her," he muttered, "I'd
pound him into such a jelly that his friends would never know his
handsome face again as long as there was life in his carcass."
Mr. Conyers threw away the burning match, and puffed at his
newly-lighted cigar. He did not trouble himself to take it from his
lips as he addressed Aurora, but spoke between his teeth, and smoked in
the pauses of his discourse.
"Perhaps, if you've—calmed yourself down—a bit," he said, "you'll
be so good as—to come to business. What do you want me to do?"
"You know as well as I do," answered Aurora.
"You want me to leave this place?"
"Yes, for ever."
"And to take what you give me—and be satisfied?"
"Yes."
"What if I refuse?"
She turned sharply upon him as he asked this question, and looked at
him for a few moments in silence.
"What if I refuse?" he repeated, still smoking.
"Look to yourself!" she cried, between her set teeth; "that's all.
Look to yourself!"
"What! you'd kill me, I suppose?"
"No," answered Aurora; "but I'd tell all, and get the release which
I ought to have sought for two years ago."
"Oh! ah! to be sure," said Mr. Conyers; "a pleasant thing for Mr.
Mellish, and our poor papa, and a nice bit of gossip for the
newspapers. I've a good mind to put you to the test, and see if you've
pluck enough to do it, my lady."
She stamped her foot upon the turf, and tore the lace in her hands,
throwing the fragments away from her; but she did not answer him.
"You'd like to stab me, or shoot me, or strangle me, as I stand
here, would n't you, now?" asked the trainer, mockingly.
"Yes," cried Aurora, "I would!" she flung her head back with a
gesture of disdain as she spoke.
"Why do I waste my time in talking to you?" she said. "My worst
words can inflict no wound upon such a nature as yours. My scorn is no
more painful to you than it would be to any of the loathsome creatures
that creep about the margin of yonder pool."
The trainer took his cigar from his mouth, and struck the ashes away
with his little finger.
"No," he said, with a contemptuous laugh, "I'm not very
thin-skinned, and I'm pretty well used to this sort of thing into the
bargain. But suppose, as I remarked just now, we drop this style of
conversation, and come to business. We don't seem to be getting on very
fast this way."
At this juncture, Captain Prodder, who, in his extreme desire to
strangle his niece's companion, had advanced very close upon the two
speakers, knocked off his bat against the lower branches of the tree
which sheltered him.
There was no mistake this time about the rustling of the leaves. The
trainer started, and limped toward Captain Prodder's hiding-place.
"There's some one listening to us," he said. "I'm sure of it this
time—that fellow Hargraves, perhaps. I fancy he's a sneak."
Mr. Conyers supported himself against the very tree behind which the
sailor stood, and beat among the undergrowth with his stick, but did
not succeed in encountering the legs of the listener.
"If that soft-headed fool is playing the spy upon me," cried
the trainer, savagely, "he'd better not let me catch him, for I'll make
him remember it if I do."
"Don't I tell you that my dog followed me here?" exclaimed Aurora,
contemptuously.
A low rustling of the grass on the other side of the avenue, and at
some distance from the seaman's place of concealment, was heard as Mrs.
Mellish spoke.
"That's your dog, if you like," said the trainer; "the other
was a man. Come on a little way farther, and let's make a finish of
this business; it's past ten o'clock."
Mr. Conyers was right. The church clock had struck ten five minutes
before, but the solemn chimes had fallen unheeded upon Aurora's ear,
lost amid the angry voices raging in her breast. She started as she
looked around her at the summer darkness in the woods, and the flaming
yellow moon, which brooded low upon the earth, and shed no light upon
the mysterious pathways and the water-pools in the wood.
The trainer limped away, Aurora walking by his side, yet holding
herself as far aloof from him as the grassy pathway would allow. They
were out of hearing, and almost out of sight, before the sea-captain
could emerge from a state of utter stupefaction so far as to be able to
look at the business in its right bearings.
"I ought to ha' knocked him down," he muttered at last; "whether
he's her husband or whether he is n't. I ought to have knocked him
down, and I would have done it too," added the captain, resolutely, "if
it had n't been that my niece seemed to have a good fiery spirit of her
own, and to be able to fire a jolly good broadside in the way of hard
words. I'll find my skull-thatcher if I can," said Captain Prodder,
groping for his hat among the brambles and the long grass, "and then
I'll just run up to the turnstile and tell my mate to lay at anchor a
bit longer with the horse and shay. He'll be wonderin' what I'm up to;
but I won't go back just yet; I'll keep in the way of my niece and that
swab with the game leg."
The captain found his hat, and walked down to the turnstile, where
he found the young man from the "Reindeer" fast asleep, with the reins
loose in his hands, and his head upon his knees. The horse, with his
head in an empty nose-bag, seemed as fast asleep as the driver.
The young man woke at the sound of the turnstile creaking upon its
axis, and the step of the sailor in the road.
"I a'n't goin' to get aboard just yet," said Captain Prodder; "I'll
take another turn in the wood, as the evenin's so pleasant. I come to
tell you I would n't keep you much longer, for I thought you'd think I
was dead."
"I did a'most," answered the charioteer, candidly. "My word, a'n't
you been a time!"
"I met Mr. and Mrs. Mellish in the wood," said the captain, "and I
stopped to have a look at 'em. She's a bit of a spitfire, a'n't she?"
asked Samuel, with affected carelessness.
The young man from the "Reindeer" shook his head dubiously.
"I doant know about that," he said; "she's a rare favorite
hereabouts, with poor folks and gentry too. They do say as she
horsewhipped a poor fond chap as they'd got in the stables for
ill-usin' her dog; and sarve him right too," added the young man,
decisively. "Them softies is allus vicious."
Captain Prodder pondered rather doubtfully upon this piece of
information. He was not particularly elated by the image of his
sister's child laying a horsewhip upon the shoulders of her half-witted
servant. This trifling incident did n't exactly harmonize with his idea
of the beautiful heiress, playing upon all manner of instruments, and
speaking half a dozen languages.
"Yes," repeated the driver, "they do say as she gave t' fondy
a good whopping; and damme if I don't admire her for it."
"Ay, ay," answered Captain Prodder, thoughtfully. "Mr. Mellish walks
lame, don't he?" he asked, after a pause.
"Lame!" cried the driver; "Lord bless your heart, not a bit of it.
John Mellish is as fine a young man as you'll meet in this Riding—ay,
and finer, too. I ought to know. I've seen him walk into our house
often enough in the race week."
The captain's heart sank strangely at this information. The man with
whom he had heard his niece quarrelling was not her husband, then. The
squabble had seemed natural enough to the uninitiated sailor while he
looked at it in a matrimonial light, but, seen from another aspect, it
struck sudden terror to his sturdy heart, and blanched the ruddy hues
in his brown face. "Who was he, then?" he thought; "who was it as my
niece was talkin' to—after dark—alone—a mile off her own home, eh?"
Before he could seek for a solution to the unuttered question which
agitated and alarmed him, the report of a pistol rang sharply through
the wood, and found an echo under a distant hill.
The horse pricked up his ears, and jibbed a few paces; the driver
gave a low whistle.
"I thought so," he said. "Poachers! This side of the wood's chock
full of game; and, though Squire Mellish is allus threatenin' to
prosecute 'em, folks know pretty well as he'll never do it."
The broad-shouldered, strong-limbed sailor leaned against the
turnstile, trembling in every limb.
What was that which his niece had said a quarter of an hour before,
when the man had asked her whether she would like to shoot him?
"Leave your horse," he said, in a gasping voice; "tie him to the
stile, and come with me. If—if—it's poachers, we'll—we'll catch 'em."
The young man looped the reins across the turnstile. He had no very
great terror of any inclination for flight latent in the gray horse
from the "Reindeer." The two men ran into the wood, the captain running
in the direction in which his sharp ears told him the shot had been
fired.
The moon was slowly rising in the tranquil heavens, but there was
very little light yet in the wood.
The captain stopped near a rustic summer-house falling into decay,
and half buried amid the tangled foliage that clustered about the
mouldering thatch and the dilapidated woodwork.
"It was hereabout the shot was fired," muttered the captain; "about
a hundred yards due nor'ard of the stile. I could take my oath as it
were n't far from this spot I'm standin' on."
He looked about him in the dim light. He could see no one; but an
army might have hidden among the trees that encircled the open patch of
turf on which the summer-house had been built. He listened with his hat
off, and his big hand pressed tightly on his heart, as if to still its
tumultuous beating; he listened as eagerly as he had often listened,
far out on a glassy sea, for the first faint breath of a rising wind;
but he could hear nothing except the occasional croaking of the frogs
in the pond near the summer-house.
"I could have sworn it was about here the shot was fired," he
repeated. "God grant as it was poachers, after all; but it's
given me a turn that's made me feel like some Cockney lubber aboard a
steamer betwixt Bristol and Cork. Lord, what a blessed old fool I am!"
muttered the captain, after walking slowly round the summer-house to
convince himself that there was no one hidden in it. "One 'ud think I'd
never heerd the sound of a ha'-p'orth of powder before to-night."
He put on his hat, and walked a few paces forward, still looking
about cautiously, and still listening, but much easier in his mind than
when first he had re-entered the wood.
He stooped suddenly, arrested by a sound which has of itself,
without any reference to its power of association, a mysterious and
chilling influence upon the human heart. This sound was the howling of
a dog—the prolonged, monotonous howling of a dog. A cold sweat broke
out upon the sailor's forehead. That sound, always one of terror to his
superstitious nature, was doubly terrible tonight.
"It means death," he muttered, with a groan. "No dog ever howled
like that except for death."
He turned back and looked about him. The moonlight glimmered faintly
upon the broad patch of stagnant water near the summer-house, and upon
its brink the captain saw two figures, black against the summer
atmosphere—a prostrate figure, lying close to the edge of the water,
and a large dog, with his head uplifted to the sky, howling piteously.
It was the bounden duty of poor John Mellish, in his capacity of
host, to sit at the head of his table, pass the claret-jug, and listen
to Colonel Maddison's stories of the pig-sticking and the tiger-hunting
as long as the Indian officer chose to talk for the amusement of his
friend and his son-in-law. It was perhaps lucky that patient Mr.
Lofthouse was well up in all the stories, and knew exactly which
departments of each narrative were to be laughed at, and which were to
be listened to with silent and awe-stricken attention; for John Mellish
made a very bad audience upon this occasion. He pushed the filberts
toward the colonel at the very moment when "the tigress was crouching
for a spring, upon the rising ground exactly above us, sir, and when,
by Jove, Charley Maddison felt himself at pretty close quarters with
the enemy, sir, and never thought to stretch his legs under this
mahogany, or any other man's, sir;" and he spoiled the officer's best
joke by asking him for the claret in the middle of it.
The tigers and the pigs were confusion and weariness of spirit to
Mr. Mellish. He was yearning for the moment when, with any show of
decency, he might make for the drawing-room, and find out what Aurora
was doing in the still summer twilight. When the door was opened and
fresh wine brought in, he heard the rattling of the keys under Mrs.
Lofthouse's manipulation, and rejoiced to think that his wife was
seated quietly, perhaps, listening to those sonatas in C flat which the
rector's wife delighted to interpret.
The lamps were brought in before Colonel Maddison's stories were
finished; and when John's butler came to ask if the gentlemen would
like coffee, the worthy Indian officer said "Yes, by all means, and a
cheroot with it. No smoking in the drawing-room, eh, Mellish? Petticoat
government and window-curtains, I dare say. Clara does n't like my
smoke at the Rectory, and poor Lofthouse writes his sermons in the
summer-house; for he can't write without a weed, you know, and a volume
of Tillotson, or some of those fellows, to prig from, eh, George?" said
the facetious gentleman, digging his son-in-law in the ribs with his
fat old fingers, and knocking over two or three wine-glasses in his
ponderous jocosity. How dreary it all seemed to John Mellish tonight!
He wondered how people felt who had no social mystery brooding upon
their hearth; no domestic skeleton cowering in their homely cupboard.
He looked at the rector's placid face with a pang of envy. There was no
secret kept from him. There was no perpetual struggle rending his heart; no dreadful doubts and fears that would not be quite
lulled to rest; no vague terror, incessant and unreasoning; no mute
argument for ever going forward, with plaintiff's counsel and
defendant's counsel continually pleading the same cause, and arriving
at the same result. Heaven take pity upon those who have to suffer such
silent misery, such secret despair! We look at our neighbors' smiling
faces, and say, in bitterness of spirit, that A is a lucky fellow, and
that B can't be as much in debt as his friends say he is; that C and
his pretty wife are the happiest couple we know; and to-morrow B is in
the Gazette, and C is weeping over a dishonored home, and a
group of motherless children, who wonder what mamma has done that papa
should be so sorry. The battles are very quiet, but they are for ever
being fought. We keep the fox hidden under our cloak, but the teeth of
the animal are none the less sharp, nor the pain less terrible to bear;
a little more terrible, perhaps, for being endured silently. John
Mellish gave a long sigh of relief when the Indian officer finished his
third cheroot, and pronounced himself ready to join the ladies. The
lamps in the drawing-room were lighted, and the curtains drawn before
the open windows, when the three gentlemen entered. Mrs. Lofthouse was
asleep upon one of the sofas, with a Book of Beauty lying open at her
feet, and Mrs. Powell, pale and sleepless—sleepless as trouble and
sorrow, as jealousy and hate, as anything that is ravenous and
unappeasable—sat at her embroidery, working laborious monstrosities
upon delicate cambric muslin.
The colonel dropped heavily into a luxurious easy-chair, and quietly
abandoned himself to repose. Mr. Lofthouse awoke his wife, and
consulted her about the propriety of ordering the carriage. John
Mellish looked eagerly round the room. To him it was empty. The rector
and his wife, the Indian officer and the ensign's widow, were only so
many "phosphorescent spectralities," "phantasm captains;" in short,
they were not Aurora.
"Where's Lolly?" he asked looking from Mrs. Lofthouse to Mrs.
Powell; "where's my wife?"
"I really do not know," answered Mrs. Powell, with icy deliberation.
"I have not been watching Mrs. Mellish."
The poisoned darts glanced away from John's preoccupied breast.
There was no room in his wounded heart for such a petty sting as this.
"Where's my wife?" he cried, passionately; "you
must know
where she is. She's not here. Is she up stairs? Is she out of doors?"
"To the best of my belief," replied the ensign's widow, with more
than usual precision, "Mrs. Mellish is in some part of the grounds; she
has been out of doors ever since we left the dining-room."
The French clock upon the mantle-piece chimed the three-quarters
after ten as she finished speaking, as if to give emphasis to her
words, and to remind Mr. Mellish how long his wife had been absent. He
bit his lip fiercely, and strode toward one of the windows. He was
going to look for his wife; but he stopped as he flung aside the
window-curtain, arrested by Mrs. Powell's uplifted hand.
"Hark!" she said, "there is something the matter, I fear. Did you
hear that violent ringing at the hall-door?"
Mr. Mellish let fall the curtain, and re-entered the room.
"It's Aurora, no doubt," he said; "they've shut her out again, I
suppose. I beg, Mrs. Powell, that you will prevent this in future.
Really, ma'am, it is hard that my wife should be shut out of her own
house."
He might have said much more, but he stopped, pale and breathless,
at the sound of a hubbub in the hall, and rushed to the room-door. He
opened it and looked out, with Mrs. Powell and Mr. and Mrs. Lofthouse
crowding behind him and looking over his shoulder.
Half a dozen servants were clustered round a roughly-dressed,
seafaring-looking man, who, with his hat off and his disordered hair
falling about his white face, was telling in broken sentences, scarcely
intelligible for the speaker's agitation, that a murder had been done
in the wood.
CHAPTER XXV.
THE DEED THAT HAD BEEN DONE IN THE
WOOD.
The bareheaded seafaring man who stood in the centre of the hall was
Captain Samuel Prodder. The scared faces of the servants gathered round
him told more plainly than his words, which came hoarsely from his
parched white lips, the nature of the tidings that he brought.
John Mellish strode across the hall with an awful calmness on his
white face, and, parting the hustled group of servants with his strong
arms as a mighty wind rends asunder the storm-beaten waters, he placed
himself face to face with Captain Prodder.
"Who are you?" he asked, sternly; "and what has brought you here?"
The Indian officer had been aroused by the clamor, and had emerged,
red and bristling with self-importance, to take his part in the
business in hand.
There are some pies in the making of which everybody yearns to have
a finger. It is a great privilege, after some social convulsion has
taken place, to be able to say, "I was there at the time the scene
occurred, sir;" or, "I was standing as close to him when the blow was
struck, ma'am, as I am to you at this moment." People are apt to take
pride out of strange things. An elderly gentleman at Doncaster, showing
me his comfortably furnished apartments, informed me, with evident
satisfaction, that Mr. William Palmer had lodged in those very rooms.
Colonel Maddison pushed aside his daughter and her husband, and
struggled out into the hall.
"Come, my man," he said, echoing John's interrogatory, "let us hear
what has brought you here at such a remarkably unseasonable hour."
The sailor gave no direct answer to the question. He pointed with
his thumb across his shoulder toward that dismal spot in the lonely
wood, which was as present to his mental vision now as it had been to
his bodily eyes a quarter of an hour before.
"A man!" he gasped; "a man—lyin' close agen' the water's edge—shot
through the heart."
"Dead?" asked some one, in an awful tone. The voices and the
questions came from whom they would in the awe-stricken terror of those
first moments of overwhelming horror and surprise. No one knew who
spoke except the speakers; perhaps even they were scarcely aware that
they had spoken.
"Dead?" asked one of those eager listeners.
"Stone dead."
"A man—shot dead in the wood!" cried John Mellish; "what man?"
"I beg your pardon, sir," said the grave old butler, laying his hand
gently upon his master's shoulder, "I think, from what this person
says, that the man who had been shot is—the new trainer, Mr.—Mr.—"
"Conyers!" exclaimed John. "Conyers! who—who should shoot him?" The
question was asked in a hoarse whisper. It was impossible for the
speaker's face to grow whiter than it had been from the moment in which
he had opened the drawing-room-door, and looked out into the hall; but
some terrible change not to be translated into words came over it at
the mention of the trainer's name.
He stood motionless and silent, pushing his hair from his forehead,
and staring wildly about him.
The grave butler laid his warning hand for a second time upon his
master's shoulder.
"Sir, Mr. Mellish," he said, eager to arouse the young man from the
dull, stupid quiet into which he had fallen, "excuse me, sir, but if my
mistress should come in suddenly, and hear of this, she might be upset,
perhaps. Would n't it be better to—"
"Yes! yes!" cried John Mellish, lifting his head suddenly, as if
aroused into immediate action by the mere suggestion of his wife's
name—"yes! Clear out of the hall, every one of you," he said,
addressing the eager group of pale-faced servants. "And you, sir," he
added, to Captain Prodder, "come with me."
He walked toward the dining-room-door. The sailor followed him,
still bareheaded, still with a semi-bewildered expression in his dusky
face.
"It a'n't the first time I've seen a man shot," he thought, "but
it's the first time I've felt like this."
Before Mr. Mellish could reach the dining-room, before the servants
could disperse and return to their proper quarters, one of the
half-glass doors, which had been left ajar, was pushed open by the
light touch of a woman's hand, and Aurora Mellish entered the hall.
"Ah, ha!" thought the ensign's widow, who looked on at the scene
snugly sheltered by Mr. and Mrs. Lofthouse, "my lady is caught a second
time in her evening rambles. What will he say to her goings on
to-night, I wonder?"
Aurora's manner presented a singular contrast to the terror and
agitation of the assembly in the hall. A vivid crimson flush glowed in
her cheeks and lit up her shining eyes. She carried her head high, in
that queenly defiance which was her peculiar grace. She walked with a
light step; she moved with easy, careless gestures. It seemed as if
some burden which she had long carried had been suddenly removed from
her. But at sight of the crowd in the hall she drew back with a look of
alarm.
"What has happened, John?" she cried; "what is wrong?"
He lifted his hand with a warning gesture—a gesture that plainly
said, Whatever trouble or sorrow there may be, let her be spared the
knowledge of it—let her be sheltered from the pain.
"Yes, my darling," he answered, quietly, taking her hand and leading
her into the drawing-room, "there is something wrong. An accident has
happened—in the wood yonder; but it concerns no one whom you care for.
Go, dear; I will tell you all by and by. Mrs. Lofthouse, you will take
care of my wife. Lofthouse, come with me. Allow me to shut the door,
Mrs. Powell, if you please," he added to the ensign's widow, who did
not seem inclined to leave her post upon the threshold of the
drawing-room. "Any curiosity which you may have about the business
shall be satisfied in due time. For the present, you will oblige me by
remaining with my wife and Mrs. Lofthouse."
He paused, with his hand upon the drawing-room-door, and looked at
Aurora.
She was standing with her shawl upon her arm, watching her husband;
and she advanced eagerly to him as she met his glance.
"John," she exclaimed, "for mercy's sake, tell me the truth!
What
is this accident?"
He was silent for a moment, gazing at her eager face—that face,
whose exquisite mobility expressed every thought; then, looking at her
with a strange solemnity, he said gravely, "You were in the wood just
now, Aurora?"
"I was," she answered; "I have only just left the grounds. A man
passed me, running violently, about a quarter of an hour ago. I thought
he was a poacher. Was it to him the accident happened?"
"No. There was a shot fired in the wood some time since. Did you
hear it?"
"I did," replied Mrs. Mellish, looking at him with sudden terror and
surprise. "I knew there were often poachers about near the road, and I
was not alarmed by it. Was there anything wrong in that shot? Was any
one hurt?"
Her eyes were fixed upon his face, dilated with that look of
wondering terror.
"Yes; a—a man was hurt."
Aurora looked at him in silence—looked at him with a stony face,
whose only expression was an utter bewilderment. Every other feeling
seemed blotted away in that one sense of wonder.
John Mellish led her to a chair near Mrs. Lofthouse, who had been
seated, with Mrs. Powell, at the other end of the room, close to the
piano, and too far from the door to overhear the conversation which had
just taken place between John and his wife. People do not talk very
loudly in moments of intense agitation. They are liable to be deprived
of some portion of their vocal power in the fearful crisis of terror
and despair. A numbness seizes the organ of speech; a partial paralysis
disables the ready tongue; the trembling lips refuse to do their duty.
The soft pedal of the human instrument is down, and the tones are
feeble and muffled, wandering into weak minor shrillness, or sinking to
husky basses, beyond the ordinary compass of the speaker's voice. The
stentorian accents in which Claude Melnotte bids adieu to Mademoiselle
Deschappelle mingle very effectively with the brazen clamor of the
Marseillaise Hymn; the sonorous tones in which Mistress Julia appeals
to her Hunchback guardian are pretty sure to bring down the approving
thunder of the eighteen-penny gallery; but I doubt if the noisy energy
of stage-grief is true to nature, however wise in art. I'm afraid that
an actor who would play Claude Melnotte with a pre-Raphaelite fidelity
to nature would be an insufferable bore, and utterly inaudible beyond
the third row in the pit. The artist must draw his own line between
nature and art, and map out the extent of his own territory. If he
finds that cream-colored marble is more artistically beautiful than a
rigid presentment of actual flesh and blood, let him stain his marble
of that delicate hue until the end of time. If he can represent five
acts of agony and despair without once turning his back to his audience
or sitting down, let him do it. If he is conscientiously true to his art, let him choose for himself how true he shall be to nature.
John Mellish took his wife's hand in his own, and grasped it with a
convulsive pressure that almost crushed the delicate fingers.
"Stay here, my dear, till I come back to you," he said. "Now,
Lofthouse."
Mr. Lofthouse followed his friend into the hall, where Colonel
Maddison had been making the best use of his time by questioning the
merchant-captain.
"Come, gentlemen," said John, leading the way to the dining-room;
"come, colonel, and you too, Lofthouse; and you, sir," he added, to the
sailor, "step this way."
The débris of the dessert still covered the table, but the
men did not advance far into the room. John stood aside as the others
went in, and, entering the last, closed the door behind him, and stood
with his back against it.
"Now," he said, turning sharply upon Samuel Prodder, "what is this
business?"
"I'm afraid it's sooicide—or—or murder," answered the sailor,
gravely. "I've told this good gentleman all about it."
This good gentleman was Colonel Maddison, who seemed delighted to
plunge into the conversation.
"Yes, my dear Mellish," he said, eagerly, "our friend, who describes
himself as a sailor, and who had come down to see Mrs. Mellish, whose
mother he knew when he was a boy, has told me all about this shocking
affair. Of course the body must be removed immediately, and the sooner
your servants go out with lanterns for that purpose the better.
Decision, my dear Mellish, decision and prompt action are indispensable
in these sad catastrophes."
"The body removed!" repeated John Mellish; "the man is dead, then?"
"Quite dead," answered the sailor; "he was dead when I found him,
though it was n't above seven minutes after the shot was fired. I left
a man with him—a young man as drove me from Doncaster—and a
dog—some big dog that watched beside him, howling awful, and would n't
leave him."
"Did you—see—the man's face?"
"Yes."
"You are a stranger here," said John Mellish; "it is useless,
therefore, to ask you if you know who the man is."
"No, sir," answered the sailor, "I did n't know him; but the young
man from the Reindeer—"
"He recognized him?"
"Yes; he said he'd seen the man in Doncaster only the night before;
and that he was your—trainer, I think he called him."
"Yes, yes."
"A lame chap."
"Come, gentlemen," said John, turning to his friends, "what are we
to do?"
"Send the servants into the wood," replied Colonel Maddison, "and
have the body carried—"
"Not here," cried John Mellish, interrupting him, "not here; it
would kill my wife."
"Where did the man live?" asked the colonel.
"In the north lodge. A cottage against the northern gates, which are
never used now."
"Then let the body be taken there," answered the Indian soldier;
"let one of your people run for the parish constable; and you'd better
send for the nearest surgeon immediately, though, from what our friend
here says, a hundred of 'em could n't do any good. It's an awful
business. Some poaching fray, I suppose."
"Yes, yes," answered John, quickly, "no doubt."
"Was the man disliked in the neighborhood?" asked Colonel Maddison;
"had he made himself in any manner obnoxious?"
"I should scarcely think it likely. He had only been with me about a
week."
The servants, who had dispersed at John's command, had not gone very
far. They had lingered in corridors and lobbies, ready at a moment's
notice to rush out into the hall again, and act their minor parts in
the tragedy. They preferred doing anything to returning quietly to
their own quarters.
They came out eagerly at Mr. Mellish's summons. He gave his orders
briefly, selecting two of the men, and sending the others about their
business.
"Bring a couple of lanterns," he said: "and follow us across the
Park toward the pond in the wood."
Colonel Maddison, Mr. Lofthouse, Captain Prodder, and John Mellish
left the house together. The moon, still slowly rising in the broad,
cloudless heavens, silvered the quiet lawn, and shimmered upon the
tree-tops in the distance. The three gentlemen walked at a rapid pace,
led by Samuel Prodder, who kept a little way in advance, and followed
by a couple of grooms, who carried darkened stable-lanterns.
As they entered the wood, they stopped involuntarily, arrested by
that solemn sound which had first drawn the sailor's attention to the
dreadful deed that had been done—the howling of the dog. It sounded in
the distance like a low, feeble wail—a long, monotonous death-cry.
They followed that dismal indication of the spot to which they were
to go. They made their way through the shadowy avenue, and emerged upon
the silvery patch of turf and fern where the rotting summer-house stood
in its solitary decay. The two figures—the prostrate figure on the
brink of the water, and the figure of the dog with uplifted head—still
remained exactly as the sailor had left them three-quarters of an hour
before. The young man from the Reindeer stood aloof from these two
figures, and advanced to meet the new-comers as they drew near.
Colonel Maddison took a lantern from one of the men, and ran forward
to the water's edge. The dog rose as he approached, and walked slowly
round the prostrate form, sniffling at it, and whining piteously. John
Mellish called the animal away.
"This man was in a sitting posture when he was shot," said Colonel
Maddison, decisively. "He was sitting upon this bench here."
He pointed to a dilapidated rustic seat close to the margin of the
stagnant water.
"He was sitting upon this bench," repeated the colonel, "for he's
fallen close against it, as you see. Unless I'm very much mistaken, he
was shot from behind."
"You don't think he shot himself, then?" asked John Mellish.
"Shot himself!" cried the colonel; "not a bit of it. But we'll soon
settle that. If he shot himself, the pistol must be close against him.
Here, bring a loose plank from that summer-house, and lay the body upon
it," added the Indian officer, speaking to the servants.
Captain Prodder and the two grooms selected the broadest plank they
could find. It was moss-grown and rotten, and straggling wreaths of
wild clematis were entwined about it; but it served the purpose for
which it was wanted. They laid it upon the grass, and lifted the body
of James Conyers on to it, with his handsome face—ghastly and horrible
in the fixed agony of sudden death—turned upward to the moonlit sky.
It was wonderful how mechanically and quietly they went to work,
promptly and silently obeying the colonel's orders.
John Mellish and Mr. Lofthouse searched the slippery grass upon the
bank, and groped among the fringe of fern, without result. There was no
weapon to be found anywhere within a considerable radius of the body.
While they were searching in every direction for this missing link
in the mystery of the man's death, the parish constable arrived with
the servant who had been sent to summon him.
He had very little to say for himself, except that he supposed it
was poachers as had done it; and that he also supposed all particklars
would come out at the inquest. He was a simple rural functionary,
accustomed to petty dealings with refractory tramps, contumacious
poachers, and impounded cattle, and was scarcely master of the
situation in any great emergency.
Mr. Prodder and the servants lifted the plank upon which the body
lay, and struck into the long avenue leading northward, walking a
little ahead of the three gentlemen and the constable. The young man
from the Reindeer returned to look after his horse, and to drive round
to the north lodge, where he was to meet Mr. Prodder. All had been done
so quietly that the knowledge of the catastrophe had not passed beyond
the domains of Mellish Park. In the holy summer-evening stillness James
Conyers was carried back to the chamber from whose narrow window he had
looked out upon the beautiful world, weary of its beauty, only a few
hours before.
The purposeless life was suddenly closed. The careless wanderer's
journey had come to an unthought-of end. What a melancholy record, what
a meaningless and unfinished page? Nature, blindly bountiful to the
children whom she has yet to know, had bestowed her richest gifts upon
this man. She had created a splendid image, and had chosen a soul at
random, ignorantly enshrining it in her most perfectly-fashioned clay.
Of all who read the story of this man's death in the following Sunday's
newspapers, there was not one who shed a tear for him; there was not
one who could say, "That man once stepped out of his way to do me a
kindness; and may the Lord have mercy upon his soul!"
Shall I be sentimental, then, because he is dead, and regret that he
was not spared a little longer, and allowed a day of grace in which he
might repent? Had he lived for ever, I do not think he would have lived
long enough to become that which it was not in his nature to be. May
God, in His infinite compassion, have pity upon the souls which He has
Himself created, and where He has withheld the light, may be excuse the
darkness! The phrenologists who examined the head of William Palmer
declared that he was so utterly deficient in moral perception, so
entirely devoid of conscientious restraint, that he could not help
being what he was. Heaven keep us from too much credence in that
horrible fatalism! Is a man's destiny here and hereafter to depend upon
bulbous projections scarcely perceptible to uneducated fingers, and
good and evil propensities which can be measured by the compass or
weighed in the scale?
The dismal cortége slowly made its way under the silver
moonlight, the trembling leaves making a murmuring music in the faint
summer air, the pale glowworm sshining here and there amid the tangled
verdure. The bearers of the dead walked with a slow but steady tramp in
advance of the rest. All walked in silence. What should they say? In
the presence of death's awful mystery life made a pause. There was a
brief interval in the hard business of existence—a hushed and solemn
break in the working of life's machinery.
"There'll be an inquest," thought Mr. Prodder, "and I shall have to
give evidence. I wonder what questions they'll ask me?"
He did not think this once, but perpetually, dwelling with a
half-stupid persistence upon the thought of that inquisition which must
most infallibly be made, and those questions that might be asked. The
honest sailor's simple mind was cast astray in the utter bewilderment
of this night's mysterious horror. The story of life was changed. He
had come to play his humble part in some sweet domestic drama of love
and confidence, and he found himself involved in a tragedy—a horrible
mystery of hatred, secrecy; and murder—a dreadful maze, from whose
obscurity he saw no hope of issue.
A beacon-light glimmered in the lower window of the cottage by the
north gates—a feeble ray, that glittered like a gem from out a bower
of honeysuckle and clematis. The little garden-gate was closed, but it
only fastened with a latch.
The bearers of the body paused before entering the garden, and the
constable stepped aside to speak to Mr. Mellish.
"Is there anybody lives in the cottage?" he asked.
"Yes," answered John; "the trainer employed an old hanger-on of my
own—a half-witted fellow, called Hargraves."
"It's him as burns the light in there most likely, then," said the
constable. "I'll go in and speak to him first. Do you wait here till I
come out again," he added, turning to the men who carried the body.
The lodge-door was on the latch. The constable opened it softly and
went in. A rushlight was burning upon the table, the candlestick placed
in a basin of water. A bottle half filled with brandy, and a tumbler,
stood near the light; but the room was empty. The constable took his
shoes off, and crept up the little staircase. The upper floor of the
lodge consisted of two rooms—one, sufficiently large and comfortable,
looking toward the stable-gates; the other, smaller and darker, looked
out upon a patch of kitchen-garden and on the fence which separated Mr.
Mellish's estate from the high-road. The larger chamber was empty; but
the door of the smaller was ajar; and the constable, pausing to listen
at that half-open door, heard the regular breathing of a heavy sleeper.
He knocked sharply upon the panel.
"Who's there?" asked the person within, starting up from a truckle
bedstead. "Is 't thou, Muster Conyers?"
"No," answered the constable. "It's me, William Dork, of Little
Meslingham. Come down stairs; I want to speak to you."
"Is there aught wrong?"
"Yes."
"Poachers?"
"That's as may be," answered Mr. Dork. "Come down stairs, will you?"
Mr. Hargraves muttered something to the effect that he would make
his appearance as soon as he could find sundry portions of his rather
fragmentary toilet. The constable looked into the room, and watched the
softy groping for his garments in the moonlight. Three minutes
afterward Stephen Hargraves slowly shambled down the angular wooden
stairs, which wound, in a corkscrew fashion affected by the builders of
small dwellings, from the upper to the lower floor.
"Now," said Mr. Dork, planting the softy opposite to him, with the
feeble rays of the rush-light upon his sickly face, "now then, I want
you to answer me a question. At what time did your master leave the
house?"
"At half-past seven o'clock," answered the softy, in his whispering
voice; "she was stroikin' the half-hour as he went out."
He pointed to a small Dutch clock in a corner of the room. His
countrymen always speak of a clock as "she."
"Oh, he went out at half-past seven o'clock, did he?" said the
constable; "and you have n't seen him since, I suppose?"
"No. He told me he should be late, and I was n't to sit oop for him.
He swore at me last night for sitting oop for him. But is there aught
wrong?" asked the softy.
Mr. Dork did not condescend to reply to this question. He walked
straight to the door, opened it, and beckoned to those who stood
without in the summer moonlight, patiently waiting for his summons.
"You may bring him in," he said.
They carried their ghastly burden into the pleasant rustic
chamber—the chamber in which Mr. James Conyers had sat smoking and
drinking a few hours before. Mr. Morton, the surgeon from Meslingham,
the village nearest to the Park gates, arrived as the body was being
carried in, and ordered a temporary couch of mattresses to be spread
upon a couple of tables placed together, in the lower room, for the
reception of the trainer's corpse.
John Mellish, Samuel Prodder, and Mr. Lofthouse remained outside of
the cottage. Colonel Maddison, the servants, the constable, and the
doctor were all clustered round the corpse.
"He has been dead about an hour and a quarter," said the doctor,
after a brief inspection of the body. "He has been shot in the back;
the bullet has not penetrated the heart, for in that case there would
have been no hemorrhage. He has respired after receiving the shot; but
death must have been almost instantaneous."
Before making his examination, the surgeon had assisted Mr. Dork,
the constable, to draw off the coat and waistcoat of the deceased. The
bosom of the waistcoat was saturated with the blood that had flowed
from the parted lips of the dead man.
It was Mr. Dork's business to examine these garments, in the hope of
finding some shred of evidence which might become a clew to the secret
of the trainer's death. He turned out the pockets of the shooting-coat
and of the waistcoat; one of these pockets contained a handful of
half-pence, a couple of shillings, a fourpenny piece, and a rusty
watch-key; another held a little parcel of tobacco wrapped in an old
betting-list, and a broken meerschaum pipe, black and greasy with the
essential oil of by-gone shag, and bird's eye. In one of the
waistcoat-pockets Mr. Dork found the dead man's silver watch, with a
blood-stained ribbon and a worthless gilt seal. Among all these things
there was nothing calculated to throw any light upon the mystery.
Colonel Maddison shrugged his shoulders as the constable emptied the
paltry contents of the trainer's pockets on to a little dresser at one
end of the room.
"There's nothing here that makes the business any clearer," he said;
"but, to my mind, it's plain enough. The man was new here, and he
brought new ways with him from his last situation. The poachers and
vagabonds have been used to have it all their own way about Mellish
Park, and they did n't like this poor fellow's interference. He wanted
to play the tyrant, I dare say, and made himself obnoxious to some of
the worst of the lot; and he's caught it hot, poor chap, that's all
I've got to say."
Colonel Maddison, with the recollection of a refractory Punjaub
strong upon him, had no very great reverence for the mysterious spark
that lights the human temple. If a man made himself obnoxious to other
men, other men were very likely to kill him. This was the soldier's
simple theory; and, having delivered himself of his opinion respecting
the trainer's death, he emerged from the cottage, and was ready to go
home with John Mellish, and drink another bottle of that celebrated
tawny port which had been laid in by his host's father twenty years
before.
The constable stood close against a candle, that had been hastily
lighted and thrust unceremoniously into a disused blacking-bottle, with
the waistcoat still in his hands. He was turning the blood-stained
garment inside out; for, while emptying the pockets, he had felt a
thick substance that seemed like a folded paper, but the whereabouts of
which he had not been able to discover. He uttered a suppressed
exclamation of surprise presently, for he found the solution of this
difficulty. The paper was sewn between the inner lining and the outer
material of the waistcoat. He discovered this by examining the seam, a
part of which was sewn with coarse stitches, and a thread of a
different color to the rest. He ripped open this part of the seam, and
drew out the paper, which was so much bloodstained as to be
undecipherable to Mr. Dork's rather obtuse vision. "I'll say naught
about it, and keep it to show to th' coroner," he thought; "I'll lay
he'll make something out of it." The constable folded the document, and
secured it in a leathern pocket-book, a bulky receptacle, the very
aspect of which was wont to strike terror to rustic defaulters. "I'll
show it to the coroner," he thought, "and if aught particklar comes
out, I may get something for my trouble."
The village surgeon, having done his duty, prepared to leave the
crowded little room, where the gaping servants still lingered, as if
loath to tear themselves away from the ghastly figure of the dead man,
over which Mr. Morton had spread a patchwork coverlet, taken from the
bed in the chamber above. The softy had looked on quietly enough at the
dismal scene, watching the faces of the small assembly, and glancing
furtively from one to another beneath the shadow of his bushy red
eyebrows. His haggard face, always of a sickly white, seemed to-night
no more colorless than usual. His slow, whispering tones were not more
suppressed than they always were. If he had a hangdog manner and a
furtive glance, the manner and the glance were both common to him. No
one looked at him, no one heeded him. After the first question as to
the hour at which the trainer left the lodge had been asked and
answered, no one spoke to him. If he got in anybody's way, he was
pushed aside; if he said anything, nobody listened to him. The dead man
was the sole monarch of that dismal scene. It was to him they looked
with awe-stricken glances; it was of him they spoke in subdued
whispers. All their questions, their suggestions, their conjectures,
were about him, and him alone. There is this to be observed in the
physiology of every murder—that before the coroner's inquest the sole
object of public curiosity is the murdered man; while immediately after
that judicial investigation the tide of feeling turns, the dead man is
buried and forgotten, and the suspected murderer becomes the hero of
men's morbid imaginations.
John Mellish looked in at the door of the cottage to ask a few
questions.
"Have you found anything, Dork?" he asked.
"Nothing particklar, sir."
"Nothing that throws any light upon this business?"
"No, sir."
"You are going home, then, I suppose?"
"Yes, sir, I must be going back now; if you'll leave some one here
to watch—"
"Yes, yes," said John, "one of the servants shall stay."
"Very well, then, sir; I'll just take the names of the witnesses
that'll be examined at the inquest, and I'll go over and see the
coroner early to-morrow morning."
"The witnesses—ah! to be sure. Who will you want?"
Mr. Dork hesitated for a moment, rubbing the bristles upon his chin.
"Well, there's this man here, Hargraves, I think you called him," he
said presently, "we shall want him; for it seems he was the last that
saw the deceased alive, leastways as I can hear on yet; then we shall
want the gentleman as found the body, and the young man as was with him
when he heard the shot: the gentleman as found the body is the most
particklar of all, and I'll speak to him at once."
John Mellish turned round, fully expecting to see Mr. Prodder at his
elbow, where he had been some time before. John had a perfect
recollection of seeing the loosely-clad seafaring figure standing
behind him in the moonlight; but, in the terrible confusion of his
mind, he could not remember exactly when it was that he had last
seen the sailor: it might have been only five minutes before—it might
have been a quarter of an hour. John's ideas of time were annihilated
by the horror of the catastrophe which had marked this night with the
red brand of murder. It seemed to him as if he had been standing for
hours in the little cottage garden, with Reginald Lofthouse by his
side, listening to the low hum of the voices in the crowded room, and
waiting to see the end of the dreary business.
Mr. Dork looked about him in the moonlight, entirely bewildered by
the disappearance of Samuel Prodder.
"Why, where on earth has he gone?" exclaimed the constable. "We
must have him before the coroner. What'll Mr. Hayward say to me for
letting him slip through my fingers?"
"The man was here a quarter of an hour ago, so he can't be very far
off," suggested Mr. Lofthouse. "Does anybody know who he is?"
No; nobody knew anything about him. He had appeared as mysteriously
as if he had risen from the earth, to bring terror and confusion upon
it with the evil tidings which he bore. Stay! some one suddenly
remembered that he had been accompanied by Bill Jarvis, the young man
from the Reindeer, and that he had ordered the young man to drive his
trap to the north gates, and wait for him there.
The constable ran to the gates upon receiving this information; but
there was no vestige of the horse and gig, or of the young man. Samuel
Prodder had evidently taken advantage of the confusion, and had driven
off in the gig under cover of the general bewilderment.
"I'll tell you what I'll do, sir," said William Dork, addressing Mr.
Mellish; "if you'll lend me a horse and trap, I'll drive into
Doncaster, and see if this man's to be found at the Reindeer. We must
have him for a witness."
John Mellish assented to this arrangement. He left one of the grooms
to keep watch in the death-chamber, in company with Stephen Hargraves,
the softy; and, after bidding the surgeon good-night, walked slowly
homeward with his friends. The church clock was striking twelve as the
three gentlemen left the wood, and passed through the little iron
gateway on to the lawn.
"We had better not tell the ladies more than we are obliged to tell
them about this business," said John Mellish, as they approached the
house, where the lights were still burning in the hall and
drawing-room; "we shall only agitate them by letting them know the
worst."
"To be sure, to be sure, my boy," answered the colonel. "My poor
little Maggie always cries if she hears of anything of this kind; and
Lofthouse is almost as big a baby," added the soldier, glancing rather
contemptuously at his son-in-law, who had not spoken once during that
slow homeward walk.
John Mellish thought very little of the strange disappearance of
Captain Prodder. The man had objected to be summoned as a witness
perhaps, and had gone. It was only natural. He did not even know his
name; he only knew him as the mouth-piece of evil tidings, which had
shaken him to the very soul. That this man Conyers—this man of all
others, this man toward whom he had conceived a deeply-rooted aversion,
an unspoken horror—should have perished mysteriously by an unknown
hand, was an event so strange and appalling as to deprive him for a
time of all power of thought, all capability of reasoning. Who had
killed this man—this penniless, good-for-nothing trainer? Who could
have had any motive for such a deed? Who—The cold sweat broke out upon
his brow in the anguish of the thought.
Who had done this deed?
It was not the work of any poacher. No. It was very well for Colonel
Maddison, in his ignorance of antecedent facts, to account for it in
that manner; but John Mellish knew that he was wrong. James Conyers had
only been at the Park a week. He had had neither time nor opportunity
for making himself obnoxious; and, beyond that, he was not the man to
make himself obnoxious. He was a selfish, indolent rascal, who only
loved his own ease, and who would have allowed the young partridges to
be wired under his very nose. Who, then, had done this deed?
There was only one person who had any motive for wishing to be rid
of this man. One person who, made desperate by some great despair,
enmeshed perhaps by some net hellishly contrived by a villain, hopeless
of any means of extrication, in a moment of madness, might have—No! In
the face of every evidence that earth could offer—against reason,
against hearing, eyesight, judgment, and memory—he would say, as he
said now, No! She was innocent! She was innocent! She had looked
in her husband's face, the clear light had shone from her luminous
eyes, a stream of electric radiance penetrating straight to his
heart—and he had trusted her.
"I'll trust her at the worst," he thought. "If all living creatures
upon this wide earth joined their voices in one great cry of
upbraiding, I'd stand by her to the very end, and defy them."
Aurora and Mrs. Lofthouse had fallen asleep upon opposite sofas;
Mrs. Powell was walking softly up and down the long drawing-room,
waiting and watching—waiting for a fuller knowledge of this ruin which
had come upon her employer's household.
Mrs. Mellish sprang up suddenly at the sound of her husband's step
as he entered the drawing-room.
"Oh, John," she cried, running to him and laying her hands upon his
broad shoulders, "thank Heaven you are come back! Now tell me all—tell
me all, John. I am prepared to hear anything, no matter what. This is
no ordinary accident. The man who was hurt—"
Her eyes dilated as she looked at him with a glance of intelligence
that plainly said, "I can guess what has happened."
"The man was very seriously hurt, Lolly," her husband answered,
quietly.
"What man?"
"The trainer recommended to me by John Pastern."
She looked at him for a few moments in silence.
"He is dead?" she said, after that brief pause.
"He is."
Her head sank forward upon her breast, and she walked away, quietly
returning to the sofa from which she had arisen.
"I am very sorry for him," she said; "he was not a good man. I am
sorry he was not allowed time to repent of his wickedness."
"You knew him, then?" asked Mrs. Lofthouse, who had expressed
unbounded consternation at the trainer's death.
"Yes; he was in my father's service some years ago."
Mr. Lofthouse's carriage had been waiting ever since eleven o'clock,
and the rector's wife was only too glad to bid her friends good-night,
and to drive away from Mellish Park and its fatal associations; so,
though Colonel Maddison would have preferred stopping to smoke another
cheroot while he discussed the business with John Mellish, he was fain
to submit to feminine authority, and take his seat by his daughter's
side in the comfortable landau, which was an open or a close carriage,
as the convenience of its proprietor dictated. The vehicle rolled away
upon the smooth carriage-drive; the servants closed the hall-doors, and
lingered about, whispering to each other, in little groups in the
corridors and on the staircases, waiting until their master and
mistress should have retired for the night. It was difficult to think
that the business of life was to go on just the same though a murder
had been done upon the outskirts of the Park, and even the housekeeper,
a severe matron at ordinary times, yielded to the common influence, and
forgot to drive the maids to their dormitories in the gabled roof.
All was very quiet in the drawing-room where the visitors had left
their host and hostess to hug those ugly skeletons which are put away
in the presence of company. John Mellish walked slowly up and down the
room. Aurora sat staring vacantly at the guttering wax candles in the
old-fashioned silver branches; and Mrs. Powell, with her embroidery in
full working-order, threaded her needles and snipped away the fragments
of her delicate cotton as carefully as if there had been no such thing
as crime or trouble in the world, and no higher purpose in life than
the achievement of elaborate devices upon French cambric.
She paused now and then to utter some polite commonplace. She
regretted such an unpleasant catastrophe; she lamented the disagreeable
circumstances of the trainer's death; indeed, she in a manner inferred
that Mr. Conyers had shown himself wanting in good taste and respect
for his employer by the mode of his death; but the point to which she
recurred most frequently was the fact of Aurora's presence in the
grounds at the time of the murder.
"I so much regret that you should have been out of doors at the
time, my dear Mrs. Mellish," she said; "and, as I should imagine, from
the direction which you took on leaving the house, actually near the
place where the unfortunate man met his death. It will be so unpleasant
for you to have to appear at the inquest."
"Appear at the inquest!" cried John Mellish, stopping suddenly, and
turning fiercely upon the placid speaker. "Who says that my wife will
have to appear at the inquest?"
"I merely imagined it probable that—"
"Then you'd no business to imagine it, ma'am," retorted Mr. Mellish,
with no very great show of politeness. "My wife will not appear. Who
should ask her to do so? Who should wish her to do so? What has she to
do with to-night's business? or what does she know of it more than you
or I, or any one else in this house?"
Mrs. Powell shrugged her shoulders.
"I thought that, from Mrs. Mellish's previous knowledge of this
unfortunate person, she might be able to throw some light upon his
habits and associations," she suggested, mildly.
"Previous knowledge!" roared John. "What knowledge should Mrs.
Mellish have of her father's grooms? What interest should she take in
their habits or associations?"
"Stop," said Aurora, rising and laying her hand lightly on her
husband's shoulder. "My dear, impetuous John, why do you put yourself
into a passion about this business? If they choose to call me as a
witness, I will tell all I know about this man's death, which is
nothing but that I heard a shot fired while I was in the grounds."
She was very pale, but she spoke with a quiet determination, a calm,
resolute defiance of the worst that fate could reserve for her.
"I will tell anything that it is necessary to tell," she said; "I
care very little what."
With her hand still upon her husband's shoulder, she rested her head
on his breast like some weary child nestling in its only safe shelter.
Mrs. Powell rose, and gathered together her embroidery in a pretty,
lady-like receptacle of fragile wicker-work. She glided to the door,
selected her candlestick, and paused on the threshold to bid Mr. and
Mrs. Mellish good-night.
"I am sure you must need rest after this terrible affair," she
simpered, "so I will take the initiative. It is nearly one o'clock. Good-night."
If she had lived in the Thane of Cawdor's family, she would have
wished Macbeth and his wife a good night's rest after Duncan's murder,
and would have hoped they would sleep well; she would have courtesied
and simpered amid the tolling of alarm-bells, the clashing of vengeful
swords, and the blood-bedabbled visages of the drunken grooms. It must
have been the Scottish queen's companion who watched with the
truckling physician, and played the spy upon her mistress's remorseful
wanderings, and told how it was the conscience-stricken lady's habit to
do thus and thus; no one but a genteel mercenary would have been so
sleepless in the dead hours of the night, lying in wait for the
revelation of horrible secrets, the muttered clews to deadly mysteries.
"Thank God, she's gone at last!" cried John Mellish, as the door
closed very softly and very slowly upon Mrs. Powell. "I hate that
woman, Lolly."
Heaven knows I have never called John Mellish a hero; I have never
set him up as a model of manly perfection or infallible virtue; and, if
he is not faultless, if he has those flaws and blemishes which seem a
constituent part of our imperfect clay, I make no apology for him, but
trust him to the tender mercies of those who, not being quite
perfect themselves, will, I am sure, be merciful to him. He hated
those who hated his wife, or did her any wrong, however small. He loved
those who loved her. In the great power of his wide affection, all
self-esteem was annihilated. To love her was to love him; to serve her
was to do him treble service; to praise her was to make him vainer than
the vainest school-girl. He freely took upon his shoulders every debt
that she owed, whether of love or of hate; and he was ready to pay
either species of account to the utmost farthing, and with no mean
interest upon the sum total. "I hate that woman, Lolly," he repeated,
"and I shan't be able to stand her much longer."
Aurora did not answer him. She was silent for some moments, and when
she did speak it was evident that Mrs. Powell was very far away from
her thoughts.
"My poor John," she said, in a low, soft voice, whose melancholy
tenderness went straight to her husband's heart; "my dear, how happy we
were together for a little time! How very happy we were, my poor boy!"
"Always, Lolly," he answered, "always, my darling."
"No, no, no," said Aurora, suddenly; "only for a little while. What
a horrible fatality has pursued us! what a frightful curse has clung to
me! The curse of disobedience, John—the curse of Heaven upon my
disobedience. To think that this man should have been sent here, and
that he—"
She stopped, shivering violently, and clinging to the faithful
breast that sheltered her.
John Mellish quietly led her to her dressing-room, and placed her in
the care of her maid.
"Your mistress has been very much agitated by this night's
business," he said to the girl; "keep her as quiet as you possibly can."
Mrs. Mellish's bedroom, a comfortable and roomy apartment, with a
low ceiling and deep bay-windows, opened into a morning-room, in which
it was John's habit to read the newspapers and sporting periodicals,
while his wife wrote letters, drew pencil sketches of dogs and horses,
or played with her favorite Bow-wow. They had been very childish, and
idle, and happy in this pretty chintz-hung chamber; and, going into it
to-night in utter desolation of heart, Mr. Mellish felt his sorrows all
the more bitterly for the remembrance of those by-gone joys. The shaded
lamp was lighted on the morocco-covered writing-table, and glimmered
softly on the picture-frames, caressing the pretty modern paintings,
the simple, domestic-story pictures which adorned the subdued gray
walls. This wing of the old house had been refurnished for Aurora, and
there was not a chair or a table in the room that had not been chosen
by John Mellish with a special view to the comfort and the pleasure of
his wife. The upholsterer had found him a liberal employer, the painter
and the sculptor a noble patron. He had walked about the Royal Academy
with a catalogue and a pencil in his hand, choosing all the "pretty"
pictures for the beautification of his wife's rooms. A lady in a
scarlet riding-habit and three-cornered beaver hat, a white pony, and a
pack of greyhounds, a bit of stone terrace and sloping turf, a
flower-bed, and a fountain made poor John's idea of a pretty picture;
and he had half a dozen variations of such familiar subjects in his
spacious mansion. He sat down to-night, and looked hopelessly round the
pleasant chamber, wondering whether Aurora and he would ever be happy
again—wondering if this dark, mysterious, storm-threatening cloud
would ever pass from the horizon of his life, and leave the future
bright and clear.
"I have not been good enough," he thought; "I have intoxicated
myself with my happiness, and have made no return for it. What am I,
that I should have won the woman I love for my wife, while other men
are laying down the best desires of their hearts a willing sacrifice,
and going out to fight the battle for their fellow-men? What an
indolent, good-for-nothing wretch I have been! How blind, how
ungrateful, how undeserving!"
John Mellish buried his face in his broad hands, and repented of the
carelessly happy life which he had led for one-and-thirty thoughtless
years. He had been awakened from his unthinking bliss by a
thunder-clap, that had shattered the fairy castle of his happiness, and
laid it level with the ground; and in his simple faith he looked into
his own life for the cause of the ruin which had overtaken him. Yes, it
must be so; he had not deserved his happiness, he had not earned his
good fortune. Have you ever thought of this, ye simple country squires,
who give blankets and beef to your poor neighbors in the cruel
winter-time, who are good and gentle masters, faithful husbands, and
tender fathers, and who lounge away your easy lives in the pleasant
places of this beautiful earth? Have you ever thought that, when all
your good deeds have been gathered together and set in the balance, the
sum of them will be very small when set against the benefits you have
received? It will be a very small percentage which you will yield your
Master for the ten talents intrusted to your care. Remember John
Howard, fever-stricken and dying, Mrs. Fry, laboring in criminal
prisons, Florence Nightingale, in the bare hospital chambers, in the
close and noxious atmosphere among the dead and the dying. These are
the people who return cent per cent for the gifts intrusted to them.
These are the saints whose good deeds shine among the stars for ever
and ever; these are the indefatigable workers who, when the toil and
turmoil of the day is done, hear the Master's voice in the still
even-time welcoming them to His rest.
John Mellish, looking back at his life, humbly acknowledged that it
had been a comparatively useless one. He had distributed happiness to
the people who had come in his way, but he had never gone out of his
way to make people happy. I dare say that Dives was a liberal master to
his own servants, although he did not trouble himself to look after the
beggar who sat at his gates. The Israelite who sought instruction from
the lips of inspiration was willing to do his duty to his neighbor, but
had yet to learn the broad signification of that familiar epithet; and
poor John, like the rich young man, was ready to serve his Master
faithfully, but had yet to learn the manner of his service.
"If I could save her from the shadow of sorrow or disgrace, I
would start to-morrow barefoot on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem," he
thought. "What is there that I would not do for her? what sacrifice
would seem too great? what burden too heavy to bear?"
CHAPTER XXVI.
AT THE GOLDEN LION.
Mr. William Dork, the constable, reached Doncaster at about
quarter-past one o'clock upon the morning after the murder, and drove
straight to the Reindeer. That hotel had been closed for a couple of
hours, and it was only by the exercise of his authority that Mr. Dork
obtained access, and a hearing from the sleepy landlord. The young man
who had driven Mr. Prodder was found after considerable difficulty, and
came stumbling down the servants' staircase in a semi-somnolent state
to answer the constable's inquiries. He had driven the seafaring
gentleman, whose name he did not know, direct to the Doncaster Station,
in time to catch the mail-train, which started at 12.50. He had parted
with the gentleman at the door of the station three minutes before the
train started.
This was all the information that Mr. Dork could obtain. If he had
been a sharp London detective, he might have made his arrangements for
laying hands upon the fugitive sailor at the first station at which the
train stopped; but being merely a simple rural functionary, he
scratched his stubble head, and stared at the landlord of the Reindeer
in utter mental bewilderment.
"He was in a devil of a hurry, this chap," he muttered rather
sulkily. "What did he want to coot away for?"
The young man who had acted as charioteer could not answer this
question. He only knew that the seafaring gentleman had promised him
half a sovereign if he caught the mail-train, and that he had earned
his reward.
"Well, I suppose it a'n't so very particklar," said Mr. Dork,
sipping a glass of rum, which he had ordered for his refreshment.
"You'll have to appear to-morrow, and you can tell nigh as much as t'
other chap," he added, turning to the young man. "You was with him when
the shot were fired, and you warn't far when he found the body. You'll
have to appear and give evidence whenever the inquest's held. I doubt
if it'll be tomorrow, for there won't be much time to give notice to
the coroner."
Mr. Dork wrote the young man's name in his pocket-book, and the
landlord vouched for his being forthcoming when called upon. Having
done thus much, the constable left the inn, after drinking another
glass of rum, and refreshing John Mellish's horse with a handful of
oats and a drink of water. He drove at a brisk pace back to the Park
stables, delivered the horse and gig to the lad who had waited for his
coming, and returned to his comfortable little dwelling in the village
of Meslingham, about a mile from the Park gates.
I scarcely know how to describe that long, quiet, miserable day
which succeeded the night of the murder. Aurora Mellish lay in a dull
stupor, not able to lift her head from the pillows upon which it
rested, scarcely caring to raise her eyelids from the aching eyes they
sheltered. She was not ill, nor did she affect to be ill. She lay upon
the sofa in her dressing-room, attended by her maid, and visited at
intervals by John, who roamed hither and thither about the house and
grounds, talking to innumerable people, and always coming to the same
conclusion, namely, that the whole affair was a horrible mystery, and
that he heartily wished the inquest well over. He had visitors from
twenty miles round his house—for the evil news had spread far and wide
before noon—visitors who came to condole, and to sympathize, and
wonder, and speculate, and ask questions, until they fairly drove him
mad. But he bore all very patiently. He could tell them nothing except
that the business was as dark a mystery to him as it could be to them,
and that he had no hope of finding any solution to the ghastly enigma.
They one and all asked him the same question, "Had any one a motive for
killing this man?"
How could he answer them? He might have told them that if twenty
persons had had a powerful motive for killing James Conyers, it was
possible that a one-and-twentieth person, who had no motive, might have
done the deed. That species of argument which builds up any hypothesis
out of a series of probabilities may, after all, lead very often to
false conclusions.
Mr. Mellish did not attempt to argue the question. He was too weary
and sick at heart, too anxious for the inquest to be over, and he free
to carry Aurora away with him, and turn his back upon the familiar
place, which had been hateful to him ever since the trainer had crossed
its threshold.
"Yes, my darling," he said to his wife, as he bent over her pillow,
"I shall take you away to the south of France directly this business is
settled. You shall leave the scene of all past associations, all by
gone annoyances. We will begin the world afresh."
"God grant that we may be able to do so," Aurora answered, gravely.
"Ah! my dear, I can not tell you that I am sorry for this man's death.
If he had died nearly two years ago, when I thought he did, how much
misery he would have saved me!"
Once in the course of that long summer's afternoon Mr. Mellish
walked across the Park to the cottage at the north gates. He could not
repress a morbid desire to look upon the lifeless clay of the man whose
presence had caused him such vague disquietude, such instinctive
terror. He found the softy leaning on the gate of the little garden,
and one of the grooms standing at the door of the death-chamber.
"The inquest is to be held at the Golden Lion at ten o'clock
to-morrow morning," Mr. Mellish said to the men. "You, Hargraves, will
be wanted as a witness."
He walked into the darkened chamber. The groom understood what he
came for, and silently withdrew the white drapery that covered the
trainer's dead face.
Accustomed hands had done their awful duty. The strong limbs had
been straightened. The lower jaw, which had dropped in the agony of
sudden death, was supported by a linen bandage; the eyelids were closed
over the dark violet eyes; and the face, which had been beautiful in
life, was even yet more beautiful in the still solemnity of death. The
clay which in life had lacked so much in its lack of a beautiful soul
to light it from within, found its level in death. The worthless soul
was gone, and the physical perfection that remained had lost its only
blemish. The harmony of proportion, the exquisitely modelled features,
the charms of detail, all were left, and the face which James Conyers
carried to the grave was handsomer than that which had smiled insolent
defiance upon the world in the trainer's lifetime.
John Mellish stood for some minutes looking gravely at that marble
face.
"Poor fellow!" thought the generous-hearted young squire; "it was a
hard thing to die so young. I wish he had never come here. I wish Lolly
had confided in me, and let me made a bargain with this man to stop
away and keep her secret. Her secret! her father's secret more likely.
What secret could she have had that a groom was likely to discover? It
may have been some mercantile business, some commercial transaction of
Archibald Floyd's, by which the old man fell into his servant's power.
It would be only like my glorious Aurora to take the burden upon her
own shoulders, and to bear it bravely through every trial."
It was thus that John Mellish had often reasoned upon the mystery
which divided him from his wife. He could not bear to impute even the
shadow of evil to her. He could not endure to think of her as a poor,
helpless woman, entrapped into the power of a mean-spirited hireling,
who was only too willing to make his market out of her secrets. He
could not tolerate such an idea as this; and he sacrificed poor
Archibald Floyd's commercial integrity for the preservation of Aurora's
womanly dignity. Ah! how weak and imperfect a passion is this boundless
love! How ready to sacrifice others for that one loved object, which must be kept spotless in our imaginations, though a hecatomb of her
fellow-creatures are to be blackened and befouled for her
justification. If Othello could have established Desdemona's purity by
the sacrifice of the reputation of every lady in Cyprus, do you think
he would have spared the fair inhabitants of the friendly isle? No; he
would have branded every one of them with infamy, if he could, by so
doing, have rehabilitated the wife he loved. John Mellish would
not think ill of his wife. He resolutely shut his eyes to all damning
evidence. He clung with a desperate tenacity to his belief in her
purity, and only clung the more tenaciously as the proofs against her
became more numerous.
The inquest was held at a roadside inn within a quarter of a mile of
the north gates—a quiet little place, only frequented on market-days
by the country people going backward and forward between Doncaster and
the villages beyond Meslingham. The coroner and his jury sat in a long
bare room, in which the frequenters of the Golden Lion were wont to
play bowls in wet weather. The surgeon, Steeve Hargraves, Jarvis, the
young man from the Reindeer, William Dork, the constable, and Mr.
Mellish were the only witnesses called; but Colonel Maddison and Mr.
Lofthouse were both present during the brief proceedings.
The inquiry into the circumstances of the trainer's death occupied a
very short time. Nothing was elicited by the brief examination of the
witnesses which in any way led to the elucidation of the mystery. John
Mellish was the last person interrogated, and he answered the questions
put to him with prompt decision. There was one inquiry, however, which
he was unable to answer, although it was a very simple one. Mr.
Hayward, the coroner, anxious to discover so much of the history of the
dead man as might lead eventually to the discovery of his murderer,
asked Mr. Mellish if his trainer had been a bachelor or a married man.
"I really can not answer that question," said John; "I should
imagine that he was a single man, as neither he nor Mr. Pastern told me
anything to the contrary. Had he been married, he would have brought
his wife with him, I should suppose. My trainer, Langley, was married
when he entered my service, and his wife and children have occupied the
premises over my stables for some years."
"You infer, then, that James Conyers was unmarried?"
"Most decidedly."
"And it is your opinion that he had made no enemies in the
neighborhood?"
"It is next to impossible that he could have done so."
"To what cause, then, do you attribute his death?"
"To an unhappy accident. I can account for it in no other way. The
path through the wood is used as a public thoroughfare, and the whole
of the plantation is known to be infested with poachers. It was past
ten o'clock at night when the shot was heard. I should imagine that it
was fired by a poacher, whose eyes deceived him in the shadowy light."
The coroner shook his head. "You forget, Mr. Mellish," he said,
"that the cause of death was not an ordinary gunshot wound. The shot
heard was the report of a pistol, and the deceased was killed by a
pistol-bullet."
John Mellish was silent. He had spoken in good faith as to his
impression respecting the cause of the trainer's death. In the press
and hurry, the horror and confusion of the two last days, the smaller
details of the awful event had escaped his memory.
"Do you know any one among your servants, Mr. Mellish," asked the
coroner, "whom you would consider likely to commit an act of violence
of this kind? Have you any one of an especially vindictive character in
your household?"
"No," answered John, decisively; "I can answer for my servants as I
would for myself. They were all strangers to this man. What motive
could they possibly have had to seek his death?"
Mr Hayward rubbed his chin, and shook his head reflectively.
"There was this superannuated trainer whom you spoke of just now,
Mr. Mellish," he said. "I am well aware that the post of trainer in
your stables is rather a good thing. A man may save a good deal of
money out of his wages and perquisites with such a master as you. This
former trainer may not have liked being superseded by the deceased. He
may have felt some animus toward his successor."
"Langley!" cried John Mellish; "he is as good a fellow as ever
breathed. He was not superseded; he resigned the active part of his
work at his own wish, and he retained his full wages by mine. The poor
fellow has been confined to his bed for the last week."
"Humph!" muttered the coroner. "Then you can throw no light upon
this business, Mr. Mellish?"
"None whatever. I have written to Mr. Pastern, in whose stables the
deceased was employed, telling him of the circumstances of the
trainer's death, and begging him to forward the information to any
relative of the murdered man. I expect an answer by tomorrow's post,
and I shall be happy to submit that answer to you."
Prior to the examination of the witnesses, the jurymen had been
conducted to the north lodge, where they had beheld the mortal remains
of James Conyers. Mr. Morton had accompanied them, and had endeavored
to explain to them the direction which the bullet had taken, and the
manner in which, according to his own idea, the shot must have been
fired. The jurymen who had been impanneled to decide upon this awful
question were simple agriculturists and petty tradesmen, who grudged
the day's lost labor, and who were ready to accept any solution of the
mystery which might be suggested to them by the coroner. They hurried
back to the Golden Lion, listened deferentially to the evidence and to
Mr. Hayward's address, retired to an adjoining apartment, where they
remained in consultation for the space of about five minutes, and
whence they emerged with a very rambling form of decision, which Mr.
Hayward reduced into a verdict of wilful murder against some person or
persons unknown.
Very little had been said about the disappearance of the seafaring
man who had carried the tidings of the murder to Mr. Mellish's house.
Nobody for a moment imagined that the evidence of this missing witness
might have thrown some ray of light upon the mystery of the trainer's
death. The seafaring man had been engaged in conversation with the
young man from the Reindeer at the time when the shot was fired; he was
therefore not the actual murderer; and, strangely significant as his
hurried flight might have been to the acute intelligence of a
well-trained metropolitan police officer, no one among the rustic
officials present at the inquest attached any importance to the
circumstance. Nor had Aurora's name been once mentioned during the
brief proceedings. Nothing had transpired which in any way revealed her
previous acquaintance with James Conyers; and John Mellish drew a deep
breath, a long sigh of relief, as he left the Golden Lion and walked
homeward. Colonel Maddison, Mr. Lofthouse, and two or three other
gentlemen lingered on the threshold of the little inn talking to Mr.
Hayward, the coroner.
The inquest was terminated; the business was settled; and the mortal
remains of James Conyers could be carried to the grave at the pleasure
of his late employer. All was over. The mystery of death and the
secrets of life would be buried peacefully in the grave of the murdered
man, and John Mellish was free to carry his wife away with him
whithersoever he would. Free, have I said? No; for ever and for ever
the shadow of that bygone mystery would hang like a funeral pall
between himself and the woman he loved; for ever and for ever the
recollection of that ghastly undiscovered problem would haunt him in
sleeping and in waking, in the sunlight and in the darkness. His nobler
nature, triumphing again and again over the subtle influences of
damning suggestions and doubtful facts, was again and again shaken,
although never quite defeated. He fought the battle bravely, though it
was a very hard one, and it was to endure, perhaps, to the end of time.
That voiceless argument was for ever to be argued; the spirits of Faith
and Infidelity were for ever to be warring with each other in that
tortured breast until the end of life—until he died, perhaps, with his
head lying upon his wife's bosom, with his cheek fanned by her warm
breath, but ignorant to the very last of the real nature of that dark
something, that nameless and formless horror with which he had wrestled
so patiently and so long.
"I'll take her away with me," he thought; "and when we are divided
by a thousand miles of blue water from the scene of her secret, I will
fall on my knees before her, and beseech her to confide in me."
He passed by the north lodge with a shudder, and walked straight
along the high-road toward the principal entrance of the Park. He was
close to the gates when he heard a voice—a strange, suppressed voice,
calling feebly to him to stop. He turned round and saw the softy making
his way toward him with a slow, shambling run. Of all human beings,
except perhaps that one who now lay cold and motionless in the darkened
chamber at the north lodge, this Steeve Hargraves was the last whom Mr.
Mellish cared to see. He turned with an angry frown upon the softy, who
was wiping the perspiration from his pale face with the ragged end of
his neck-handkerchief, and panting hoarsely.
"What is the matter?" asked John. "What do you want with me?"
"It's th' coroner," gasped Stephen Hargraves—"th' coroner and Mr.
Lofthouse, th' parson—they want to speak to ye, sir, oop at the
Loi-on."
"What about?"
Steeve Hargraves gave a ghastly grin.
"I doant know, sir," he whispered. "It's hardly loikely they'd tell
me. There's summat oop, though, I'll lay, for Mr. Lofthouse was as
whoite as ashes, and seemed strangely oopset about summat. Would you be
pleased to step oop, and speak to 'un directly, sir? that was my
message."
"Yes, yes, I'll go," answered John, absently.
He had taken his hat off, and was passing his hand over his hot
forehead in a half-bewildered manner. He turned his back upon the
softy, and walked rapidly away, retracing his steps in the direction of
the roadside inn.
Stephen Hargraves stood staring after him until he was out of sight,
and then turned, and walked on slowly toward the turnstile leading into
the wood.
"I know what they've found," he muttered, "and
I know
what they want with him. He'll be some time oop there, so I'll slip
across the wood and tell her. Yes"—he paused, rubbing his hands, and
laughing a slow, voiceless laugh, which distorted his ugly face, and
made him horrible to look upon—yes, it will be nuts for me to tell
her."
CHAPTER XXVII.
"MY WIFE! MY WIFE! WHAT WIFE? I
HAVE NO WIFE."
The Golden Lion had reassumed its accustomed air of rustic
tranquillity when John Mellish returned to it. The jurymen had gone
back to their different avocations, glad to have finished the business
so easily; the villagers, who had hung about the inn to hear what they
could of the proceedings, were all dispersed; and the landlord was
eating his dinner, with his wife and family, in the comfortable little
bar-parlor. He put down his knife and fork as John entered the sanded
bar, and left his meal to receive such a distinguished visitor.
"Mr. Hayward and Mr. Lofthouse are in the coffee-room, sir," he
said. "Will you please to step this way?"
He opened the door of a carpeted room, furnished with shining
mahogany tables, and adorned by half a dozen gaudily colored prints of
the Doncaster meetings, the great match between Voltigeur and Flying
Dutchman, and other events which had won celebrity for the northern
race-course. The coroner was sitting at the bottom of one of the long
tables, with Mr. Lofthouse standing near him. William Dork, the
Meslingham constable, stood near the door, with his hat in his hand,
and with rather an alarmed expression dimly visible in his ruddy face.
Mr. Hayward and Mr. Lofthouse were both very pale.
One rapid glance was enough to show all this to John
Mellish—enough to show him this, and something more: a basin of
blood-stained water before the coroner, and an oblong piece of wet
paper, which lay under Mr. Hayward's clenched hand.
"What is the matter? Why did you send for me?" he asked.
Bewildered and alarmed as he had been by the message which had
summoned him hurriedly back to the inn, he was still more so by the
confusion evident in the coroner's manner as he answered this question.
"Pray sit down, Mr. Mellish," he said. "I—I—sent for
you—at—the—advice of Mr. Lofthouse, who—who, as a clergyman and a
family man, thought it incumbent upon me—"
Reginald Lofthouse laid his hand upon the coroner's arm with a
warning gesture. Mr. Hayward stopped for a moment, cleared his throat,
and then continued speaking, but in an altered tone.
"I have had occasion to reprimand William Dork for a breach of duty,
which, though I am aware it may have been, as he says, purely
unintentional and accidental—"
"It was indeed, sir," muttered the constable, submissively. "If I'd
ha' know'd—"
"The fact is, Mr. Mellish, that on the night of the murder, Dork, in
examining the clothes of the deceased, discovered a paper, which had
been concealed by the unhappy man between the outer material and the
lining of his waistcoat. This paper was so stained by the blood in
which the breast of the waistcoat was absolutely saturated that Dork
was unable to decipher a word of its contents. He therefore was quite
unaware of the importance of the paper; and, in the hurry and confusion
consequent on the very hard duty he has done for the last two days, he
forgot to produce it at the inquest. He had occasion to make some
memorandum in his pocket-book almost immediately after the verdict had
been given, and this circumstance recalled to his mind the existence of
the paper. He came immediately to me, and consulted me upon this very
awkward business. I examined the document, washed away a considerable
portion of the stains which had rendered it illegible, and have
contrived to decipher the greater part of it."
"The document is of some importance, then?" John asked.
He sat at a little distance from the table, with his head bent, and
his fingers rattling nervously against the side of his chair. He chafed
horribly at the coroner's pompous slowness. He suffered an agony of
fear and bewilderment. Why had they called him back? What was this
paper? How could it concern him?
"Yes," Mr. Hayward answered, "the document is certainly an important
one. I have shown it to Mr. Lofthouse, for the purpose of taking his
advice upon the subject. I have not shown it to Dork; but I detained
Dork in order that you may hear from him how and where the paper was
found, and why it was not produced at the inquest."
"Why should I ask any questions upon the subject?" cried John,
lifting his head suddenly, and looking from the coroner to the
clergyman. "How should this paper concern me?"
"I regret to say that it does concern you very materially, Mr.
Mellish," the rector answered, gently.
John's angry spirit revolted against that gentleness. What right had
they to speak to him like this? Why did they look at him with those
grave, pitying faces? Why did they drop their voices to that horrible
tone in which the bearers of evil tidings pave their way to the
announcement of some overwhelming calamity?
"Let me see this paper, then, if it concerns me," John said, very
carelessly. "Oh, my God!" he thought, "what is this misery that is
coming upon me? What is this hideous avalanche of trouble which is
slowly descending to crush me?"
"You do not wish to hear anything from Dork?" asked the coroner.
"No, no!" cried John, savagely. "I only want to see that paper." He
pointed as he spoke to the wet and blood-stained document under Mr.
Hayward's hand.
"You may go, then, Dork," the coroner said, quietly, "and be sure
you do not mention this business to any one. It is a matter of purely
private interest, and has no reference to the murder. You will
remember?"
"Yes, sir."
The constable bowed respectfully to the three gentlemen, and left
the room. He was very glad to be so well out of the business.
"They need n't have called me," he thought (to
call,
in the Northern patois, is to scold, to abuse). "They need n't
have said it was repri—wat's its name?—to keep the paper. I might
have burnt it if I liked, and said naught about it."
"Now," said John, rising and walking to the table as the door closed
upon the constable, "now, then, Mr. Hayward, let me see this paper. If
it concerns me, or any one connected with me, I have a right to see it."
"A right which I will not dispute," the coroner answered, gravely,
as he handed the blood-stained document to Mr. Mellish. "I only beg you
to believe in my heart-felt sympathy with you in this—"
"Let me alone!" cried John, waving the speaker away from him as he
snatched the paper from his hand; "let me alone! Can't you see that I'm
nearly mad?"
He walked to the window, and with his back to the coroner and Mr.
Lofthouse, examined the blotched and blotted document in his hands. He
stared for a long time at those blurred and half-illegible lines before
he became aware of their full meaning. But at last, at last, the
signification of that miserable paper grew clear to him, and with a
loud cry of anguish he dropped into the chair from which he had risen,
and covered his face with his strong right hand. He held the paper in
the left, crumpled and crushed by the convulsive pressure of his grasp.
"My God!" he ejaculated, after that first cry of anguish, "my God! I
never thought of this—I never could have imagined this."
Neither the coroner nor the clergyman spoke. What could they say to
him. Sympathetic words could have no power to lessen such a grief as
this; they would only fret and harass the strong man in his agony; it
was better to obey him; it was far better to let him alone.
He rose at last, after a silence that seemed long to the spectators
of his grief.
"Gentlemen," he said, in a loud, resolute voice that resounded
through the little room, "I give you my solemn word of honor that when
Archibald Floyd's daughter married me, she believed this man, James
Conyers, to be dead."
He struck his clenched fist upon the table, and looked with proud
defiance at the two men. Then, with his left hand, the hand that
grasped the blood-stained paper, thrust into his breast, he walked out
of the room. He walked out of the room, and out of the house, but not
homeward. A grassy lane opposite the Golden Lion led away to a great
waste of brown turf called Harper's Common. John Mellish walked slowly
along this lane, and out upon this quiet common-land, lonely even in
the broad summer daylight. As he closed the five-barred gate at the end
of the lane, and emerged upon the open waste, he seemed to shut the
door of the world that lay behind him, and to stand alone with his
great grief under the low, sunless summer sky. The dreary scene before
him, and the gray atmosphere above his head, seemed in strange harmony
with his grief. The reedy water-pools, unbroken by a ripple; the barren
verdure, burnt a dull grayish brown by the summer sun; the bloomless
heather, and the flowerless rushes—all things upon which he looked
took a dismal coloring from his own desolation, and seemed to make him
the more desolate. The spoiled child of fortune—the popular young
squire, who had never been contradicted in nearly two-and-thirty
years—the happy husband, whose pride in his wife had touched upon that
narrow boundary-line which separates the sublime from the
ridiculous—ah! whither had they fled, all these shadows of the happy
days that were gone? They had vanished away; they had fallen into the
black gulf of the cruel past. The monster who devours his children had
taken back these happy ones, and a desolate man was left in their
stead—a desolate man, who looked at a broad ditch and a rushy bank a
few paces from where he stood, and thought, "Was it I who leaped that
dike a month ago to gather forget-me-nots for my wife?"
He asked himself that question, reader, which we must all ask
ourselves sometimes. Was he really that creature of the irrevocable
past? Even as I write this I can see that common-land of which I
write—the low sky, the sunburnt grass, the reedy water-pools, the flat
landscape stretching far away on every side to regions that are strange
to me. I can recall every object in that simple scene—the atmosphere
of the sunless day, the sounds in the soft summer air, the voices of
the people near me; I can recall everything except—myself. This
miserable ego is the one thing that I can not bring back—the
one thing that seems strange to me—the one thing that I can scarcely
believe in. If I went back to that Northern common-land to-morrow, I
should recognize every hillock, every scrap of furze, or patch of
heather. The few years that have gone by since I saw it will have made
a scarcely perceptible difference in the features of the familiar
place. The slow changes of Nature, immutable in her harmonious law,
will have done their work according to that unalterable law; but this
wretched me has undergone so complete a change that, if you could bring
me back that alter ego of the past, I should be unable to
recognize the strange creature; and yet it is by no volcanic shocks, no
rending asunder of rocky masses, no great convulsions, or terrific
agonies of Nature, that the change has come about; it is rather by a
slow, monotonous wearing away of salient points, an imperceptible
adulteration of this or that constituent part, an addition here, and a
subtraction there, that the transformation takes place. It is hard to
make a man believe in the physiologists, who declare that the hand
which uses his pen to-day is not the same hand that guided the quill
with which he wrote seven years ago. He finds it very difficult to
believe this; but let him take out of some forgotten writing-desk,
thrust into a corner of his lumber-room, those letters which he wrote
seven years ago, and which were afterward returned to him by the lady
to whom they were addressed, and the question which he will ask
himself, as he reads the faded lines, will most surely be, "Was it I
who wrote this bosh? Was it I who called a lady with white eyelashes
'the guiding star of a lonely life?' Was it I who was 'inexpressibly
miserable, with one s, and looked 'forward with unutterable
anxiety to the party in Onslow Square, at which I once more should look
into those soft blue eyes?' What party in Onslow Square? Non mi
recordo. 'Those soft blue eyes' were garnished with white lashes,
and the lady to whom the letters were written jilted me to marry a rich
soap-boiler." Even the law takes cognizance of this wonderful
transformation. The debt which Smith contracts in 1850 is null and void
in 1857. The Smith of '50 may have been an extravagant rogue; the Smith
of '57 may be a conscientious man, who would not cheat his creditors of
a farthing. Shall Smith the second be called upon to pay the debts of
Smith the first? I leave that question to Smith's conscience and the
metaphysicians. Surely the same law should hold good in breach of
promise of marriage. Smith the first may have adored Miss Brown; Smith
the second may detest her. Shall Smith of 1857 be called upon to
perform the contract entered into by that other Smith of 1850? The
French criminal law goes still farther. The murderer whose crime
remains unsuspected for ten years can laugh at the police officers who
discover his guilt in the eleventh. Surely this must be because the
real murderer is no longer amenable to justice—because the hand that
struck the blow, and the brain that plotted the deed, are alike extinct.
Poor John Mellish, with the world of the past crumbled at his feet,
looked out at the blank future, and mourned for the people who were
dead and gone.
He flung himself at full length upon the stunted grass, and, taking
the crumpled paper from his breast, unfolded it and smoothed it our
before him.
It was a certificate of marriage—the certificate of a marriage
which had been solemnized at the parish church of Dover upon the 2d of
July, 1856, between James Conyers, bachelor, rough-rider, of London,
son of Joseph Conyers, stage-coachman, and Susan, his wife, and Aurora
Floyd, spinster, daughter of Archibald Floyd, banker, of Felden Woods,
Kent.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
AURORA'S FLIGHT.
Mrs. Mellish sat in her husband's room on the morning of the
inquest, among the guns and fishing-rods, the riding-boots and
hunting-whips, and all the paraphernalia of sportsmanship. She sat in a
capacious wicker-work arm-chair close to the open window, with her head
lying back upon the chintz-covered cushions, and her eyes wandering far
away across the lawn and flower-beds toward the winding pathway by
which it was likely John Mellish would return from the inquest at the
Golden Lion.
She had openly defied Mrs. Powell, and had locked the door of this
quiet chamber upon that lady's stereotyped civilities and sympathetic
simperings. She had locked the door upon the outer world, and she sat
alone in the pleasant window, the full-blown roses showering their
scented petals upon her lap with every breath of the summer breeze, and
the butterflies hovering about her. The old mastiff sat by her side,
with his heavy head lying on her lap, and his big dim eyes lifted to
her face. She sat alone, I have said; but Heaven knows she was not
companionless. Black care and corroding anxiety kept her faithful
company, and would not budge from her side. What companions are so
adhesive as trouble and sorrow? what associates so tenacious, what
friends so watchful and untiring? This wretched girl stood alone in the
centre of a sea of troubles, fearful to stretch out her hands to those
who loved her, lest she should drag them into that ocean which was
rising to overwhelm her.
"Oh, if I could suffer alone," she thought—"if I could suffer all
this misery alone, I think I would go through it to the last without
complaining; but the shame, the degradation, the anguish will come upon
others more heavily than upon me. What will they not suffer? what will
they not endure if the wicked madness of my youth should become known
to the world?"
Those others of whose possible grief and shame she thought with such
cruel torture were her father and John Mellish. Her love for her
husband had not lessened by one iota her love for that indulgent father
on whom the folly of her girlhood had brought such bitter suffering.
Her generous heart was wide enough for both. She had acknowledged no
"divided duty," and would have repudiated any encroachment of the new
affection upon the old. The great river of her love widened into an
ocean, and embraced a new shore with its mighty tide; but that far-away
source of childhood, from which affection first sprang in its soft
infantine purity, still gushed in crystal beauty from its unsullied
spring. She would perhaps scarcely have recognized the coldly-measured
affection of mad Lear's youngest daughter—the affection which could
divide itself with mathematical precision between father and husband.
Surely, love is too pure a sentiment to be so weighed in the balance.
Must we subtract something from the original sum when we are called
upon to meet a new demand? or has not affection rather some magic power
by which it can double its capital at any moment when there is a run
upon the bank? When Mrs. John Anderson becomes the mother of six
children, she does not say to her husband, "My dear John, I shall be
compelled to rob you of six-tenths of my affection in order to provide
for the little ones." No; the generous heart of the wife grows larger
to meet the claims upon the mother, as the girl's heart expanded with
the new affections of the wife. Every pang of grief which Aurora felt
for her husband's misery was doubled by the image of her father's
sorrow. She could not divide these two in her own mind. She loved
them, and was sorry for them, with an equal measure of love and sorrow.
"If—if the truth should be discovered at this inquest," she
thought, "I never can see my husband again; I can never look in his
face any more. I will run away to the end of the world, and hide myself
from him for ever."
She had tried to capitulate with her fate; she had endeavored to
escape the full measure of retribution, and she had failed. She had
done evil that good might come of it, in the face of that command which
says that all such evil-doing shall be wasted sin, useless iniquity.
She had deceived John Mellish, in the hope that the veil of deception
might never be rent in twain, that the truth might be undiscovered to
the end, and the man she loved spared from cruel shame and grief. But
the fruits of that foolish seed, sown long ago, in the day of her
disobedience, had grown up around her and hedged her in upon every
side, and she had been powerless to cut a pathway for herself through
the noxious weeds that her own hands had planted.
She sat with her watch in her hand, and her eyes wandered every now
and then from the gardens before her to the figures on the dial. John
Mellish had left the house at a little after nine o'clock, and it was
now nearly two. He had told her that the inquest would be over in a
couple of hours, and that he would hurry home directly it was finished
and tell her the result. What would be the result of that inquest? What
inquiries might be made? what evidence might, by some unhappy accident,
be produced to compromise or to betray her? She sat in a dull stupor,
waiting to receive her sentence. What would it be? Condemnation or
release? If her secret should escape detection—if James Conyers
should be allowed to carry the story of his brief married life to the
grave, what relief, what release for the wretched girl, whose worst sin
had been to mistake a bad man for a good one—the ignorant trustfulness
of a child who is ready to accept any shabby pilgrim for an exiled
nobleman or a prince in disguise.
It was half-past two when she was startled by the sound of a
shambling footstep upon the gravelled pathway underneath the veranda.
The footstep slowly shuffled on for a few paces, then paused, then
shuffled on again; and at last a face that she hated made itself
visible at the angle of the window opposite to that against which she
sat. It was the white face of the softy, which was poked cautiously
forward a few inches within the window-frame. The mastiff sprang up
with a growl, and made as if he would have flown at that ugly leering
face, which looked like one of the hideous decorations of a Gothic
building; but Aurora caught the animal's collar with both her hands,
and dragged him back.
"Be quiet, Bow-wow," she said; "quiet, boy, quiet."
She still held him with one firm hand, soothing him with the other.
"What do you want?" she asked, turning upon the softy with a cold, icy
grandeur of disdain, which made her look like Nero's wife defying her
false accusers. "What do you want with me? Your master is dead, and you
have no longer an excuse for coming here. You have been forbidden the
house and the grounds. If you forget this another time, I shall request
Mr. Mellish to remind you."
She lifted her disengaged hand, and laid it upon the window-sash;
she was going to close the window, when Stephen Hargraves stopped her.
"Don't be in such a hoorry," he said; "I want to speak to you. I've
come straight from th' inquest. I thought you might want to know all
about it. I coom out o' friendliness, though you did pay into me with
th' horsewhip."
Aurora's heart beat tempestuously against her aching breast. Ah!
what hard duty that poor heart had done lately; what icy burdens it had
borne, what horrible oppression of secrecy and terror had weighed upon
it, crushing out all hope and peace! An agony of suspense and dread
convulsed that tortured heart as the softy tempted her—tempted her to
ask him the issue of the inquest, that she might receive from his lips
the sentence of life or death. She little knew how much of her secret
this man had discovered; but she knew that he hated her, and that he
suspected enough to know his power of torturing her.
She lifted her proud head, and looked at him with a steady glance of
defiance. "I have told you that your presence is disagreeable," she
said. "Stand aside, and let me shut the window."
The softy grinned insolently, and, holding the window-frame with one
of his broad hands, put his head into the room. Aurora rose to leave
the window; but he laid the other hand upon her wrist, which shrunk
instinctively from contact with his hard, horny palm.
"I tell you I've got summat particklar to say to you," he whispered.
"You shall hear all about it. I was one of th' witnesses at th'
inquest, and I've been hangin' about ever since, and I know everything."
Aurora flung her head back disdainfully, and tried to wrench her
wrist from that strong grasp.
"Let me go," she said. "You shall suffer for this insolence when Mr.
Mellish returns."
"But he won't be back just yet a while," said the softy, grinning.
"He's gone back to the Golden Loi-on. Th' coroner and Mr. Lofthouse,
th' parson, sent for him to tell him summat—summat about you!"
hissed Stephen Hargraves, with his dry white lips close to Aurora's ear.
"What do you mean?" cried Mrs. Mellish, still writhing in the
softy's grasp—still restraining her dog from flying at him with her
disengaged hand; "what do you mean?"
"I mean what I say," answered Steeve Hargraves; "I mean that it's
all found out. They know everything; and they've sent for Mr. Mellish,
to tell him. They've sent for him to tell him what you was to him
that's dead."
A low wail broke from Aurora's lips. She had expected to hear this,
perhaps; she had, at any rate, dreaded it; she had only fought against
receiving the tidings from this man; but he had conquered her—he had
conquered her, as the dogged, obstinate nature, however base, will
always conquer the generous and impulsive soul. He had secured his
revenge, and had contrived to be the witness of her agony. He released
her wrist as he finished speaking, and looked at her—looked at her
with an insolently triumphant leer in his small eyes.
She drew herself up, proudly still—proudly and bravely in spite of
all, but with her face changed—changed from its former expression of
restless pain to the dull blankness of despair.
"They found th' certificate," said the softy. "He'd carried it about
with him sewed up in's waistco-at."
The certificate! Heaven have pity upon her girlish ignorance! She
had never thought of that; she had never remembered that miserable
scrap of paper which was the legal evidence of her folly. She had
dreaded the presence of that husband who had arisen, as if from the
grave, to pursue and torment her, but she had forgotten that other
evidence of the parish register, which might also arise against her at
any moment. She had feared the finding of something—some letter—some
picture—some accidental record among the possessions of the murdered
man, but she had never thought of this most conclusive evidence, this
most incontrovertible proof. She put her hand to her head, trying to
realize the full horror of her position. The certificate of her
marriage with her father's groom was in the hands of John Mellish.
"What will he think of me?" she thought. "How would he ever believe
me if I were to tell him that I had received what I thought positive
evidence of James Conyers' death a year before my second marriage? How could he believe in me? I have deceived him too cruelly to dare to
ask his confidence."
She looked about, trying to collect herself, trying to decide upon
what she ought to do, and in her bewilderment and agony forgot for a
moment the greedy eyes which were gloating upon her misery. But she
remembered herself presently, and, turning sternly upon Stephen
Hargraves, spoke to him with a voice which was singularly clear and
steady.
"You have told me all that you have to tell," she said; "be so good
as to get out of the way while I shut the window."
The softy drew back and allowed her to close the sashes; she bolted
the window, and drew down the Venetian blind, effectually shutting out
her spy, who crept away slowly and reluctantly toward the shrubbery,
through which he could make his way safely out of the grounds.
"I've paid her out," he muttered, as he shambled off under the
shelter of the young trees; "I've paid her out pretty tidy. It's almost
better than money," he said, laughing silently—"it's almost better
than money to pay off them kind of debts."
Aurora seated herself at John Mellish's desk, and wrote a few
hurried lines upon a sheet of paper that lay uppermost among letters
and bills.
"MY DEAR LOVE," she wrote, "I can not remain here to see you after the
discovery which has been made to-day. I am a miserable coward, and I
can not meet your altered looks, I can not hear your altered voice. I
have no hope that you can have any other feeling for me than contempt
and loathing. But on some future day, when I am far away from you, and
the bewilderment of my present misery has grown less, I will write, and
explain everything. Think of me mercifully if you can; and if you can
believe that, in the wicked concealments of the last few weeks, the
mainspring of my conduct has been my love for you, you will only
believe the truth. God bless you, my best and truest. The pain of
leaving you for ever is less than the pain of knowing that you had
ceased to love me. Good-by."
She lighted a taper, and sealed the envelope which contained this
letter.
"The spies who hate and watch me shall not read this," she thought,
as she wrote John's name upon the envelope.
She left the letter upon the desk, and, rising from her seat, looked
round the room—looked with a long, lingering gaze, that dwelt on each
familiar object. How happy she had been among all that masculine
litter! how happy with the man she had believed to be her husband! how
innocently happy before the coming down of that horrible storm-cloud
which had overwhelmed them both! She turned away with a shudder.
"I have brought disgrace and misery upon all who have loved me," she
thought. "If I had been less cowardly—if I had told the truth—all
this might have been avoided if I had confessed the truth to Talbot
Bulstrode."
She paused at the mention of that name.
"I will go to Talbot," she thought. "He is a good man. I will go to
him; I shall have no shame now in telling him all. He will advise me
what to do; he will break this discovery to my poor father."
Aurora had dimly foreseen this misery when she had spoken to Lucy
Bulstrode at Felden; she had dimly foreseen a day in which all would be
discovered, and she would fly to Lucy to ask for a shelter.
She looked at her watch.
"A quarter-past three," she said. "There is an express that leaves
Doncaster at five. I could walk the distance in the time."
She unlocked the door, and ran up stairs to her own rooms. There was
no one in the dressing-room, but her maid was in the bedroom, arranging
some dresses in a huge wardrobe.
Aurora selected her plainest bonnet and a large gray cloak, and
quietly put them on before the cheval glass in one of the pretty French
windows. The maid, busy with her own work, did not take any particular
notice of her mistress's actions; for Mrs. Mellish was accustomed to
wait upon herself, and disliked any officious attention.
"How pretty the rooms look!" Aurora thought, with a weary sigh; "how
simple and countrified! It was for me that the new furniture was
chosen, for me that the bath-room and conservatory were built."
She looked through the vista of brightly-carpeted rooms.
Would they ever seem as cheerful as they had once done to their
master? Would he still occupy them, or would he lock the doors, and
turn his back upon the old house in which he had lived such an
untroubled life for nearly two-and-thirty years?
"My poor boy, my poor boy!" she thought. "Why was I ever born to
bring such sorrow upon him?"
There was no egotism in her sorrow for his grief. She knew that he
had loved her, and she knew that this parting would be the bitterest
agony of his life; but in the depth of mortification which her own
womanly pride had undergone, she could not look beyond the present
shame of the discovery made that day to a future of happiness and
release.
"He will believe that I never loved him," she thought. "He will
believe that he was the dupe of a designing woman, who wished to regain
the position she had lost. What will he not think of me that is base
and horrible?"
The face which she saw in the glass was very pale and rigid; the
large dark eyes dry and lustrous, the lips drawn tightly down over the
white teeth.
"I look like a woman who could cut her throat in such a crisis as
this," she said. "How often I have wondered at the desperate deeds done
by women! I shall never wonder again."
She unlocked her dressing-case, and took a couple of bank-notes and
some loose gold from one of the drawers. She put these in her purse,
gathered her cloak about her, and walked toward the door.
She paused on the threshold to speak to her maid, who was still busy
in the inner room.
"I am going into the garden, Parsons," she said; "tell Mr. Mellish
that there is a letter for him in his study."
The room in which John kept his boots and racing-accounts was called
a "study" by the respectful household.
The dog Bow-wow lifted himself lazily from his tiger-skin rug as
Aurora crossed the hall, and came sniffing about her, and endeavored to
follow her out of the house. But she ordered him back to his rug, and
the submissive animal obeyed her, as he had often done in his youth,
when his young mistress used to throw her doll into the water at
Felden, and send the faithful mastiff to rescue that fair-haired waxen
favorite. He obeyed her now, but a little reluctantly; and he watched
her suspiciously as she descended the flight of steps before the door.
She walked at a rapid pace across the lawn, and into the shrubbery,
going steadily southward, though by that means she made her journey
longer; for the north lodge lay toward Doncaster. In her way through
the shrubbery she met two people, who walked closely side by side,
engrossed in a whispering conversation, and who both started and
changed countenance at seeing her. These two people were the softy and
Mrs. Powell.
"So," she thought, as she passed this strangely-matched pair, "my
two enemies are laying their heads together to plot my misery. It is
time that I left Mellish Park."
She went out of a little gate leading into some meadows. Beyond
these meadows there was a long shady lane that led behind the house to
Doncaster. It was a path rarely chosen by any of the household at the
Park, as it was the longest way to the town.
Aurora stopped at about a mile from the house which had been her
own, and looked back at the picturesque pile of building, half hidden
under the luxuriant growth of a couple of centuries.
"Good-by, dear home, in which I was an impostor and a cheat," she
said; "good-by for ever and for ever, my own dear love."
While Aurora uttered these few words of passionate farewell, John
Mellish lay upon the sun-burnt grass, staring absently at the still
water-pools under the gray sky—pitying her, praying for her, and
forgiving her from the depth of his honest heart.
CHAPTER XXIX.
JOHN MELLISH FINDS HIS HOME DESOLATE.
The sun was low in the western sky, and distant village clocks had
struck seven, when John Mellish walked slowly away from that lonely
waste of stunted grass called Harper's Common, and strolled homeward in
the peaceful evening.
The Yorkshire squire was still very pale. He walked with his head
bent forward upon his breast, and the hand that grasped the crumpled
paper thrust into the bosom of his waistcoat; but a hopeful light shone
in his eyes, and the rigid lines of his mouth had relaxed into a tender
smile—a smile of love and forgiveness. Yes, he had prayed for her, and
forgiven her, and he was at peace. He had pleaded her cause a hundred
times in the dull quiet of that summer's afternoon, and had excused
her, and forgiven her. Not lightly, Heaven is a witness; not without a
sharp and cruel struggle, that had rent his heart with tortures
undreamed of before.
This revelation of the past was such bitter shame to him—such
horrible degradation—such irrevocable infamy. His love, his idol, his
empress, his goddess—it was of her he thought. By what hellish
witchcraft had she been insnared into the degrading alliance recorded
in this miserable scrap of paper? The pride of five unsullied centuries
arose, fierce and ungovernable, in the breast of the country gentleman,
to resent this outrage upon the woman he loved. O God, had all his
glorification of her been the vain boasting of a fool who had not known
what he talked about? He was answerable to the world for the past as
well as for the present. He had made an altar for his idol, and had
cried aloud to all who came near her to kneel down and perform their
worship at her shrine, and he was answerable to these people for the
purity of their divinity. He could not think of her as less than the
idol which his love had made her—perfect, unsullied, unassailable.
Disgrace where she was concerned knew in his mind no degrees.
It was not his own humiliation he thought of when his face grew hot
as he imagined the talk there would be in the county if this fatal
indiscretion of Aurora's youth ever became generally known; it was the
thought of her shame that stung him to the heart. He never once
disturbed himself with any prevision of the ridicule which was likely
to fall upon him.
It was here that John Mellish and Talbot Bulstrode were so widely
different in their manner of loving and suffering. Talbot had sought a
wife who should reflect honor upon himself, and had fallen away from
Aurora at the first trial of his faith, shaken with horrible
apprehensions of his own danger. But John Mellish had submerged his
very identity into that of the woman he loved. She was his faith and
his worship, and it was for her glory that he wept in this cruel day of
shame. The wrong which he found so hard to forgive was not her wrong
against him, but that other and more fatal wrong against herself. I
have said that his affection was universal, and partook of all the
highest attributes of that sublime self-abnegation which we call Love.
The agony which he felt to-day was the agony which Archibald Floyd had
suffered years before. It was vicarious torture, endured for Aurora,
and not for himself; and, in his struggle against that sorrowful anger
which he felt for her folly, every one of her perfections took up arms
upon the side of his indignation, and fought against their own
mistress. Had she been less beautiful, less queenly, less generous,
great, and noble, he might have forgiven her that self-inflicted shame
more easily. But she was so perfect; and how could she—how could she?
He unfolded the wretched paper half a dozen times, and read and
reread every word of that commonplace legal document, before he could
convince himself that it was not some vile forgery, concocted by James
Conyers for purposes of extortion. But he prayed for her, and forgave
her. He pitied her with more than a mother's tender pity, with more
than a sorrowful father's anguish.
"My poor dear!" he said, "my poor dear! she was only a school-girl
when this certificate was first written—an innocent child, ready to
believe in any lies told her by a villain."
A dark frown obscured the Yorkshireman's brow as he thought this—a
frown that would have promised no good to Mr. James Conyers had not the
trainer passed out of the reach of all earthly good and evil.
"Will God have mercy upon a wretch like that?" thought John Mellish;
"will that man be forgiven for having brought disgrace and misery upon
a trusting girl?"
It will perhaps be wondered at that John Mellish, who suffered his
servants to rule in his household, and allowed his butler to dictate to
him what wines he should drink, who talked freely to his grooms, and
bade his trainer sit in his presence—it will be wondered at, perhaps,
that this frank, free-spoken, simple-mannered young man should have
felt so bitterly the shame of Aurora's unequal marriage. It was a
common saying in Doncaster that Squire Mellish, of the Park, had no
pride; that he would clap poor folks on the shoulder, and give them
good-day as he lounged in the quiet street; that he would sit upon the
corn-chandler's counter, slashing his hunting-whip upon those popular
tops—about which a legend was current, to the effect that they were
always cleaned with Champagne—and discussing the prospects of the
September meeting; and that there was not within the three Ridings a
better landlord or a nobler-hearted gentlemen. And all this was
perfectly true. John Mellish was entirely without personal pride; but
there was another pride, which was wholly inseparable from his
education and position, and this was the pride of caste. He was
strictly conservative; and although he was ready to talk to his good
friend the saddler, or his trusted retainer the groom, as freely as he
would have held converse with his equals, he would have opposed all the
strength of his authority against the saddler had that honest tradesman
attempted to stand for his native town, and would have annihilated the
groom with one angry flash of his bright blue eyes had the servant
infringed by so much as an inch upon the broad extent of territory that
separated him from his master.
The struggle was finished before John Mellish arose from the brown
turf, and turned toward the home which he had left early that morning,
ignorant of the great trouble that was to fall upon him, and only dimly
conscious of some dark foreboding of the coming of an unknown horror.
The struggle was over, and there was now only hope in his heart—the
hope of clasping his wife to his breast, and comforting her for all the
past. However bitterly he might feel the humiliation of this madness of
her ignorant girlhood, it was not for him to remind her of it; his duty
was to confront the world's slander or the world's ridicule, and oppose
his own breast to the storm, while she was shielded by the great
shelter of his love. His heart yearned for some peaceful foreign land,
in which his idol would be far away from all who could tell her secret,
and where she might reign once more glorious and unapproachable. He was
ready to impose any cheat upon the world, in his greediness of praise
and worship for her—for her. How tenderly he thought of her, walking
slowly homeward in that tranquil evening? He thought of her waiting to
hear from him the issue of the inquest, and he reproached himself for
his neglect when he remembered how long he had been absent.
"But my darling will scarcely be uneasy," he thought; "she will hear
all about the inquest from some one or other, and she will think that I
have gone into Doncaster on business. She will know nothing of the
finding of this detestable certificate. No one need know of it.
Lofthouse and Hayward are honorable men, and they will keep my poor
girl's secret; they will keep the secret of her foolish youth—my poor,
poor girl!"
He longed for that moment which he fancied so near—the moment in
which he should fold her in his arms, and say, "My dearest one, be at
peace; there is no longer any secret between us. Henceforth your
sorrows are my sorrows, and it is hard if I can not help you to carry
the load lightly. We are one, my dear. For the first time since our
wedding-day, we are truly united."
He expected to find Aurora in his own room, for she had declared her
intention of sitting there all day; and he ran across the broad lawn to
the rose-shadowed veranda that sheltered his favorite retreat. The
blind was drawn down and the window bolted, as Aurora had bolted it in
her wish to exclude Mr. Stephen Hargraves. He knocked at the window,
but there was no answer.
"Lolly has grown tired of waiting," he thought.
The second dinner-bell rang in the hall while Mr. Mellish lingered
outside this darkened window. The commonplace sound reminded him of his
social duties.
"I must wait till dinner is over, I suppose, before I talk to my
darling," he thought. "I must go through all the usual business, for
the edification of Mrs. Powell and the servants, before I can take my
darling to my breast, and set her mind at ease for ever."
John Mellish submitted himself to the indisputable force of those
ceremonial laws which we have made our masters, and he was prepared to
eat a dinner for which he had no appetite, and wait two hours for that
moment for whose coming his soul yearned, rather than provoke Mrs.
Powell's curiosity by any deviation from the common course of events.
The windows of the drawing-room were open, and he saw the glimmer of
a pale muslin dress at one of them. It belonged to Mrs. Powell, who was
sitting in a contemplative attitude, gazing at the evening sky.
She was not thinking of that western glory of pale crimson and
shining gold. She was thinking that if John Mellish cast off the wife
who had deceived him, and who had never legally been his wife, the
Yorkshire mansion would be a fine place to live in; a fine place for a
housekeeper who knew how to obtain influence over her master, and who
had the secret of his married life and of his wife's disgrace to help
her on to power.
"He's such a blind, besotted fool about her," thought the ensign's
widow, "that if he breaks with her to-morrow, he'll go on loving her
just the same, and he'll do anything to keep her secret. Let it work
which way it will, they're in my power—they're both in my power; and
I'm no longer a poor dependent, to be sent away, at a quarter's notice,
when it pleases them to be tired of me."
The bread of dependence is not a pleasant diet, but there are many
ways of eating the same food. Mrs. Powell's habit was to receive all
favors grudgingly, as she would have given, had it been her lot to give
instead of to receive. She measured others by her own narrow gauge, and
was powerless to comprehend or believe in the frank impulses of a
generous nature. She knew that she was a useless member of Poor John's
household, and that the young squire could have easily dispensed with
her presence. She knew, in short, that she was retained by reason of
Aurora's pity for her friendlessness; and, having neither gratitude nor
kindly feelings to give in return for her comfortable shelter, she
resented her own poverty of nature, and hated her entertainers for
their generosity. It is a property of these narrow natures so to resent
the attributes they can envy, but can not even understand; and Mrs.
Powell had been far more at ease in households in which she had been
treated as a lady-like drudge than she had ever been at Mellish Park,
where she was received as an equal and a guest. She had eaten the
bitter bread upon which she had lived so long in a bitter spirit, that
her whole nature had turned to gall from the influence of that
disagreeable diet. A moderately generous person can bestow a favor, and
bestow it well; but to receive a boon with perfect grace requires a far
nobler and more generous nature.
John Mellish approached the open window at which the ensign's widow
was seated, and looked into the room. Aurora was not there. The long
saloon seemed empty and desolate. The decorations of the temple looked
cold and dreary, for the deity was absent.
"No one here!" exclaimed Mr. Mellish, disconsolately.
"No one but me," murmured Mrs. Powell, with an accent of mild
deprecation.
"But where is my wife, ma'am?"
He said those two small words, "my wife," with such a tone of
resolute defiance that Mrs. Powell looked at him as he spoke, and
thought, "He has seen the certificate."
"Where is Aurora?" repeated John.
"I believe that Mrs. Mellish has gone out."
"Gone out! where?"
"You forget, sir," said the ensign's widow, reproachfully—"you
appear to forget your special request that I should abstain from all
supervision of Mrs. Mellish's arrangements. Prior to that request,
which I may venture to suggest was unnecessarily emphatic, I had
certainly considered myself as the humble individual chosen by Miss
Floyd's aunt, and invested by her with a species of authority over the
young lady's actions, in some manner responsible for—"
John Mellish chafed horribly under the merciless stream of long
words which Mrs. Powell poured upon his head.
"Talk about that at another time, for Heaven's sake, ma'am," he
said, impatiently. "I only want to know where my wife is. Two words
will tell me that, I suppose."
"I am sorry to say that I am unable to afford you any information
upon that subject," answered Mrs. Powell; "Mrs. Mellish quitted the
house at about half-past three o'clock, dressed for walking. I have not
seen her since."
Heaven forgive Aurora for the trouble it had been her lot to bring
upon those who best loved her. John's heart grew sick with terror at
this first failure of his hope. He had pictured her waiting to receive
him, ready to fall upon his breast in answer to his passionate cry,
"Aurora, come! come, dear love! the secret has been discovered, and is
forgiven."
"Somebody knows where my wife has gone, I suppose, Mrs. Powell?" he
said, fiercely, turning upon the ensign's widow in his wrathful sense
of disappointment and alarm. He was only a big child after all, with a
child's alternate hopefulness and despair; with a child's passionate
devotion for those he loved, and ignorant terror of danger to those
beloved ones.
"Mrs. Mellish may have made a confidante of Parsons," replied the
ensign's widow, "but she certainly did not enlighten me as to
her intended movements. Shall I ring the bell for Parsons?"
"If you please."
John Mellish stood upon the threshold of the French window, not
caring to enter the handsome chamber of which he was the master. Why
should he go into the house? It was no home for him without the woman
who had made it so dear and sacred—dear even in the darkest hour of
sorrow and anxiety, sacred even in despite of the trouble his love had
brought upon him.
The maid Parsons appeared in answer to a message sent by Mrs.
Powell, and John strode into the room, and interrogated her sharply as
to the departure of her mistress.
The girl could tell very little, except that Mrs. Mellish had said
that she was going into the garden, and that she had left a letter in
the study for the master of the house. Perhaps Mrs. Powell was even
better aware of the existence of this letter than the abigail herself.
She had crept stealthily into John's room after her interview with the
softy and her chance encounter with Aurora. She had found the letter
lying on the table, sealed with a crest and monogram that were engraved
upon a bloodstone worn by Mrs. Mellish among the trinkets on her
watch-chain. It was not possible, therefore, to manipulate this letter
with any safety, and Mrs. Powell had contented herself by guessing
darkly at its contents. The softy had told her of the fatal discovery
of the morning, and she instinctively comprehended the meaning of that
sealed letter. It was a letter of explanation and farewell,
perhaps—perhaps only of farewell.
John strode along the corridor that led to his favorite room. The
chamber was dimly lighted by the yellow evening sunlight which streamed
from between the Venetian blinds and drew golden bars upon the matted
floor. But even in that dusky and uncertain light he saw the white
patch upon the table, and sprang with tigerish haste upon the letter
his wife had left for him.
He drew up the Venetian blind, and stood in the embrasure of the
window, with the evening sunlight upon his face, reading Aurora's
letter. There was neither anger nor alarm visible in his face as he
read—only supreme love and supreme compassion.
"My poor darling! my poor girl! How could she think that there
could ever be such a word as good-by between us! Does she think so
lightly of my love as to believe that it could fail her now, when she
wants it most? Why, if that man had lived," he thought, his face
darkening with the memory of that unburied clay which yet lay in the
still chamber at the north lodge—"if that man had lived, and had
claimed her, and carried her away from me by the right of the paper in
my breast, I would have clung to her still; I would have followed
wherever he went, and would have lived near him, that she might have
known where to look for a defender from every wrong; I would have been
his servant, the willing servant and contented hanger-on of a boor, if
I could have served her by enduring his insolence. So, my dear, my
dear," murmured the young squire, with a tender smile, "it was worse
than foolish to write this letter to me, and even more useless than it
was cruel to run away from the man who would follow you to the farthest
end of this wide world."
He put the letter into his pocket, and took his hat from the table.
He was ready to start—he scarcely knew for what destination; for the
end of the world, perhaps—in his search for the woman he loved. But he
was going to Felden Woods before beginning the longer journey, as he
fully believed that Aurora would fly to her father in her foolish
terror.
"To think that anything could ever happen to change or lessen my
love for her," he said: "foolish girl! foolish girl!"
He rang for his servant, and ordered the hasty packing of his
smallest portmanteau. He was going to town for a day or two, and he was
going alone. He looked at his watch; it was only a quarter after eight,
and the mail left Doncaster at half-past twelve. There was plenty of
time, therefore; a great deal too much time for the feverish impatience
of Mr. Mellish, who would have chartered a special engine to convey
him, had the railway officials been willing. There were four long hours
during which he must wait, wearing out his heart in his anxiety to
follow the woman he loved—to take her to his breast, and comfort and
shelter her—to tell her that true love knows neither decrease nor
change. He ordered the dog-cart to be got ready for him at eleven
o'clock. There was a slow train that left Doncaster at ten; but, as it
reached London only ten minutes before the mail, it was scarcely
desirable as a conveyance. Yet, after the hour had passed for its
starting, Mr. Mellish reproached himself bitterly for that lost ten
minutes, and was tormented by a fancy that, through the loss of those
very ten minutes, he should miss the chance of an immediate meeting
with Aurora.
It was nine o'clock before he remembered the necessity of making
some pretence of sitting down to dinner. He took his place at the end
of the long table, and sent for Mrs. Powell, who appeared in answer to
his summons, and seated herself with a well-bred affectation of not
knowing that the dinner had been put off for an hour and a half.
"I'm sorry I've kept you so long, Mrs. Powell," he said, as he sent
the ensign's widow a ladleful of clear soup, that was of the
temperature of lemonade. "The truth is, that I—I—find I shall be
compelled to run up to town by the mail."
"Upon no unpleasant business, I hope?"
"Oh, dear, no; not at all. Mrs. Mellish has gone up to her father's
place, and—and—has requested me to follow her," added John, telling a
lie with considerable awkwardness, but with no very great remorse. He
did not speak again during dinner. He ate anything that his servants
put before him, and took a good deal of wine; but he ate and drank
alike unconsciously, and when the cloth had been removed, and he was
left alone with Mrs. Powell, he sat staring at the reflection of the
wax candles in the depths of the mahogany. It was only when the lady
gave a little ceremonial cough, and rose with the intention of
simpering out of the room, that he roused himself from his long
reverie, and looked up suddenly.
"Don't go just this moment, if you please, Mrs. Powell," he said.
"If you'll sit down again for a few minutes, I shall be glad. I wished
to say a word or two to you before I leave Mellish."
He rose as he spoke, and pointed to a chair. Mrs. Powell seated
herself, and looked at him earnestly, with an eager, viperish
earnestness, and a nervous movement of her thin lips.
"When you came here, Mrs. Powell," said John, gravely, "you came as
my wife's guest and as my wife's friend. I need scarcely say that you
could have had no better claim upon my friendship and hospitality. If
you had brought a regiment of dragoons with you as the condition of
your visit, they would have been welcome, for I believed that your
coming would give pleasure to my poor girl. If my wife had been
indebted to you for any word of kindness, for any look of affection, I
would have repaid that debt a thousand-fold, had it lain in my power to
do so by any service, however difficult. You would have lost nothing by
your love for my poor motherless girl if any devotion of mine could
have recompensed you for that tenderness. It was only reasonable that I
should look to you as the natural friend and counsellor of my darling,
and I did so honestly and confidently. Forgive me if I tell you that I
very soon discovered how much I had been mistaken in entertaining such
a hope. I soon saw that you were no friend to my wife."
"Mr. Mellish!"
"Oh, my dear madam, you think because I keep hunting-boots and guns
in the room I call my study, and because I remember no more of the
Latin that my tutor crammed into my head than the first line of the
Eton Syntax—you think, because I'm not clever, that I must needs be a
fool. That's your mistake, Mrs. Powell; I'm not clever enough to be a
fool, and I've just sufficient perception to see any danger that
assails those I love. You don't like my wife; you grudge her her youth,
and her beauty, and my foolish love for her; and you've watched, and
listened, and plotted—in a lady-like way, of course—to do her some
evil. Forgive me if I speak plainly. Where Aurora is concerned, I feel
very strongly. To hurt her little finger is to torture my whole body.
To stab her once is to stab me a hundred times. I have no wish to be
discourteous to a lady; I am only sorry that you have been unable to
love a poor girl who has rarely failed to win friends among those who
have known her. Let us part without animosity, but let us understand
each other for the first time. You do not like us, and it is better
that we should part before you learn to hate us."
The ensign's widow waited in utter stupefaction until Mr. Mellish
stopped, from want of breath, perhaps, rather than from want of words.
All her viperish nature rose in white defiance of him, as he walked
up and down the room, chafing himself into a fury with his recollection
of the wrong she had done him in not loving his wife.
"You are perhaps aware, Mr. Mellish," she said, after an awful
pause, "that under such circumstances the annual stipend due to me for
my services can not be expected to cease at your caprice; and that,
although you may turn me out of doors"—Mrs. Powell descended to this
very commonplace locution, and stooped to the vernacular in her desire
to be spiteful—"you must understand that you will be liable for my
salary until the expiration of—"
"Oh, pray do not imagine that I shall repudiate any claim you may
make upon me, Mrs. Powell," said John, eagerly; "Heaven knows it has
been no pleasure to me to speak as plainly as I have spoken to-night. I
will write a check for any amount you may consider proper as
compensation for this change in our arrangements. I might have been
more polite, perhaps; I might have told you that my wife and I think of
travelling on the Continent, and that we are, therefore, breaking up
our household. I have preferred telling you the plain truth. Forgive me
if I have wounded you."
Mrs. Powell rose, pale, menacing, terrible—terrible in the
intensity of her feeble wrath, and in the consciousness that she had
power to stab the heart of the man who had affronted her.
"You have merely anticipated my own intention, Mr. Mellish," she
said. "I could not possibly have remained a member of your household
after the very unpleasant circumstances that have lately transpired. My
worst wish is, that you may find yourself involved in no greater
trouble through your connection with Mr. Floyd's daughter. Let me add
one word of warning before I have the honor of wishing you
good-evening. Malicious people might be tempted to smile at your
enthusiastic mention of your 'wife,' remembering that the person to
whom you allude is Aurora Conyers, the widow of your groom, and that
she has never possessed any legal claim to the title you bestow upon
her."
If Mrs. Powell had been a man, she would have found her head in
contact with the Turkey carpet of John's dining-room before she could
have concluded this speech; as she was a woman, John Mellish stood
looking her full in the face, waiting till she had finished speaking.
But he bore the stab she inflicted without flinching under its cruel
pain, and he robbed her of the gratification she had hoped for. He did
not let her see his anguish.
"If Lofthouse has told her the secret," he cried, when the door had
closed upon Mrs. Powell, "I'll horsewhip him in the church."
CHAPTER XXX.
AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR.
Aurora found a civil railway official at the Doncaster station, who
was ready to take a ticket for her, and find her a comfortable seat in
an empty carriage; but before the train started a couple of sturdy
farmers took their seats upon the spring cushions opposite Mrs.
Mellish. They were wealthy gentlemen, who farmed their own land, and
travelled express; but they brought a powerful odor of the stable-yard
into the carriage, and they talked with that honest Northern twang
which always has a friendly sound to the writer of this story. Aurora,
with her veil drawn over her pale face, attracted very little of their
attention. They talked of farming-stock and horse-racing, and looked
out of the window every now and then to shrug their shoulders at
somebody else's agriculture.
I believe they were acquainted with the capabilities of every acre
of land between Doncaster and Harrow, and knew how it might have been
made "worth ten shillin' an acre more than it was, too, sir," as they
perpetually informed each other.
How wearisome their talk must have seemed to the poor lonely
creature who was running away from the man she loved—from the man who
loved her, and would love to the end of time.
"I did n't mean what I wrote," she thought. "My poor boy would
never love me less. His great heart is made up of unselfish love and
generous devotion. But he would be sorry for me; he would be so sorry!
He could never be proud of me again; he could never boast of me any
more. He would be always resenting some insult, or imagining some
slight. It would be too painful for him. He would see his wife pointed
at as the woman who had married her groom. He would be embroiled in a
hundred quarrels, a hundred miseries. I will make the only return that
I can ever make to him for his goodness to me—I will give him up, and
go away and hide myself from him for ever."
She tried to imagine what John's life would be without her. She
tried to think of him in some future time, when he should have worn out
his grief, and reconciled himself to her loss. But she could not, she
could not! She could not endure any image of him in which he was
separated from his love for her.
"How should I ever think of him without thinking of his love for
me?" she thought. "He loved me from the first moment in which he saw
me. I have never known him except as a lover—generous, pure, and true."
And in this mind Aurora watched the smaller stations, which looked
like mere streaks of whitened wood-work as the express tore past them,
though every one of them was a mile-stone upon the long road which was
separating her from the man she loved.
Ah! careless wives, who think it a small thing, perhaps, that your
husbands are honest and generous, constant and true, and who are apt to
grumble because your next-door neighbors have started a carriage, while
you are fain to be content with eighteen-penny airings in vehicles
procured at the nearest cab-stand, stop and think of this wretched
girl, who in this hour of desolation recalled a thousand little wrongs
she had done to her husband, and would have laid herself under his feet
to be walked over by him could she have thus atoned for her petty
tyrannies, her petty caprices. Think of her in her loneliness, with her
heart yearning to go back to the man she loved, and with her love
arrayed against herself, and pleading for him. She changed her mind a
hundred times during that four hours journey, sometimes thinking that
she would go back by the next train, and then again remembering that
her first impulse had been, perhaps, after all, only too correct, and
that John Mellish's heart had turned against her in the cruel
humiliation of that morning's discovery.
Have you ever tried to imagine the anger of a person whom you have
never seen angry? Have you ever called up the image of a face that has
never looked on you except in love and gentleness, and invested that
familiar countenance with the blank sternness of estrangement? Aurora
did this. She acted over and over again in her weary brain the scene
that might have taken place between her husband and herself. She
remembered that scene in the hackneyed stage-play, which everybody
affects to ridicule, and secretly weeps at. She remembered Mrs. Haller
and the Stranger, the children, the countess, the cottage, the jewels,
the parchments, and all the old familiar properties of that well-known
fifth act in the simple social tragedy, and she pictured to herself
John Mellish retiring into some distant country with his rheumatic
trainer Langley, and becoming a misanthropical hermit, after the manner
of the injured German.
What was her life to be henceforth? She shut her eyes upon that
blank future.
"I will go back to my father," she thought; "I will go back to him
again, as I went before. But this time there shall be no falsehoods, no
equivocations, and this time nothing shall tempt me to leave him again."
Amid all her perplexities, she clung to the thought that Lucy and
Talbot would help her. She would appeal to passionless Talbot Bulstrode
in behalf of her poor heart-broken John.
"Talbot will tell me what is right and honorable to be done," she
thought. "I will hold by what he says. He shall be the arbiter of my
future."
I do not believe that Aurora had ever entertained any very
passionate devotion for the handsome Cornishman, but it is very certain
that she had always respected him. It may be that any love she had felt
for him had grown out of that very respect, and that her reverence for
his character was made all the greater by the contrast between him and
the base-born schemer for whom her youth had been sacrificed. She had
submitted to the decree which had separated her from her affianced
lover, for she had believed in its justice; and she was ready now to
submit to any decision pronounced by the man in whose sense of honor
she had unbounded confidence.
She thought of all these things again, and again, and again, while
the farmers talked of sheep and turnips, of Thorley's food, Swedes, and
beans, and corn, and clover, and of mysterious diseases, which they
discussed gravely, under such terms as "red gum," "finger and toe,"
etc. They alternated this talk with a dash of turf scandal; and even in
the all-absorbing perplexities of her domestic sorrows Mrs. Mellish
could have turned fiercely upon these innocent farmers when they
pooh-poohed John's stable, and made light of the reputation of her
namesake the bay filly, and declared that no horse that came out of the
squire's stables was ever anything better than a plater or a screw.
The journey came to an end, only too quickly it seemed to
Aurora—too quickly, for every mile widened the gulf she had set
between herself and the home she loved; every moment only brought the
realization of her loss more fully home to her mind.
"I will abide by Talbot Bulstrode's advice," she kept saying to
herself; indeed, this thought was the only reed to which she clung in
her trouble. She was not a strong-minded woman. She had the generous,
impulsive nature which naturally turns to others for help and comfort.
Secretiveness had no part in her organization, and the one concealment
of her life had been a perpetual pain and grief to her.
It was past eight o'clock when she found herself alone amid the
bustle and confusion of the King's Cross terminus. She sent a porter
for a cab, and ordered the man to drive to Half-Moon street. It was
only a few days since she had met Lucy and Talbot at Felden Woods, and
she knew that Mr. Bulstrode and his wife were detained in town, waiting
for the prorogation of the House.
It was Saturday evening, and therefore a holiday for the young
advocate of the Cornish miners and their rights; but Talbot spent his
leisure among Blue-books and Parliamentary Minutes, and poor Lucy, who
might have been shining, a pale star, at some crowded conversazione,
was compelled to forego the pleasure of struggling upon the staircase
of one of those wise individuals who insist upon inviting their
acquaintances to pack themselves into the smallest given space
consistent with the preservation of life, and trample upon each other's
lace flounces and varnished boots with smiling equanimity. Perhaps, in
the universal fitness of things, even these fashionable evenings have a
certain solemn purpose, deeply hidden under considerable
surface-frivolity. It may be that they serve as moral gymnasia, in
which the thews and sinews of social amenity are racked and tortured,
with a view to their increased power of endurance. It is good for a man
to have his favorite corn trodden upon, and yet be compelled to smile
under the torture; and a woman may learn her first great lesson in
fortitude from the destruction of fifty guineas' worth of Mechlin, and
the necessity of assuring the destroyer that she is rather gratified
than otherwise by the sacrifice. Noblesse oblige. It is good to
"suffer and be strong." Cold coffee and tepid ice-cream may not be the
most strengthening or delightful of food, but there may be a moral diet
provided at these social gatherings which is not without its usefulness.
Lucy willingly abandoned her own delights, for she had that
lady-like appreciation of society which had been a part of her
education. Her placid nature knew no abnormal tendencies. She liked the
amusements that other girls of her position liked. She had none of the
eccentric predilections which had been so fatal to her cousin. She was
not like that lovely and illustrious Spanish lady who is said to love
the cirque better than the opera, and to have a more intense
appreciation of a series of flying plunges through tissue-paper-covered
hoops than of the most elaborate fioriture of tenor or soprano.
She gave up something, therefore, in resigning the stereotyped gayeties
of the London season. But, Heaven knows, it was very pleasant to her to
make the sacrifice. Her inclinations were fatted lambs, which she
offered willingly upon the altar of her idol. She was never happier
than when sitting by her husband's side, making extracts from the
Blue-books, to be quoted in some pamphlet that he was writing; or if
she was ever happier, it was only when she sat in the ladies' gallery,
straining her eyes athwart the floriated iron fretwork, which screened
her from any wandering glances of distracted members, in her vain
efforts to see her husband in his place on the government benches, and
very rarely seeing more than the crown of Mr. Bulstrode's hat.
She sat by Talbot's side upon this evening, busy with some petty
needle-work, and listening with patient attention to her husband's
perusal of the proof-sheets of his last pamphlet. It was a noble
specimen of the stately and ponderous style of writing, and it abounded
in crushing arguments and magnificent climaxes, which utterly
annihilated somebody (Lucy did n't exactly make out who), and most
incontrovertibly established something, though Mrs. Bulstrode could n't
quite understand what. It was enough for her that he had written that
wonderful composition, and that it was his rich baritone voice that
rolled out the studied Johnsonianisms. If he had pleased to read Greek
to her, she would have thought it pleasant to listen. Indeed, there
were pet passages of Homer which Mr. Bulstrode now and then loved to
recite to his wife, and which the little hypocrite pretended to admire.
No cloud had darkened the calm heaven of Lucy's married life. She loved
and was beloved. It was a part of her nature to love in a reverential
attitude, and she had no wish to approach nearer to her idol. To sit at
her sultan's feet, and replenish the rosewater in his chibouque;
to watch him while he slept, and wave the punkah above his
seraphic head; to love, and admire, and pray for him, made up the sum
of her heart's desire.
It was close upon nine o'clock when Mr. Bulstrode was interrupted in
the very crowning sentence of his peroration by a double knock at the
street-door. The houses in Half-Moon street are small, and Talbot flung
down his proof-sheet with a gesture expressive of considerable
irritation. Lucy looked up, half sympathizingly, half apologetically,
at her lord and master. She held herself in a manner responsible for
his ease and comfort.
"Who can it be, dear?" she murmured; "at such a time, too!"
"Some annoyance or other, I dare say, my dear," answered Talbot.
"But, whoever it is, I won't see them to-night. I suppose, Lucy, I've
given you a pretty fair idea of the effect of this upon my honorable
friend, the member for—"
Before Mr. Bulstrode could name the borough of which his honorable
friend was the representative, a servant announced that Mrs. Mellish
was waiting below to see the master of the house.
"Aurora!" exclaimed Lucy, starting from her seat and dropping the
fairy implements of her work in a little shower upon the carpet;
"Aurora!" It can't be, surely? Why, Talbot, she only went back to
Yorkshire a few days ago."
"Mr. and Mrs. Mellish are both below, I suppose?" Mr. Bulstrode said
to the servant.
"No, sir; Mrs. Mellish came alone in a cab from the station, I
believe. Mrs. Mellish is in the library, sir. I asked her to walk up
stairs, but she requested to see you alone, sir, if you please."
"I'll come directly," answered Talbot. "Tell Mrs. Mellish I will be
with her immediately."
The door closed upon the servant, and Lucy ran toward it, eager to
hurry to her cousin.
"Poor Aurora," she said; "there must be something wrong, surely.
Uncle Archibald has been taken ill, perhaps; he was not looking well
when we left Felden. I'll go to her, Talbot; I'm sure she'd like to see
me first."
"No, Lucy, no," answered Mr. Bulstrode, laying his hand upon the
door, and standing between it and his wife; "I had rather you did n't
see your cousin until I have seen her. It will be better for me to see
her first." His face was very grave, and his manner almost stern as he
said this. Lucy shrank from him as if he had wounded her. She
understood him very vaguely, it is true, but she understood that he had
some doubt or suspicion of her cousin, and, for the first time in his
life, Mr. Bulstrode saw an angry light kindled in his wife's blue eyes.
"Why should you prevent my seeing Aurora?" Lucy asked; "she is the
best and dearest girl in the world. Why should n't I see her?"
Talbot Bulstrode stared in blank amazement at his mutinous wife.
"Be reasonable, my dear Lucy," he answered very mildly; "I hope
always to be able to respect your cousin—as much as I respect you. But
if Mrs. Mellish leaves her husband in Yorkshire, and comes to London
without his permission—for he would never permit her to come
alone—she must explain to me why she does so before I can suffer my
wife to receive her."
Poor Lucy's fair head drooped under this reproof.
She remembered her last conversation with her cousin—that
conversation in which Aurora had spoken of some far-off day of trouble
that might bring her to ask for comfort and shelter in Half-Moon
street. Had the day of trouble come already?
"Was it wrong of Aurora to come alone, Talbot, dear?" Lucy asked,
meekly.
"Was it wrong?" repeated Mr. Bulstrode, fiercely. "Would it be wrong
for you to go tearing from here to Cornwall, child?"
He was irritated by the mere imagination of such an outrage, and he
looked at Lucy as if he half suspected her of some such intention.
"But Aurora may have had some very particular reason, dear?" pleaded
his wife.
"I can not imagine any reason powerful enough to justify such a
proceeding," answered Talbot; "but I shall be better able to judge of
that when I've heard what Mrs. Mellish has to say. Stay here, Lucy,
till I send for you."
"Yes, Talbot."
She obeyed as submissively as a child; but she lingered near the
door, after her husband had closed it upon her, with a mournful
yearning in her heart. She wanted to go to her cousin, and comfort her,
if she had need of comfort. She dreaded the effect of her husband's
cold and passionless manner upon Aurora's impressionable nature.
Mr. Bulstrode went down to the library to receive his kinswoman. It
would have been strange if he had failed to remember that Christmas
evening nearly two years before, upon which he had gone down to the
shadowy room at Felden, with every hope of his heart crushed, to ask
for comfort from the woman he loved. It would have been strange if, in
the brief interval that elapsed between his leaving the drawing-room
and entering the library, his mind had not flown back to that day of
desolation. If there was any infidelity to Lucy in that sharp thrill of
pain that pierced his heart as the old memory came back, the sin was as
short-lived as the agony which it brought with it. He was able now to
say, in all singleness of heart, "I made a wise choice, and I shall
never repent of having made it."
The library was a small apartment at the back of the dining-room. It
was dimly lighted, for Aurora had lowered the lamp. She did not want
Mr. Bulstrode to see her face.
"My dear Mrs. Mellish," said Talbot, gravely, "I am so surprised at
this visit that I scarcely know how to say I am glad to see you. I fear
something must have happened to cause your travelling alone. John is
ill, perhaps, or—"
He might have said much more if Aurora had not interrupted him by
casting herself upon her knees before him, and looking up at him with a
pale, agonized face, that seemed almost ghastly in the dim lamplight.
It was impossible to describe the look of horror that came over
Talbot Bulstrode's face as she did this. It was the Felden scene over
again. He came to her in the hope that she would justify herself, and
she tacitly acknowledged her humiliation.
She was a guilty woman, then—a guilty creature, whom it would be
his painful duty to cast out of that pure household. She was a poor,
lost, polluted wretch, who must not be admitted into the holy
atmosphere of a Christian gentleman's home.
"Mrs. Mellish! Mrs. Mellish!" he cried, "what is the meaning of
this? Why do you give me this horrible pain again? Why do you insist
upon humiliating yourself and me by such a scene as this?"
"Oh, Talbot, Talbot!" answered Aurora, "I come to you because you
are good and honorable. I am a desolate, wretched woman, and I want
your help—I want your advice. I will abide by it; I will, Talbot
Bulstrode, so help me Heaven!"
Her voice was broken by her sobs. In her passionate grief and
confusion she forgot that it was just possible such an appeal as this
might be rather bewildering in its effect upon Talbot. But perhaps,
even amid his bewilderment, the young Cornishman saw, or fancied he
saw, something in Aurora's manner which had no fellowship with guilt,
or with such guilt as he had at first dreaded. I imagine that it must
have been so, for his voice was softer and his manner kinder when he
next addressed her.
"Aurora," he said, "for pity's sake be calm. Why have you left
Mellish? What is the business in which I can help or advise you? Be
calm, my dear girl, and I will try and understand you. God knows how
much I wish to be a friend to you, for I stand in a brother's place,
you know, my dear, and demand a brother's right to question your
actions. I am sorry you came up to town alone, because such a step was
calculated to compromise you; but if you will be calm, and tell me why
you came, I may be able to understand your motives. Come, Aurora, try
and be calm."
She was still on her knees, sobbing hysterically. Talbot would have
summoned his wife to her assistance, but he could not bear to see the
two women associated until he had discovered the cause of Aurora's
agitation.
He poured some water into a glass, and gave it her. He placed her in
an easy-chair near the open window, and then walked up and down the
room until she had recovered herself.
"Talbot Bulstrode," she said, quietly, after a long pause, "I want
you to help me in the crisis of my life. I must be candid with you,
therefore, and tell you that which I would have died rather than tell
you two years ago. You remember the night upon which you left Felden?"
"Remember it? Yes, yes."
"The secret which separated us then, Talbot, was the one secret of
my life—the secret of my disobedience, the secret of my father's
sorrow. You asked me to give you an account of that one year which was
missing out of the history of my life. I could not do so, Talbot; I
would not! My pride revolted against the horrible humiliation. If
you had discovered the secret yourself, and had accused me of the
disgraceful truth, I would have attempted no denial; but with my own
lips to utter the hateful story—no, no, I could have borne anything
better than that. But now that my secret is common property, in the
keeping of police officers and stable-boys, I can afford to tell you
all. When I left the school in the Rue Saint Dominique, I ran away to
marry my father's groom!"
"Aurora!"
Talbot Bulstrode dropped into the chair nearest him, and sat blankly
staring at his wife's cousin. Was this the secret humiliation which had
prostrated her at his feet in the chamber at Felden Woods?
"Oh, Talbot, how could I have told you this? How can I tell you now
why I did this mad and wicked thing, blighting the happiness of my
youth by my own act, and bringing shame and grief upon my father? I had
no romantic, overwhelming love for this man. I can not plead the
excuses which some women urge for their madness. I had only a
school-girl's sentimental fancy for his dashing manner, only a
school-girl's frivolous admiration of his handsome face. I married him
because he had dark blue eyes, and long eye-lashes, and white teeth,
and brown hair. He had insinuated himself into a kind of intimacy with
me by bringing me all the empty gossip of the race-course, by extra
attention to my favorite horses, by rearing a litter of puppies for me.
All these things brought about associations between us; he was always
my companion in my rides; and he contrived before long to tell me his
story. Bah! why should I weary you with it?" cried Aurora, scornfully.
"He was a prince in disguise, of course; he was a gentleman's son; his
father had kept his hunters; he was at war with fortune; he had been
ill used and trampled down in the battle of life. His talk was
something to this effect, and I believed him. Why should I disbelieve
him? I had lived all my life in an atmosphere of truth. My governess
and I talked perpetually of the groom's romantic story. She was a silly
woman, and encouraged my folly; out of mere stupidity, I believe, and
with no suspicion of the mischief she was doing. We criticised the
groom's handsome face, his white hands, his aristocratic manners. I
mistook insolence for aristocracy; Heaven help me! And, as we saw
scarcely any society at that time, I compared my father's groom with
the few guests who came to Felden, and the town-bred impostor profited
by comparison with rustic gentlemen. Why should I stay to account to
you for my folly, Talbot Bulstrode? I could never succeed in doing so,
though I talked for a week; I can not account to myself for my madness.
I can only look back to that horrible time, and wonder why I was mad."
"My poor Aurora! my poor Aurora!"
He spoke in the pitying tone with which he might have comforted her
had she been a child. He was thinking of her in her childish ignorance,
exposed to the insidious advances of an unscrupulous schemer, and his
heart bled for the motherless girl.
"My father found some letters written by this man, and discovered
that his daughter had affianced herself to his groom. He made this
discovery while I was out riding with James Conyers—the groom's name
was Conyers—and when I came home there was a fearful scene between us.
I was mad enough and wicked enough to defend my conduct, and to
reproach my father with the illiberality of his sentiments. I went even
farther: I reminded him that the house of Floyd and Floyd had had a
very humble origin. He took me to Paris upon the following day. I
thought myself cruelly treated. I revolted against the ceremonial
monotony of the pension; I hated the studies, which were ten
times more difficult than anything I had ever experienced with my
governess; I suffered terribly from the conventual seclusion, for I had
been used to perfect freedom among the country roads round Felden; and,
amid all this, the groom pursued me with letters and messages, for he
had followed me to Paris, and spent his money recklessly in bribing the
servants and hangers-on of the school. He was playing for a high stake,
and he played so desperately that he won. I ran away from school, and
married him at Dover, within eight or nine hours of my escape from the
Rue Saint Dominique."
She buried her face in her hands, and was silent for some time.
"Heaven have pity upon my wretched ignorance!" she said at last;
"the illusion under which I had married this man ended in about a week.
At the end of that time I discovered that I was the victim of a
mercenary wretch, who meant to use me to the uttermost as a means of
wringing money from my father. For some time I submitted, and my father
paid, and paid dearly, for his daughter's folly; but he refused to
receive the man I had married, or to see me until I separated myself
from that man. He offered the groom an income on the condition of his
going to Australia, and resigning all association with me for ever. But
the man had a higher game to play. He wanted to bring about a
reconciliation with my father, and he thought that in due time that
tender father's resolution would have yielded to the force of his love.
It was little better than a year after our marriage that I made a
discovery that transformed me in one moment from a girl into a woman—a
revengeful woman, perhaps, Mr. Bulstrode. I discovered that I had been
wronged, deceived, and outraged by a wretch who laughed at my ignorant
confidence in him. I had learned to hate the man long before this
occurred; I had learned to despise his shallow trickeries, his insolent
pretensions; but I do not think I felt his deeper infamy the less
keenly for that. We were travelling in the south of France, my husband
playing the great gentleman upon my father's money, when this discovery
was made by me—or not by me; for it was forced upon me by a woman who
knew my story and pitied me. Within half an hour of obtaining this
knowledge, I acted upon it. I wrote to James Conyers, telling him I had
discovered that which gave me the right to call upon the law to release
me from him; and if I refrained from doing so, it was for my father's
sake, and not for his. I told him that so long as he left me
unmolested, and kept my secret, I would remit him money from time to
time. I told him that I left him to the associations he had chosen for
himself, and that my only prayer was that God, in His mercy, might
grant me complete forgetfulness of him. I left this letter for him with
the concierge, and quitted the hotel in such a manner as to
prevent his obtaining any trace of the way I had gone. I stopped in
Paris for a few days, waiting for a reply to a letter I had written to
my father, telling him that James Conyers was dead. Perhaps that was
the worst sin of my life, Talbot. I deceived my father; but I believed
that I was doing a wise and merciful thing in setting his mind at rest.
He would have never been happy so long as he had believed the man
lived. You understand all now, Talbot," she said mournfully. "You
remember the morning at Brighton?"
"Yes, yes; and the newspaper with the marked paragraph—the report
of the jockey's death."
"That report was false, Talbot Bulstrode," cried Aurora. "James
Conyers was not killed."
Talbot's face grew suddenly pale. He began to understand something
of the nature of that trouble which had brought Aurora to him.
"What! he was still living, then?" he said, anxiously.
"Yes; until the night before last?"
"But where—where has he been all this time?"
"During the last ten days at Mellish Park."
She told him the terrible story of the murder. The trainer's death
had not yet been reported in the London papers. She told him the
dreadful story; and then, looking up at him with an earnest, imploring
face, as she might have done had he been indeed her brother, she
entreated him to help and counsel her in this terrible hour of need.
"Teach me how to do what is best for my dear love," she said. "Don't
think of me or my happiness, Talbot; think only of him. I will make any
sacrifice; I will submit to anything. I want to atone to my poor dear
for all the misery I have brought upon him."
Talbot Bulstrode did not make any reply to this earnest appeal. The
administrative powers of his mind were at work; he was busy summing up
facts, and setting them before him, in order to grapple with them
fairly, and he had no attention to waste upon sentiment or emotion. He
was walking up and down the room, with his eyebrows knitted sternly
over his cold gray eyes, and his head bent.
"How many people know this secret, Aurora?" he asked, presently.
"I can't tell you that; but I fear it must be very generally known,"
answered Mrs. Mellish, with a shuddering recollection of the softy's
insolence. "I heard of the discovery that had been made from a
hanger-on of the stables, a man who hates me—a man whom I—had a
misunderstanding with."
"Have you any idea who it was that shot this Conyers?"
"No, not the least idea."
"You do not even guess at any one?"
"No."
Talbot took a few more turns up and down the small apartment, in
evident trouble and perplexity of mind. He left the room presently, and
called at the foot of the staircase:
"Lucy, my dear, come down to your cousin."
I'm afraid Mrs. Bulstrode must have been lurking somewhere about the
outside of the drawing-room door, for she flew down the stairs at the
sound of the strong voice, and was by her husband's side two or three
seconds after he had spoken.
"Oh, Talbot," she said, "how long you have been! I thought you would
never send for me. What has been the matter with my poor darling?"
"Go in to her, and comfort her, my dear," Mr. Bulstrode answered,
gravely; "she has had enough trouble, Heaven knows, poor girl. Don't
ask her any questions, Lucy, but make her as comfortable as you can,
and give her the best room you can find for her. She will stay with us
as long as she remains in town."
"Dear, dear Talbot," murmured the young Cornishman's grateful
worshipper, "how kind you are!"
"Kind!" cried Mr. Bulstrode; "she has need of friends, Lucy; and,
God knows, I will act the brother's part toward her, faithfully and
bravely. Yes, bravely," he added, raising his head with an almost
defiant gesture as he slowly ascended the stairs.
What was the dark cloud which he saw brooding so fatally over the
far horizon? He dared not think of what it was—he dared not even
acknowledge its presence; but there was a sense of trouble and horror
in his breast that told him the shadow was there.
Lucy Bulstrode ran into the library, and flung herself upon her
cousin's breast, and wept with her. She did not ask the nature of the
sorrow which had brought Aurora an unexpected and uninvited guest to
that modest little dwelling-house. She only knew that her cousin was in
trouble, and, that it was her happy privilege to offer her shelter and
consolation. She would have fought a sturdy battle in defence of this
privilege; but she adored her husband for the generosity which had
granted it to her without a struggle. For the first time in her life,
poor, gentle Lucy took a new position with her cousin. It was her turn
to protect Aurora; it was her turn to display a pretty motherly
tenderness for the desolate creature whose aching head rested on her
bosom.
The West-End clocks were striking three, in the dead middle of the
night, when Mrs. Mellish fell into a feverish slumber, even in her
sleep repeating again and again, "My poor John! my poor, dear love!
what will become of him! my own faithful darling!"
CHAPTER XXXI.
TALBOT BULSTRODE'S ADVICE.
Talbot Bulstrode went out early upon the quiet Sunday morning after
Aurora's arrival, and walked down to the Telegraph Company's Office at
Charing Cross, whence he despatched a message to Mr. John Mellish. It
was a very brief message, only telling Mr. Mellish to come to town
without delay, and that he would find Aurora in Half-Moon street. Mr.
Bulstrode walked quietly homeward in the morning sunshine after having
performed this duty. Even the London streets were bright and dewy in
that early sunlight, for it was only a little after seven o'clock, and
the fresh morning breezes came sweeping over the house-tops, bringing
health and purity from Shooter's Hill and Highgate, Streatham and
Barnsbury, Richmond and Hampstead. The white morning mists were slowly
melting from the worn grass in the Green Park; and weary creatures, who
had had no better shelter than the quiet sky, were creeping away to
find such wretched resting-places as they might, in that free city, in
which to sit for an unreasonable time upon a door-step, or to ask a
rich citizen for the price of a loaf, is to commit an indictable
offence.
Surely it was impossible for any young legislator not quite worn
out by a life-long struggle with the time which was never meant to be
set right—surely it was impossible for any fresh-hearted, prosperous
young Liberal to walk through those quiet streets without thinking of
these things. Talbot Bulstrode thought very earnestly and very
mournfully. To what end were his labors, after all? He was fighting for
a handful of Cornish miners; doing battle with the rampant spirit of
circumlocution for the sake of a few benighted wretches, buried in the
darkness of a black abyss of ignorance a hundred times deeper and
darker than the material obscurities in which they labored. He was
working his best and his hardest that these men might be taught, in
some easy, unambitious manner, the simplest elements of Christian love
and Christian duty. He was working for these poor far-away creatures,
in their forgotten corner of the earth; and here, around and about him,
was ignorance more terrible, because, hand in hand with ignorance of
all good, there was the fatal experience of all evil. The simple
Cornish miner who uses his pickaxe in the region of his friend's skull
when he wishes to enforce an argument, does so because he knows no
other species of emphasis. But in the London universities of crime,
knavery, and vice, and violence, and sin matriculate and graduate day
by day, to take their degrees in the felon's dock or on the scaffold.
How could he be otherwise than sorrowful, thinking of these things?
Were Sodom and Gomorrah worse than this city, in which there were yet
so many good and earnest men laboring patiently day by day, and taking
little rest? Was the great accumulation of evil so heavy that it rolled
for ever back upon these untiring Sisyphuses? Or did they make some
imperceptible advance toward the mountain-top, despite of all
discouragement?
With this weary question debating itself in his brain, Mr. Bulstrode
walked along Piccadilly toward the comfortable bachelor's quarters,
whose most commonplace attributes Lucy had turned to favor and to
prettiness; but at the door of the Gloucester Coffee-house Talbot
paused to stare absently at a nervous-looking chestnut mare, who
insisted upon going through several lively performances upon her hind
legs, very much to the annoyance of an unshaven ostler, and not
particularly to the advantage of a smart little dog-cart to which she
was harnessed.
"You need n't pull her mouth to pieces, my man," cried a voice from
the doorway of the hotel; "use her gently, and she'll soon quiet
herself. Steady, my girl, steady!" added the owner of this voice,
walking to the dog-cart as he spoke.
Talbot had good reason to stop short, for this gentleman was Mr.
John Mellish, whose pale face, and loose, disordered hair betokened a
sleepless night.
He was going to spring into the dog-cart when his old friend tapped
him on the shoulder.
"This is rather a lucky accident, John, for you're the very person I
want to see," said Mr. Bulstrode. "I've just telegraphed to you."
John Mellish stared with a blank face.
"Don't hinder me, please," he said; I'll talk to you by and by. I'll
call upon you in a day or two. I'm just off to Felden. I've only been
in town an hour and a half, and should have gone down before if I had
not been afraid of knocking up the family."
He made another attempt to get into the vehicle, but Talbot caught
him by the arm.
"You need n't go to Felden," he said; your wife's much nearer."
"Eh?"
"She's at my house. Come and have some breakfast."
There was no shadow upon Talbot Bulstrode's mind as his old
school-fellow caught him by the hand, and nearly dislocated his wrist
in a paroxysm of joy and gratitude. It was impossible for him to look
beyond that sudden burst of sunshine upon John's face. If Mr. Mellish
had been separated from his wife for ten years, and had just returned
from the Antipodes for the sole purpose of seeing her again, he could
scarcely have appeared more delighted at the prospect of a speedy
meeting.
"Aurora here!" he said; "at your house? My dear old fellow, you
can't mean it. But, of course, I ought to have known she'd come to you.
She could n't have done anything better or wiser, after having been so
foolish as to doubt me."
"She came to me for advice, John. She wanted me to advise her how to
act for your happiness—yours, you great Yorkshireman, and not her own."
"Bless her noble heart!" cried Mr. Mellish, huskily. "And you told
her—"
"I told her nothing, my dear fellow; but I tell you to take your
lawyer down to Doctor's Commons with you to-morrow morning, get a new
license, and marry your wife for the second time, in some quiet little
out-of-the-way church in the city."
Aurora had risen very early upon that peaceful Sunday morning. The
few hours of feverish and fitful sleep had brought very little comfort
to her. She stood with her weary head leaning against the window-frame,
and looked hopelessly out into the empty London street. She looked out
into the desolate beginning of a new life, the blank uncertainty of an
unknown future. All the minor miseries peculiar to a toilet in a
strange room were doubly miserable to her. Lucy had brought the poor
luggageless traveller all the paraphernalia of the toilet-table, and
had arranged everything with her own busy hands. But the most
insignificant trifle that Aurora touched in her cousin's chamber
brought back the memory of some costly toy chosen for her by her
husband. She had travelled in her white morning-dress, and the soft
lace and muslin were none the fresher for her journey; but as two of
Lucy's dresses joined together would have scarcely fitted her stately
cousin, Mrs. Mellish was fain to be content with her limp muslin. What
did it matter? The loving eyes which noted every shred of ribbon, every
morsel of lace, every fold of her garments, were, perhaps, never to
look upon her again. She twisted her hair into a careless mass at the
back of her head, and had completed her toilet when Lucy came to the
door, tenderly anxious to know how she had slept.
"I will abide by Talbot's decision," she repeated to herself again
and again. "If he says it is best for my dear that we should part, I
will go away for ever. I will ask my father to take me far away, and my
poor darling shall not even know where I have gone. I will be true in
what I do, and will do it thoroughly."
She looked to Talbot Bulstrode as a wise judge, to whose sentence
she would be willing to submit. Perhaps she did this because her own
heart kept for ever repeating, "Go back to the man who loves you. Go
back, go back! There is no wrong you can do him so bitter as to desert
him. There is no unhappiness you can bring upon him equal to the
unhappiness of losing you. Let me be your guide. Go back, go
back!"
But this selfish monitor must not be listened to. How bitterly this
poor girl, so old in experience of sorrow, remembered the selfish sin
of her mad marriage! She had refused to sacrifice a school-girl's
foolish delusion; she had disobeyed the father who had given her
seventeen years of patient love and devotion; and she looked at all the
misery of her youth as the fatal growth of this evil seed, so
rebelliously sown. Surely such a lesson was not to be altogether
unheeded! Surely it was powerful enough to teach her the duty of
sacrifice! It was this thought that steeled her against the pleadings
of her own affection. It was for this that she looked to Talbot
Bulstrode as the arbiter of her future. Had she been a Roman Catholic,
she would have gone to her confessor, and appealed to a priest—who,
having no social ties of his own, must, of course, be the best judge of
all the duties involved in domestic relations—for comfort and succor;
but, being of another faith, she went to the man whom she most
respected, and who, being a husband himself, might, as she thought, be
able to comprehend the duty that was due to her husband.
She went down stairs with Lucy into a little inner room upon the
drawing-room floor—a snug apartment, opening into a mite of a
conservatory. It was Mr. and Mrs. Bulstrode's habit to breakfast in
this cosy little chamber rather than in that awful temple of slippery
morocco, funereal bronze, and ghastly mahogany, which upholsterers
insist upon as the only legitimate place in which an Englishman may
take his meals. Lucy loved to sit opposite her husband at the small
round table, and minister to his morning appetite from her pretty
breakfast equipage of silver and china. She knew—to the smallest
weight employed at Apothecaries' Hall, I think—how much sugar Mr.
Bulstrode liked in his tea. She poured the cream into his cup as
carefully as if she had been making up a prescription. He took the
simple beverage in a great shallow breakfast-cup of fragile turquoise
Sevres, that had cost seven guineas, and had been made for Madame du
Barry, the rococo merchant had told Talbot. (Had his customer
been a lady, I fear Marie Antoinette would have been described as the
original possessor of the porcelain.) Mrs. Bulstrode loved to minister
to her husband. She picked the bloated livers of martyred geese out of
the Strasburgh pies for his delectation; she spread the butter upon his
dry toast, and pampered and waited on him, serving him as only such
women serve their idols. But this morning she had her cousin's sorrows
to comfort, and she established Aurora in a capacious chintz-covered
easy-chair on the threshold of the conservatory, and seated herself at
her feet.
"My poor, pale darling," she said, tenderly, "what can I do to bring
the roses back to your cheeks?"
"Love me, and pity me, dear," Aurora answered, gravely, "but don't
ask me any questions."
The two women sat thus for some time, Aurora's handsome head bent
over Lucy's fair face, and her hand clasped in both Lucy's hands. They
talked very little, and only spoke then of indifferent matters, or of
Lucy's happiness and Talbot's parliamentary career. The little clock
over the chimney-piece struck the quarter before eight; they were very
early, these unfashionable people; and a minute afterward Mrs.
Bulstrode heard her husband's step upon the stairs, returning from his
ante-breakfast walk. It was his habit to take a constitutional stroll
in the Green Park now and then, so Lucy had thought nothing of this
early excursion.
"Talbot has let himself in with his latchkey," said Mrs. Bulstrode,
"and I may pour out the tea, Aurora. But listen, dear; I think there's
some one with him."
There was no need to bid Aurora listen; she had started from her low
seat, and stood erect and motionless, breathing in a quick, agitated
manner, and looking toward the door. Besides Talbot Bulstrode's step
there was another, quicker and heavier—a step she knew so well.
The door was opened, and Talbot entered the room, followed by a
visitor, who pushed aside his host with very little attention to the
laws of civilized society, and, indeed, nearly drove Mr. Bulstrode
backward into a gilded basket of flowers. But this stalwart John
Mellish had no intention of being unmannerly or brutal. He pushed aside
his friend only as he would have pushed, or tried to push, aside a
regiment of soldiers with fixed bayonets, or a Lancaster gun, or a
raging ocean, or any other impediment that had come between him and
Aurora. He had her in his arms before she could even cry his name aloud
in her glad surprise, and in another moment she was sobbing on his
breast.
"My darling! my pet! my own!" he cried, smoothing her dark hair with
his broad hand, and blessing her, and weeping over her—"my own love!
How could you do this? how could you wrong me so much? My own precious
darling! had you learned to know me no better than this in all
our happy married life?"
"I came to ask Talbot's advice, John," she said, earnestly, "and I
mean to abide by it, however cruel it may seem."
Mr. Bulstrode smiled gravely as he watched these two foolish people.
He was very much pleased with his part in the little domestic drama,
and he contemplated them with a sublime consciousness of being the
author of all this happiness; for they were happy. The poet has said,
there are some moments—very rare, very precious, very brief—which
stand by themselves, and have their perfect fulness of joy within their
own fleeting span, taking nothing from the past, demanding nothing of
the future. Had John and Aurora known that they were to be separated by
the breadth of Europe for the remainder of their several lives, they
would not the less have wept joyful tears at the pure blissfulness of
this meeting.
"You asked me for my advice, Aurora," said Talbot, "and I bring it
to you. Let the past die with the man who died the other night. The
future is not yours to dispose of; it belongs to your husband, John
Mellish."
Having delivered himself of these oracular sentences, Mr. Bulstrode
seated himself at the breakfast-table, and looked into the mysterious
and cavernous interior of a raised pie with such an intent gaze that it
seemed as if he never meant to look out of it. He devoted so many
minutes to this serious contemplation that by the time he looked up
again Aurora had become quite calm, while Mr. Mellish affected an
unnatural gayety, and exhibited no stronger sign of past emotion than a
certain inflamed appearance in the region of his eyelids.
But this stalwart, devoted, impressionable Yorkshireman ate a most
extraordinary repast in honor of this reunion. He spread mustard on his
muffins. He poured Worcester sauce into his coffee, and cream over his
deviled cutlets. He showed his gratitude to Lucy by loading her plate
with comestibles she did n't want. He talked perpetually, and devoured
incongruous viands in utter absence of mind. He shook hands with Talbot
so many times across the breakfast-table that he exposed the lives or
limbs of the whole party to imminent peril from the boiling water in
the urn. He threw himself into a paroxysm of coughing, and made himself
scarlet in the face by an injudicious use of Cayenne pepper; and he
exhibited himself altogether in such an imbecile light, that Talbot
Bulstrode was compelled to have recourse to all sorts of expedients to
keep the servants out of the room during the progress of that rather
noisy and bewildering repast.
The Sunday papers were brought to the master of the house before
breakfast was over; and while John talked, ate, and gesticulated, Mr.
Bulstrode hid himself behind the open leaves of the Weekly Dispatch,
reading a paragraph that appeared in that journal.
This paragraph gave a brief account of the murder and the inquest at
Mellish, and wound up by that rather stereotyped sentence, in which the
public are informed that "the local police are giving unremitting
attention to the affair, and we think we may venture to affirm that
they have obtained a clew which will most probably lead to the early
discovery of the guilty party."
Talbot Bulstrode, with the newspaper still before his face, sat for
some little time frowning darkly at the page upon which this paragraph
appeared. The horrible shadow, whose nature he would not acknowledge
even to himself, once more lowered upon the horizon which had just
seemed so bright and clear.
"I would give a thousand pounds," he thought, "if I could find the
murderer of this man."
CHAPTER XXXII.
ON THE WATCH.
Very soon after breakfast upon that happy Sabbath of reunion and
contentment. John Mellish drove Aurora to Felden Woods. It was
necessary that Archibald Floyd should hear the story of the trainer's
death from the lips of his own children, before newspaper paragraphs
terrified him with some imperfect outline of the truth.
The dashing phaeton in which Mr. Bulstrode was in the habit of
driving his wife was brought to the door as the church-bells were
calling devout citizens to their morning duties, and at that unseemly
hour John Mellish smacked his whip, and dashed off in the direction of
Westminster Bridge.
Talbot Bulstrode's horses soon left London behind them, and before
long the phaeton was driving upon the trim park-like roads,
overshadowed by luxuriant foliage, and bordered here and there by
exquisitely-ordered gardens and rustic villas, that glittered whitely
in the sunshine. The holy peace of the quiet Sabbath was upon every
object that they passed, even upon the leaves and flowers, as it seemed
to Aurora. The birds sang subdued and murmuring harmonies; the light
summer breeze scarcely stirred the deep grass on which the lazy cattle
stood to watch the phaeton dash by.
Ah! how happy Aurora was, seated by the side of the man whose love
had outlasted every trial! How happy now that the dark wall that had
divided them was shattered, and they were indeed united! John Mellish
was as tender and pitying toward her as a mother to her forgiven child.
He asked no explanations; he sought to know nothing of the past. He was
content to believe that she had been foolish and mistaken, and that the
mistake and folly of her life would be buried in the grave of the
murdered trainer.
The lodge-keeper at Felden Woods exclaimed as he opened the gates to
his master's daughter. He was an old man, and he had opened the same
gates more than twenty years before, when the banker's dark-eyed bride
had first entered her husband's mansion.
Archibald Floyd welcomed his children heartily. How could he ever be
otherwise than unutterably happy in the presence of his darling,
however often she might come, with whatever eccentricity she might time
her visits?
Mrs. Mellish led her father into his study.
"I must speak to you alone, papa." she said; "but John knows all I
have to say. There are no secrets between us now. There never will be
again."
Aurora had a painful story to tell her father, for she had to
confess to him that she had deceived him upon the occasion of her
return to Felden after her parting with James Conyers.
"I told you a story, father," she said, "when I told you that my
husband was dead. But, Heaven knows, I believed that I should be
forgiven the sin of that falsehood, for I thought that it would spare
you grief and trouble of mind, and surely anything would have been
justifiable that could have done that. I suppose good never can come
out of evil, for I have been bitterly punished for my sin. I received a
newspaper within a few months of my return in which there was a
paragraph describing the death of James Conyers. The paragraph was not
correct, for the man had escaped with his life: and when I married John
Mellish, my first husband was alive."
Archibald Floyd uttered a cry of despair, and half rose from his
easy-chair; but Aurora knelt upon the ground by his side, with her arms
about him, soothing and comforting him.
"It is all over now, dear father," she said; "it is all over. The
man is dead. I will tell you how he died by and by. It is all over.
John knows all; and I am to marry him again. Talbot Bulstrode says that
it is necessary, as our marriage was not legal. My own dear father,
there is to be no more secrecy, no more unhappiness—only love, and
peace, and union for all of us."
She told the old man the story of the trainer's death, dwelling very
little upon the particulars, and telling nothing of her own doings that
night, except that she had been in the wood at the time of the murder,
and that she had heard the pistol fired.
It was not a pleasant story, this story of murder, and violence, and
treachery within the boundary of his daughter's home. Even amid
Aurora's assurances that all sorrow was past, that doubt and
uncertainty were to vanish away before security and peace, Archibald
Floyd could not control this feeling. He was restless and uneasy in
spite of himself. He took John Mellish out upon the terrace in the
afternoon sunshine, while Aurora lay asleep upon one of the sofas in
the long drawing-room, and talked to him of the trainer's death as they
walked up and down. There was nothing to be elicited from the young
squire that threw any light upon the catastrophe, and Archibald Floyd
tried in vain to find any issue out of the darkness of the mystery.
"Can you imagine any one having any motive for getting rid of this
man?" the banker asked.
John shrugged his shoulders. He had been asked this question so
often before, and had been always obliged to give the same reply.
No; he knew of no motive which any one about Mellish could be likely
to have.
"Had the man any money about him?" asked Mr. Floyd.
"Goodness knows whether he had or not," John answered, carelessly;
"but I should think it was n't likely he had much. He had been out of a
situation, I believe, for some time before he came to me, and he had
spent a good many months in a Prussian hospital. I don't suppose he was
worth robbing."
The banker remembered the two thousand pounds which he had given to
his daughter. What had Aurora done with that money! Had she known of
the trainer's existence when she asked for it? and had she wanted it
for him? She had not explained this in her hurried story of the murder,
and how could he press her upon so painful a subject? Why should he not
accept her own assurance that all was over, and that nothing remained
but peace.
Archibald Floyd and his children spent a tranquil day together; not
talking much, for Aurora was completely worn out by the fatigue and
excitement she had undergone. What had her life been but agitation and
terror since the day upon which Mr. John Pastern's letter had come to
Mellish to tell her of the existence of her first husband? She slept
through the best part of the day, lying upon a sofa, and with John
Mellish sitting by her side keeping watch over her. She slept while the
bells of Beckenham church summoned the parishioners to afternoon
service, and while her father went to assist in those quiet devotions,
and to kneel on his hassock in the old square pew, and pray for the
peace of his beloved child. Heaven knows how earnestly the old man
prayed for his daughter's happiness, and how she filled his thoughts;
not distracting him from more sacred thoughts, but blending her image
with his worship in alternate prayer and thanksgiving. Those who
watched him as he sat, with the sunshine on his gray head, listening
reverentially to the sermon, little knew how much trouble had been
mingled with the great prosperity of his life. They pointed him out
respectfully to strangers as a man whose signature across a slip of
paper could make that oblong morsel of beaten rag into an incalculable
sum of money; a man who stood upon a golden pinnacle with the
Rothschilds, and Montefiores, and Couttses; who could afford to pay the
national debt any morning that the whim seized him; and who was yet a
plain man, and simple as a child, as anybody might see, the admiring
parishioners would add, as the banker came out of church shaking hands
right and left, and nodding to the charity children.
I'm afraid the children dropped lower courtesies in the pathway of
Mr. Floyd than even before the Vicar of Beckenham; for they had learned
to associate the image of the banker with bunns and tea, with sixpences
and oranges, gambols on the smooth lawn at Felden, and jovial feasts in
monster tents to the music of clashing brass bands, and with even
greater treats in the way of excursions to a Crystal Palace on a hill,
an enchanted fairyland of wonders, from which it was delicious to
return in the dewy evening, singing hymns of rejoicing that shook the
vans in which they travelled.
The banker had distributed happiness right and left; but the money
which might have paid the national debt had been impotent to save the
life of the dark-eyed woman he had loved so tenderly, or to spare him
one pang of uneasiness about his idolized child. Had not that
all-powerful wealth been rather the primary cause of his daughter's
trouble, since it had cast her, young, inexperienced, and trusting, a
prey into the mercenary hands of a bad man, who would not have cared to
persecute her but for the money that had made her such a golden prize
for any adventurer who might please to essay the hazard of winning her?
With the memory of these things always in his mind, it was scarcely
strange that Archibald Floyd should bear the burden of his riches
meekly and fearfully, knowing that, whatever he might be in the Stock
Exchange, he was in the sight of Heaven only a feeble old man, very
assailable by suffering, very liable to sorrow, and humbly dependent on
the mercy of the Hand that is alone powerful to spare or to afflict, as
seemeth good to Him who guides it.
Aurora awoke out of her long sleep while her father was at church.
She awoke to find her husband watching her; the Sunday papers lying
forgotten on his knee, and his honest eyes fixed on the face he loved.
"My own dear John," she said, as she lifted her head from the
pillows, supporting herself upon her elbow, and stretching out one hand
to Mr. Mellish, "my own dear boy, how happy we are together now! Will
anything ever come to break our happiness again, my dear? Can Heaven be
so cruel as to afflict us any more?"
The banker's daughter, in the sovereign vitality of her nature, had
rebelled against sorrow as a strange and unnatural part of her life.
She had demanded happiness almost as a right; she had wondered at her
afflictions, and been unable to understand why she should be thus
afflicted. There are natures which accept suffering with patient
meekness, and acknowledge the justice by which they suffer; but Aurora
had never done this. Her joyous soul had revolted against sorrow, and
she arose now in the intense relief which she felt in her release from
the bonds that had been so hateful to her, and challenged Providence
with her claim to be happy for evermore.
John Mellish thought very seriously upon this matter. He could not
forget the night of the murder—the night upon which he had sat alone
in his wife's chamber pondering upon his unworthiness.
"Do you think we deserve to be happy, Lolly?" he said, presently.
"Don't mistake me, my darling. I know that you're the best and
brightest of living creatures—tender-hearted, loving, generous, and
true. But do you think we take life quite seriously enough, Lolly,
dear? I'm sometimes afraid that we're too much like the careless
children in the pretty childish allegory, who played about among the
flowers on the smooth grass in the beautiful garden until it was too
late to set out upon the long journey on the dark road which would have
led them to Paradise. What shall we do, my darling, to deserve the
blessings God has given us so freely—the blessings of youth and
strength, and love and wealth? What shall we do, dear? I don't want to
turn Mellish into a Philanstery exactly, nor to give up my racing-stud
if I can help it," John said, reflectively; "but I want to do
something, Lolly, to prove that I am grateful to Providence. Shall we
build a lot of schools, or a church, or almshouses, or something of
that sort? Lofthouse would like me to put up a painted window in
Mellish church, and a new pulpit with a patent sounding-board; but I
can't see that painted windows and sounding-boards do much good in a
general way. I want to do something, Aurora, to prove my gratitude to
the Providence that has given me the loveliest and best of women for my
true-hearted wife."
The banker's daughter smiled almost mournfully upon her devoted
husband.
"Have I been such a blessing to you, John," she said, "that you
should be grateful for me? Have I not brought you far more sorrow than
happiness, my poor dear?"
"No," shouted Mr. Mellish, emphatically. "The sorrow you have
brought me has been nothing to the joy I have felt in your love. My own
dearest girl, to be sitting here by your side to-day, and to hear you
tell me that you love me, is enough happiness to set against all the
trouble of mind that I have endured since the man that is dead came to
Mellish."
I hope my poor John Mellish will be forgiven if he talked a great
deal of nonsense to the wife he loved. He had been her lover from the
first moment in which he had seen her, darkly beautiful, upon the gusty
Brighton Parade, and he was her lover still. No shadow of contempt had
ever grown out of his familiarity with her. And, indeed, I am disposed
to take objection to that old proverb, or at least to believe that
contempt is only engendered of familiarity with things which are in
themselves base and spurious. The priest who is familiar with the altar
learns no contempt for its sacred images; but it is rather the ignorant
neophyte who sneers and sniggers at things which he can not understand.
The artist becomes only more reverent as toil and study make him more
familiar with his art; its eternal sublimity grows upon him, and he
worships the far-away Goddess of Perfection as humbly when he drops his
brush or his chisel after a life of patient labor as he did when first
he ground color or pointed rough blocks of marble for his master. And I
can not believe that a good man's respect for the woman he loves can be
lessened by that sweet and every-day familiarity in which a hundred
household virtues and gentle beauties—never dreamed of in the
ball-rooms where he first danced with an unknown idol in gauzy robes
and glimmering jewels—grow upon him, until he confesses that the wife
of ten years standing is even ten times dearer than the bride of a
week's honeymoon.
Archibald Floyd came back from church, and found his two children
sitting side by side in one of the broad windows, watching for his
arrival, and whispering together like lovers, as I have said they were.
They dined pleasantly together later in the evening, and a little
after dark the phaeton was brought round to the terrace-steps, and
Aurora kissed her father as she wished him good-night.
"You will come up to town, and be present at the marriage, sir, I
know," John whispered, as he took his father-in-law's hand. "Talbot
Bulstrode will arrange all about it. It is to take place at some
out-of-the way little church in the city. Nobody will be any the wiser,
and Aurora and I will go back to Mellish as quietly as possible.
There's only Lofthouse and Hayward know the secret of the certificate,
and they—"
John Mellish stopped suddenly. He remembered Mrs. Powell's parting
sting. She knew the secret. But how could she have come by that
knowledge? It was impossible that either Lofthouse or Hayward could
have told her. They were both honorable men, and they had pledged
themselves to be silent.
Archibald Floyd did not observe his son-in-law's embarrassment; and
the phaeton drove away, leaving the old man standing on the
terrace-steps looking after his daughter.
"I must shut up this place," he thought, "and go to Mellish to
finish my days. I can not endure these separations; I can not bear this
suspense. It is a pitiful sham, my keeping house, and living in all
this dreary grandeur. I'll shut up the place, and ask my daughter to
give me a quiet corner in her Yorkshire home, and a grave in the parish
church-yard."
The lodge-keeper turned out of his comfortable Gothic habitation to
open the clanking iron gates for the phaeton; but John drew up his
horses before they dashed into the road, for he saw that the man wanted
to speak to him.
"What is it, Forbes?" he asked.
"Oh, it's nothing particular, sir," said the man, "and perhaps I
ought n't to trouble you about it; but did you expect any one down
to-day, sir?"
"Expect any one here? no!" exclaimed John.
"There's been a person inquirin', sir, this afternoon—two persons,
I may say, in a shaycart—but one of 'em asked particular if you was
here, sir, and if Mrs. Mellish was here; and when I said yes, you was,
the gent says it was n't worth troublin' you about, the business as
he'd come upon, and as he'd call another time. And he asked me what
time you'd be likely to be leavin' the Woods; and I said I made no
doubt you'd stay to dinner up at the house. So he says 'All right,' and
drives off."
"He left no message, then?"
"No, sir. He said nothin' more than what I've told you."
"Then his business could have been of no great importance, Forbes,"
answered John, laughing. "So we need n't worry our heads about him.
Good-night."
Mr. Mellish dropped a five-shilling piece into the lodge-keeper's
hand, gave Talbot's horses their heads, and the phaeton rolled off
Londonward over the crisp gravel of the well-kept Beckenham roads.
"Who could the man have been?" Aurora asked, as they left the gates.
"Goodness knows, my dear," John answered, carelessly. "Somebody on
racing business, perhaps."
Racing business seems to be in itself such a mysterious business
that it is no strange thing for mysterious people to be always turning
up in relation to it. Aurora, therefore, was content to accept this
explanation, but not without some degree of wonderment.
"I can't understand the man coming to Felden after you, John," she
said. "How could he know that you were to be there to-day?"
"Ah! how indeed, Lolly?" returned Mr. Mellish. "He chanced it, I
suppose. A sharp customer, no doubt; wants to sell a horse, I dare say,
and heard I did n't mind giving a good price for a good thing."
Mr. Mellish might have gone even farther than this, for there were
many horsey gentlemen in his neighborhood, past masters in the
art they practised, who were wont to say that the young squire,
judiciously manipulated, might be induced to give a remarkably good
price for a very bad thing, and there were many broken-down,
slim-legged horses in the Mellish stables that bore witness to the same
fact. Those needy chevaliers d'esprit, who think that Burke's
landed gentry were created by Providence and endowed with the goods of
this world for their especial benefit, just as pigeons are made plump
and nice eating for the delectation of hawks, drove a wholesale trade
upon the young man's frank simplicity and hearty belief in his
fellow-creatures. I think it is Eliza Cook who says, "It is better to
trust and be deceived, than own the mean, poor spirit that betrays;"
and if there is any happiness in being "done," poor John enjoyed that
fleeting delight pretty frequently.
There was a turn in the road between Beckenham and Norwood; and as
the phaeton swept round, a chaise or dog-cart, a shabby vehicle enough,
with a rakish-looking horse, drove close up, and the man who was
driving asked the squire to put him in the nearest way to London. The
vehicle had been behind them all the way from Felden, but had kept at a
very respectful distance until now.
"Do you want to get to the city or the West End?" John asked.
"The West End."
"Then you can't do better than follow us," answered Mr. Mellish;
"the road's clean enough, and your horse seems a good one to go. You
can keep us in sight, I suppose?
"Yes, sir, and thank ye."
"All right, then."
Talbot Bulstrode's thorough-breds dashed off, but the rakish-looking
horse kept his ground behind them. He had something of the insolent,
off-hand assurance of a butcher's horse, accustomed to whirl a
bare-headed, blue-coated master through the sharp morning air.
"I was right, Lolly," Mr. Mellish said, as he left the dog-cart
behind.
"How do you mean, dear?" asked Aurora.
"The man who spoke to us just now is the man who has been inquiring
for me at Felden. He's a Yorkshireman."
"A Yorkshireman!"
"Yes; did n't you hear the North-country twang?"
No; she had not listened to the man, nor heeded him. How should she
think of anything but her newborn happiness—the newborn confidence
between herself and the husband she loved?
Do not think her hard-hearted or cruel if she forgot that it was the
death of a fellow-creature, a sinful man stricken down in the prime of
youth and health, that had given her this welcome release. She had
suffered so much that the release could not be otherwise than welcome,
let it come how it might.
Her nature, frank and open as the day, had been dwarfed and crippled
by the secret that had blighted her life. Can it be wondered, then,
that she rejoiced now that all need of secrecy was over, and this
generous spirit might expand as it pleased?
It was past ten when the phaeton turned into Half-Moon street. The
men in the dog-cart had followed John's directions to the letter, for
it was only in Piccadilly that Mr. Mellish had lost sight of them among
other vehicles travelling backward and forward on the lamplit
thoroughfare.
Talbot and Lucy received their visitors in one of the pretty little
drawing-rooms. The young husband and wife had spent a quiet day
together; going to church in the morning and afternoon, dining alone,
and sitting in the twilight, talking happily and confidentially. Mr.
Bulstrode was no Sabbath-breaker; and John Mellish had reason to
consider himself a peculiarly privileged person, inasmuch as the
thorough-breds had been permitted to leave their stables for his
service, to say nothing of the groom, who had been absent from his hard
seat in the servants' pew at a fashionable chapel in order that he
might accompany John and Aurora to Felden.
The little party sat up rather late, Aurora and Lucy talking
affectionately together, side by side, upon a sofa in the shadow of the
room, while the two men lounged in the open window. John told his host
the history of the day, and in doing so casually mentioned the man who
had asked him the way to London.
Strange to say, Talbot Bulstrode seemed especially interested in
this part of the story. He asked several questions about the men. He
asked what they were like; what was said by either of them; and made
many other inquiries, which seemed equally trivial.
"Then they followed you into town, John?" he said, finally.
"Yes; I only lost sight of them in Piccadilly, five minutes before I
turned the corner of the street."
"Do you think they had any motive in following you?" asked Talbot.
"Well, I fancy so; they're on the look-out for information, I
expect. The man who spoke to me looked something like a tout. I've
heard that Lord Stamford's rather anxious about my West-Australian
colt, the Pork Butcher. Perhaps his people have set these men to work
to find out if I'm going to run him in the Leger."
Talbot Bulstrode smiled bitterly, almost mournfully, at the vanity
of horseflesh. It was painful to see this light-hearted young squire
looking in such ignorant hopefulness toward a horizon upon which graver
and more thoughtful men could see a dreadful shadow lowering. Mr.
Bulstrode was standing close to the balcony; he stepped out among the
china boxes of mignonette, and looked down into the quiet street. A man
was leaning against a lamp-post some few paces from Talbot's house,
smoking a cigar, and with his face turned toward the balcony. He
finished his cigar deliberately, threw the end into the road, and
walked away while Talbot kept watch; but Mr. Bulstrode did not leave
his post of observation, and about a quarter of an hour afterward he
saw the same man lounging slowly along the pavement upon the other side
of the street. John, who sat within the shadow of the window-curtains,
lolling against them, and creasing their delicate folds with the heavy
pressure of his broad back, was utterly unconscious of all this.
Early the next morning Mr. Bulstrode and Mr. Mellish took a Hansom
cab, and rattled down to Doctor's Commons, where, for the second time
in his life, John gave himself up to be fought for by white-aproned
ecclesiastical touts, and eventually obtained the Archbishop of
Canterbury's gracious sanction of his marriage with Aurora, widow of
James Conyers, only daughter of Archibald Floyd, banker. From Doctor's
Commons the two gentlemen drove to a certain quiet, out-of-the-way
church, within the sound of Bow bells, but so completely hidden among
piles of warehouses, top-heavy chimneys, sloping roofs, and other
eccentricities of masonry, that any unhappy bridegroom who had
appointed to be married there was likely enough to spend the whole of
the wedding-day in futile endeavors to find the church-door. Here John
discovered a mouldy clerk, who was fetched from some habitation in the
neighborhood with considerable difficulty by a boy, who volunteered to
accomplish anything under heaven for a certain copper consideration;
and to this clerk Mr. Mellish gave notice of a marriage which was to
take place upon the following day, by special license.
"I'll take my second marriage certificate back with me," John said,
as he left the church, "and then I should like to see who'll dare to
look me in the face, and tell me that my darling is not my own
lawfully-wedded wife."
He was thinking of Mrs. Powell as he said this. He was thinking of
the pale, spiteful eyes that had looked at him, and of the woman's
tongue that had stabbed him with all a little nature's great capacity
for hate. He would be able to defy her now; he would be able to defy
every creature in the world who dared to breathe a syllable against his
beloved wife.
Early the next morning the marriage took place. Archibald Floyd,
Talbot Bulstrode, and Lucy were the only witnesses—that is to say, the
only witnesses with the exception of the clerk and the pew-opener, and
a couple of men who lounged into the church when the ceremony was half
over, and slouched about one of the side aisles, looking at the
monuments, and talking to each other in whispers, until the parson took
off his surplice, and John came out of the vestry with his wife upon
his arm.
Mr. and Mrs. Mellish did not return to Half-Moon street; they drove
straight to the Great Northern Station, whence they started by the
afternoon express for Doncaster. John was anxious to return; for
remember that he had left his household under very peculiar
circumstances, and strange reports might have arisen in his absence.
The young squire would perhaps scarcely have thought of this had not
the idea been suggested to him by Talbot Bulstrode, who particularly
urged upon him the expediency of returning immediately.
"Go back, John," said Mr. Bulstrode, "without an hour's unnecessary
delay. If by any chance there should be some farther disturbance about
this murder, it will be much better for you, and Aurora too, to be on
the spot. I will come down to Mellish myself in a day or two, and will
bring Lucy with me, if you will allow me."
"Allow you, my dear Talbot!"
"I will come, then. Good-by, and God bless you! Take care of
your wife."
CHAPTER XXXIII.
CAPTAIN PRODDER GOES BACK TO DONCASTER.
Mr. Samuel Prodder, returning to London, after having played his
insignificant part in the tragedy at Felden Woods, found that city
singularly dull and gloomy. He put up at some dismal boarding-house,
situated amid a mazy labyrinth of brick and mortar between the Tower
and Wapping, and having relations with another boarding-house in
Liverpool. He took up his abode at this place, in which he was known
and respected. He drank rum and water, and played cribbage with other
seamen, made after the same pattern as himself. He even went to an
East-End theatre upon the Saturday night after the murder, and sat out
the representation of a nautical drama, which he would have been glad
to have believed in, had it not promulgated such wild theories in the
science of navigation, and exhibited such extraordinary experiments in
the manoeuvring of the man-of-war upon which the action of the play
took place as to cause the captain's hair to stand on end in the
intensity of his wonder. The things people did upon that ship curdled
Samuel Prodder's blood, as he sat in the lonely grandeur of the
eighteen-penny boxes. It was quite a common thing for them to walk
unhesitatingly through the bulwarks, and disappear in what ought to
have been the sea. The extent of browbeating and humiliation borne by
the captain of that noble vessel; the amount of authority exercised by
a sailor with loose legs; the agonies of sea-sickness, represented by a
comic countryman, who had no particular business on board the gallant
bark; the proportion of hornpipe-dancing and nautical ballad-singing
gone through as compared to the work that was done, all combined to
impress poor Samuel with such a novel view of her majesty's naval
service that he was very glad when the captain who had been browbeaten
suddenly repented of all his sins—not without a sharp reminder from
the prompter, who informed the dramatis personæ that it was parst twelve, and they'd better cut it short—joined the hands of
the contumacious sailor and a young lady in white muslin, and begged
them to be happy.
It was in vain that the captain sought distraction from the one idea
upon which he had perpetually brooded since the night of his visit to
Mellish Park. He would be wanted in Yorkshire to tell what he knew of
the dark history of that fatal night. He would be called upon to
declare at what hour he had entered the wood, whom he had met there,
what he had seen and heard there. They would extort from him that which
he would have died rather than tell. They would cross-examine, and
bewilder, and torment him, until he told them everything—until he
repeated, syllable by syllable, the passionate words that had been
said—until he told them how, within a quarter of an hour of the firing
of the pistol, he had been the witness of a desperate scene between his
niece and the murdered man—a scene in which concentrated hate,
vengeful fury, illimitable disdain and detestation had been expressed
by her—by her alone: the man had been calm and moderate enough. It was
she who had been angry; it was she who had given loud utterance to her
hate.
Now, by reason of one of those strange inconsistencies common to
weak human nature, the captain, though possessed night and day by a
blind terror of being suddenly pounced upon by the minions of the law,
and compelled to betray his niece's secret, could not rest in his safe
retreat amid the labyrinths of Wapping, but must needs pine to return
to the scene of the murder. He wanted to know the result of the
inquest. The Sunday papers gave a very meagre account, only hinting
darkly at suspected parties. He wanted to ascertain for himself what
had happened at the inquest, and whether his absence had given rise to
suspicion. He wanted to see his niece again—to see her in the
daylight, undisturbed by passion. He wanted to see this beautiful
tigress in her calmer moods, if she ever had any calmer moods. Heaven
knows the simple merchant-captain was wellnigh distracted as he thought
of his sister Eliza's child, and the awful circumstances of his first
and only meeting with her.
Was she—that which he feared people might be led to think her if
they heard the story of that scene in the wood? No, no, no!
She was his sister's child—the child of that merry, impetuous
little girl who had worn a pinafore and played hop-scotch. He
remembered his sister flying into a rage with one Tommy Barnes for
unfair practices in that very game, and upbraiding him almost as
passionately as Aurora had upbraided the dead man. But if Tommy Barnes
had been found strangled by a skipping-rope, or shot dead from a
pea-shooter in the next street a quarter of an hour afterward, would
Eliza's brother have thought that she must needs be guilty of the boy's
murder? The captain had gone so far as to reason thus in his trouble of
mind. His sister Eliza's child would be likely to be passionate and
impetuous, but his sister Eliza's child would be a generous,
warm-hearted creature, incapable of any cruelty in either thought or
deed. He remembered his sister Eliza boxing his ears on the occasion of
his gouging out the eyes of her wax doll, but he remembered the same
dark-eyed sister sobbing piteously at the spectacle of a lamb that a
heartless butcher was dragging to the slaughter-house.
But the more seriously Captain Prodder revolved this question in his
mind, the more decidedly his inclination pointed to Doncaster; and
early upon that very morning on which the quiet marriage had taken
place in the obscure city church he repaired to a magnificent
Israelitish temple of fashion in the Minories, and there ordered a suit
of such clothes as were most affected by elegant landsmen. The
Israelitish salesman recommended something light and lively in the
fancy-check line; and Mr. Prodder, submitting to that authority as
beyond all question, invested himself in a suit which he had
contemplated solemnly athwart a vast expanse of plate-glass before
entering the temple of the Graces. It was "our aristocratic tourist,"
at seventy-seven shillings and sixpence, and was made of a fleecy and
rather powdery-looking cloth, in which the hues of baked and unbaked
bricks predominated over a more delicate hearthstone tint, which latter
the shopman had declared to be a color that West-End tailors had vainly
striven to emulate.
The captain, dressed in "our aristocratic tourist," which suit was
of the ultra cut-away and peg-toppy order, and with his sleeves and
trowsers inflated by any chance summer's breeze, had perhaps more of
the appearance of a tombola than is quite in accordance with a strictly
artistic view of the human figure. In his desire to make himself
utterly irrecognizable as the seafaring man who had carried the tidings
of the murder to Mellish Park, the captain had tortured himself by
substituting a tight circular collar and a wisp of purple ribbon for
the honest half-yard of snowy linen which it had been his habit to wear
turned over the loose collar of his blue coat. He suffered acute
agonies from this modern device, but he bore them bravely; and he went
straight from the tailor's to the Great Northern Railway Station, where
he took his ticket for Doncaster. He meant to visit that town as an
aristocratic tourist; he would keep himself aloof from the neighborhood
of Mellish Park, but he would be sure to hear the result of the
inquest, and he would be able to ascertain for himself whether any
trouble had come upon his sister's child.
The sea-captain did not travel by that express which carried Mr. and
Mrs. Mellish to Doncaster, but by an earlier and a slower train, which
lumbered quietly along the road, conveying inferior persons, to whom
time was not measured by a golden standard, and who smoked, and slept,
and ate, and drank resignedly enough through the eight or nine hours
journey.
It was dusk when Samuel Prodder reached the quiet racing-town from
which he had fled away in the dead of the night so short a time before.
He left the station, and made his way to the market-place, and from the
market-place he struck into a narrow lane that led him to an obscure
street upon the outskirts of the town. He had a great terror of being
led by some unhappy accident into the neighborhood of the "Reindeer,"
lest he should be recognized by some hanger-on of that hotel.
Half-way between the beginning of the straggling street and the
point at which it dwindled and shrank away into a country lane, the
captain found a little public-house called the "Crooked Rabbit"—such
an obscure and out-of-the-way place of entertainment that poor Samuel
thought himself safe in seeking for rest and refreshment within its
dingy walls. There was a framed and glazed legend of "good beds"
hanging behind an opaque window-pane—beds for which the landlord of
the "Crooked Rabbit" was in the habit of asking and receiving almost
fabulous prices during the great Leger week. But there seemed little
enough doing at the humble tavern just now, and Captain Prodder walked
boldly in, ordered a steak and a pint of ale, with a glass of rum and
water, hot, to follow, at the bar, and engaged one of the good beds for
his accommodation. The landlord, who was a fat man, lounged with his
back against the bar, reading the sporting news in the Manchester
Guardian; and it was the landlady who took Mr. Prodder's orders,
and showed him the way into an awkwardly-shaped parlor, which was much
below the rest of the house, and into which the uninitiated visitor was
apt to precipitate himself head foremost, as into a well or pit. There
were several small mahogany tables in this room, all adorned with
sticky arabesques formed by the wet impressions of the bottom rims of
pewter pots; there were so many spittoons that it was almost impossible
to walk from one end of the room to the other without taking
unintentional foot-baths of sawdust; there was an old bagatelle-table,
the cloth of which had changed from green to dingy yellow, and was
frayed and tattered like a poor man's coat; and there was a low window,
the sill of which was almost on a level with the pavement of the street.
The merchant-captain threw off his hat, loosened the slip of ribbon
and the torturing circular collar supplied him by the Israelitish
outfitter, and cast himself into a shining mahogany arm-chair close to
this window. The lower panes were shrouded by a crimson curtain, and he
lifted this very cautiously, and peered for a few moments into the
street. It was lonely enough and quiet enough in the dusky summer's
evening. Here and there lights twinkled in a shop-window, and upon one
threshold a man stood talking to his neighbor. With one thought always
paramount in his mind, it is scarcely strange that Samuel Prodder
should fancy these people must necessarily be talking of the murder.
The landlady brought the captain the steak he had ordered, and the
tired traveller seated himself at one of the tables, and discussed his
simple meal. He had eaten nothing since seven o'clock that morning, and
he made very short work of the three-quarters of a pound of meat that
had been cooked for him. He finished his beer, drank his rum and water,
smoked a pipe, and then, as he had the room still to himself, he made
an impromptu couch of Windsor chairs arranged in a row, and, in his own
parlance, turned-in upon this rough hammock to take a brief stretch.
He might have set his mind at rest, perhaps, before this, had he
chosen. He could have questioned the landlady about the murder at
Mellish Park; she was likely to know as much as any one else he might
meet at the "Crooked Rabbit." But he had refrained from doing this
because he did not wish to draw attention to himself in any way as a
person in the smallest degree interested in the murder. How did he know
what inquiries had possibly been made for the missing witness? There
was perhaps some enormous reward offered for his apprehension, and a
word or a look might betray him to the greedy eyes of those upon the
watch to obtain it.
Remember that this broad-shouldered seafaring man was as ignorant as
a child of all things beyond the deck of his own vessel, and the watery
high-roads he had been wont to navigate. Life along-shore was a solemn
mystery to him—the law of the British dominions a complication of
inscrutable enigmas, only to be spoken of and thought of in a spirit of
reverence and wonder. If anybody had told him that he was likely to be
seized upon as an accessory before the fact, and hung out of hand for
his passive part in the Mellish catastrophe, he would have believed
them implicitly. How did he know how many Acts of Parliament his
conduct in leaving Doncaster without giving his evidence might come
under? It might be high treason, leze-majesty—anything in the world
that is unpronounceable and awful—for aught this simple sailor knew to
the contrary. But in all this it was not his own safety that Captain
Prodder thought of. That was of very little moment to this
light-hearted, easy-going sailor. He had perilled his life too often on
the high-seas to set any exaggerated value upon it ashore. If they
chose to hang an innocent man, they must do their worst; it would be
their mistake, not his; and he had a simple, seaman-like faith, rather
vague, perhaps, and not very reducible to anything like Thirty-nine
Articles, that told him that there were sweet little cherubs sitting up
aloft who would take good care that any such sublunary mistake should
be rectified in a certain supernal log-book, upon whose pages Samuel
Prodder hoped to find himself set down as an honest and active sailor,
always humbly obedient to the signals of his Commander.
It was for his niece's sake, then, that the sailor dreaded any
discovery of his whereabouts, and it was for her sake that he resolved
upon exercising the greatest degree of caution of which his simple
nature was capable.
"I won't ask a single question," he thought; "there's sure to be a
pack of lubbers dropping in here by and by, and I shall hear 'em
talking about the business as likely as not. These country folks would
have nothing to talk about if they did n't overhaul the ship's books of
their betters."
The captain slept soundly for upward of an hour, and was awakened at
the end of that time by the sound of voices in the room, and the fumes
of tobacco. The gas was flaring high in the low-roofed parlor when he
opened his eyes, and at first he could scarcely distinguish the
occupants of the room for the blinding glare of light.
"I won't get up," he thought; "I'll sham asleep for a bit, and see
whether they happen to talk about the business."
There were only three men in the room. One of them was the landlord,
whom Samuel Prodder had seen reading in the bar; and the other two were
shabby-looking men, with by no means too respectable a stamp either
upon their persons or their manners. One of them wore a velveteen
cut-away coat with big brass buttons, knee-breeches, blue stockings,
and high-lows. The other was a pale-faced man, with mutton-chop
whiskers, and dressed in a shabby-genteel costume that gave indication
of general vagabondage rather than of any particular occupation.
They were talking of horses when Captain Prodder awoke, and the
sailor lay for some time listening to a jargon that was utterly
unintelligible to him. The men talked of Lord Zetland's lot, of Lord
Glasgow's lot, and the Leger, and the Cup, and made offers to bet with
each other, and quarrelled about the terms, and never came to an
agreement, in a manner that was utterly bewildering to poor Samuel; but
he waited patiently, still feigning to be asleep, and not in any way
disturbed by the men, who did not condescend to take any notice of him.
"They'll talk of the other business presently," he thought; "they're
safe to talk of it."
Mr. Prodder was right.
After discussing the conflicting merits of half the horses in the
racing calendar, the three men abandoned the fascinating subject; and
the landlord, re-entering the room after having left it to fetch a
supply of beer for his guests, asked if either of them had heard if
anything new had turned up about that business at Mellish.
"There's a letter in to-day's Guardian," he added, before
receiving any reply to his question, "and a pretty strong one. It tries
to fix the murder upon some one in the house, but it don't exactly name
the party. It would n't be safe to do that yet a while, I suppose."
Upon the request of the two men, the landlord of the "Crooked
Rabbit" read the letter in the Manchester daily paper. It was a very
clever letter, and a spirited one, giving a synopsis of the
proceedings at the inquest, and commenting very severely upon the
manner in which that investigation had been conducted. Mr. Prodder
quailed until the Windsor chairs trembled beneath him as the landlord
read one passage, in which it was remarked that the stranger who
carried the news of the murder to the house of the victim's employer,
the man who had heard the report of the pistol, and had been chiefly
instrumental in the finding of the body, had not been forthcoming at
the inquest.
"He had disappeared mysteriously and abruptly, and no efforts were
made to find him," wrote the correspondent of the Guardian.
"What assurance can be given for the safety of any man's life when
such a crime as the Mellish-Park murder is investigated in this loose
and indifferent manner? The catastrophe occurred within the boundary of
the Park fence. Let it be discovered whether any person in the Mellish
household had a motive for the destruction of James Conyers. The man
was a stranger to the neighborhood. He was not likely, therefore, to
have made enemies outside the boundary of his employer's estate, but he
may have had some secret foe within that limit. Who was he? where did
he come from? what were his antecedents and associations? Let each one
of these questions be fully sifted, and let a cordon be drawn round the
house, and let every creature living in it be held under the
surveillance of the law until patient investigation has done its work,
and such evidence has been collected as must lead to the detection of
the guilty person."
To this effect was the letter which the landlord read in a loud and
didactic manner, that was very imposing, though not without a few
stumbles over some hard words, and a good deal of slap-dash jumping at
others.
Samuel Prodder could make very little of the composition, except
that it was perfectly clear he had been missed at the inquest, and his
absence commented upon. The landlord and the shabby-genteel man talked
long and discursively upon the matter; the man in the velveteen coat,
who was evidently a thoroughbred Cockney, and only newly arrived in
Doncaster, required to be told the whole story before he was upon a
footing with the other two. He was very quiet, and generally spoke
between his teeth, rarely taking the unnecessary trouble of removing
his short clay pipe from his mouth except when it required refilling.
He listened to the story of the murder very intently, keeping one eye
upon the speaker and the other upon his pipe, and nodding approvingly
now and then in the course of the narrative.
He took his pipe from his mouth when the story was finished, and
filled it from a gutta-percha pouch, which had to be turned inside out
in some mysterious manner before the tobacco could be extricated from
it. While he was packing the loose fragments of shag or bird's-eye
neatly into the bowl of the pipe with his stumpy little finger, he
said, with supreme carelessness:
"I know'd Jim Conyers."
"Did you, now?" exclaimed the landlord, opening his eyes very wide.
"I know'd him," repeated the man, "as intimate as I know'd my own
mother; and when I read of the murder in the newspaper last Sunday, you
might have knocked me down with a feather. 'Jim's got it at last,' I
said; for he was one of them coves that goes through the world
cock-adoodling over other people to sich an extent that, when they do
drop in for it, there's not many particular sorry for 'em. He was one
of your selfish chaps, this here; and when a chap goes through this
life makin' it his leadin' principle to care about nobody, he must n't
be surprised if it ends by nobody carin' for him. Yes, I know'd Jim
Conyers," added the man, slowly and thoughtfully, "and I know'd him
under rather pecooliar circumstances."
The landlord and the other man pricked up their ears at this point
of the conversation.
The trainer at Mellish Park had, as we know, risen to popularity
from the hour in which he had fallen upon the dewy turf in the wood,
shot through the heart.
"If there was n't any partiklar objections," the landlord of the
"Crooked Rabbit" said, presently, "I should oncommonly like to hear
anything you've got to tell about the poor chap. There's a deal of
interest took about the matter in Doncaster, and my customers have
scarcely talked of anything else since the inquest."
The man in the velveteen coat rubbed his chin, and smoked his pipe
reflectively. He was evidently not a very communicative man, but it was
also evident that he was rather gratified by the distinction of his
position in the little public-house parlor.
This man was no other than Mr. Matthew Harrison, the dog-fancier,
Aurora's pensioner, the man who had traded upon her secret, and made
himself the last link between herself and the low-born husband she had
abandoned.
Samuel Prodder lifted himself from the Windsor chairs at this
juncture. He was too much interested in the conversation to be able to
simulate sleep any longer. He got up, stretched his legs and arms, made
an elaborate show of having just awakened from a profound and
refreshing slumber, and asked the landlord of the "Crooked Rabbit" to
mix him another glass of that pineapple-rum grog.
The captain lighted his pipe while his host departed upon this
errand. The seaman glanced rather inquisitively at Mr. Harrison; but
he was fain to wait until the conversation took its own course, and
offered him a safe opportunity of asking a few questions.
"The pecooliar circumstances under which I know'd James Conyers,"
pursued the dog-fancier, after having taken his own time, and smoked
out half a pipeful of tobacco, to the acute aggravation of his
auditory, "was a woman—and a stunner she was, too; one of your regular
spitfires, that'll knock you into the middle of next week if you so
much as asks her how she does in a manner she don't approve of. She was
a woman, she was, and a handsome one too; but she was more than a match
for James, with all his brass. Why, I've seen her great black eyes
flash fire upon him," said Mr. Harrison, looking dreamily before him,
as if he could even at that moment see the flashing eyes of which he
spoke—"I've seen her look at him as if she'd wither him up from off
the ground he trod upon with that contempt she felt for him."
Samuel Prodder grew strangely uneasy as he listened to this man's
talk of flashing black eyes and angry looks directed at James Conyers.
Had he not seen his niece's shining orbs flame fire upon the dead man
only a quarter of an hour before he received his death-wound—only so
long—Heaven help that wretched girl!—only so long before the man for
whom she had expressed unmitigated hate had fallen by the hand of an
unknown murderer?
"She must have been a tartar, this young woman of yours," the
landlord observed to Mr. Harrison.
"She was a tartar," answered the dog-fancier; "but she was the right
sort, too, for all that; and, what's more, she was a kind friend to me.
There's never a quarter-day goes by that I don't have cause to say so."
He poured out a fresh glass of beer as he spoke, and tossed the
liquor down his capacious throat with the muttered sentiment, "Here's
toward her."
Another man had entered the room while Mr. Prodder had sat smoking
his pipe and drinking his rum and water—a hump-backed, white-faced
man, who sneaked into the public-house parlor as if he had no right to
be there, and seated himself noiselessly at one of the tables.
Samuel Prodder remembered this man. He had seen him through the
window in the lighted parlor of the north lodge when the body of James
Conyers had been carried into the cottage. It was not likely, however,
that the man had seen the captain.
"Why, if it is n't Steeve Hargraves, from the Park!" exclaimed the
landlord, as he looked round and recognized the softy; "he'll be able
to tell plenty, I dare say. We've been talking of the murder, Steeve,"
he added, in a conciliatory manner.
Mr. Hargraves rubbed his clumsy hands about his head, and looked
furtively, yet searchingly, at each member of the little assembly.
"Ay, sure," he said, "folks don't seem to me to talk about aught
else. It was bad enough up at the Park, but it seems worse in
Doncaster."
"Are you stayin' up town, Steeve?" asked the landlord, who seemed to
be upon pretty intimate terms with the late hanger-on of Mellish Park.
"Yes, I'm stayin' oop town for a bit; I've been out of place since
the business oop there; you know how I was turned out of the house that
had sheltered me ever since I was a boy, and you know who did it. Never
mind that; I'm out of place now, but you may draw me a mug of ale; I've
money enough for that."
Samuel Prodder looked at the softy with considerable interest. He
had played a small part in the great catastrophe, yet it was scarcely
likely that he should be able to throw any light upon the mystery. What
was he but a poor half-witted hanger-on of the murdered man, who had
lost all by his patron's untimely death?
The softy drank his beer, and sat, silent, ungainly, and
disagreeable to look upon, among the other men.
"There's a reg'lar stir in the Manchester papers about this murder,
Steeve," the landlord said, by way of opening a conversation; "it don't
seem to me as if the business was goin' to be let drop over quietly.
There'll be a second inquest, I reckon, or a examination, or a memorial
to the Secretary of State, or summat o' that sort, before long."
The softy's face, expressionless almost always, expressed nothing
now but stolid indifference; the stupid indifference of a half-witted
ignoramus, to whose impenetrable intellect even the murder of his own
master was a far-away and obscure event, not powerful enough to awaken
any effort of attention.
"Yes; I'll lay there'll be a stir about it before long," the
landlord continued. "The papers put it down very strong that the murder
must have been done by some one in the house—by some one as had more
knowledge of the man, and more reason to be angry against him, than
strangers could have. Now you, Hargraves, were living at the place; you
must have seen and heard things that other people have n't had the
opportunity to hear. What do you think about it?"
Mr. Hargraves scratched his head reflectively.
"The papers are cleverer nor me," he said at last; "it would n't do
for a poor fond chap like me to go again' such as them. I think what
they think. I think it was some one about the place did it; some one
that had good reason to be spiteful against him that's dead."
An imperceptible shudder passed over the softy's frame as he alluded
to the murdered man. It was strange with what gusto the other three men
discussed the ghastly subject, returning to it persistently in spite of
every interruption, and in a manner licking their lips over its
gloomiest details. It was surely more strange that they should do this
than that Stephen Hargraves should exhibit some reluctance to talk
freely upon the dismal topic.
"And who do you think had cause to be spiteful agen him, Steeve?"
asked the landlord. "Had him and Mr. Mellish fell out about the
management of the stable?"
"Him and Mr. Mellish had never had an angry word pass between
'em, as I've heard of," answered the softy.
He laid such a singular emphasis upon the word Mr. that the
three men looked at him wonderingly, and Captain Prodder took his pipe
from his mouth, and grasped the back of a neighboring chair as firmly
as if he had entertained serious thoughts of flinging that trifle of
furniture at the softy's head.
"Who else could it have been, then, as had a spite against the man?"
asked some one.
Samuel Prodder scarcely knew who it was who spoke, for his attention
was concentrated upon Stephen Hargraves; and he never once removed his
gaze from the white face, and dull, blinking eyes.
"Who was it that went to meet him late at night in the north lodge?"
whispered the softy. "Who was it that could n't find words that was bad
enough for him, or looks that was angry enough for him? Who was it that
wrote him a letter—I've got it, and I mean to keep it, too—askin' of
him to be in the wood at such and such a time upon the very night of
the murder? Who was it that met him there in the dark—as others could
tell as well as me? Who was it that did this?"
No one answered. The men looked at each other and at the softy with
open mouths, but said nothing. Samuel Prodder grasped the topmost bar
of the wooden chair still more tightly, and his broad bosom rose and
fell beneath his tourist waistcoat like a raging sea; but he sat in the
shadow of the queerly-shaped room, and no one noticed him.
"Who was it that ran away from her own home, and hid herself after
the inquest?" whispered the softy. "Who was it that was afraid to stop
in her own house, but must run away to London without leaving word
where she was gone for anybody? Who was it that was seen upon the
mornin' before the murder meddlin' with her husband's guns and pistols,
and was seen by more than me, as them that saw her will testify when
the time comes? Who was this?"
Again there was no answer. The raging sea labored still more heavily
under Captain Prodder's waistcoat, and his grasp tightened, if it could
tighten, on the rail of the chair; but he uttered no word. There was
more to come, perhaps, yet, and he might want every chair in the room
as instruments with which to appease his vengeance.
"You was talkin', when I just came in, a while ago, of a young woman
in connection with Mr. James Conyers, sir," said the softy, turning to
Matthew Harrison; "a black-eyed woman, you said; might she have been
his wife?"
The dog-fancier started, and deliberated for a few moments before he
answered.
"Well, in a manner of speaking, she was his wife," he said at last,
rather reluctantly.
"She was a bit above him, loike, was n't she?" asked the softy. "She
had more money than she knew what to do with, eh?"
The dog-fancier stared at the questioner.
"You know who she was, I suppose?" he said, suspiciously.
"I think I do," whispered Stephen Hargraves. "She was the daughter
of Mr. Floyd, the rich banker oop in London; and she married James
Conyers, and she got tired of him; and she married our squire while her
first husband was alive; and she wrote a letter to him that's dead,
askin' of him to meet her upon the night of the murder."
Captain Prodder flung aside the chair. It was too poor a weapon with
which to wreak his wrath, and with one bound he sprang upon the softy,
seizing the astonished wretch by the throat, and overturning a table,
with a heap of crashing glasses and pewter pots, that rolled away into
the corners of the room.
"It's a lie!" roared the sailor, "you foulmouthed hound! you know
that it's a lie! Give me something," cried Captain Prodder, "give me
something, somebody, and give it quick, that I may pound this man into
a mash as soft as a soaked ship's biscuit; for if I use my fists to him
I shall murder him, as sure as I stand here. It's my sister Eliza's
child you want to slander, is it? You'd better have kept your mouth
shut while you was in her own uncle's company. I meant to have kep'
quiet here," cried the captain, with a vague recollection that he had
betrayed himself and his purpose; "but was I to keep quiet and hear
lies told of my own niece? Take care," he added, shaking the softy,
till Mr. Hargraves' teeth chattered in his head, "or I'll knock those
crooked teeth of yours down your ugly throat, to hinder you from
telling any more lies of my dead sister's only child."
"They were n't lies," gasped the softy, doggedly; "I said I've got
the letter, and I have got it. Let me go, and I'll show it to you."
The sailor released the dirty wisp of cotton neckerchief by which he
had held Stephen Hargraves, but he still retained a grasp upon his
coat-collar.
"Shall I show you the letter?" asked the softy.
"Yes."
Mr. Hargraves fumbled in his pockets for some minutes, and
ultimately produced a dirty scrap of crumpled paper.
It was the brief scrawl which Aurora had written to James Conyers,
telling him to meet her in the wood. The murdered man had thrown it
carelessly aside, after reading it, and it had been picked up by
Stephen Hargraves.
He would not trust the precious document out of his own clumsy
hands, but held it before Captain Prodder for inspection.
The sailor stared at it, anxious, bewildered, fearful; he scarcely
knew how to estimate the importance of the wretched scrap of
circumstantial evidence. There were the words, certainly, written in a
bold, scarcely feminine hand. But these words in themselves proved
nothing until it could be proved that his niece had written them.
"How do I know as my sister Eliza's child wrote that?" he asked.
"Ay, sure; but she did, though," answered the softy. "But, coom, let
me go now, will you?" he added, with cringing civility; "I did n't know
you was her uncle. How was I to know aught about it? I don't want to
make any mischief agen Mrs. Mellish, though she's been no friend to me.
I did n't say anything at the inquest, did I? though I might have said
as much as I've said tonight, if it comes to that, and have told no
lies. But when folks bother me about him that's dead, and ask
this, and that, and t' other, and go on as if I had a right to know all
about it, I'm free to tell my thoughts, I suppose—surely I'm free to
tell my thoughts?"
"I'll go straight to Mr. Mellish, and tell him what you've said, you
scoundrel!" cried the captain.
"Ay, do," whispered Stephen Hargraves, maliciously; "there's some of
it that'll be stale news to him, anyhow."
CHAPTER XXXIV.
DISCOVERY OF THE WEAPON WITH WHICH
JAMES CONYERS HAD BEEN SLAIN.
Mr. and Mrs. Mellish returned to the house in which they had been so
happy; but it is not to be supposed that the pleasant country mansion
could be again, all in a moment, the home that it had been before the
advent of James Conyers, the trainer, and the tragedy that had so
abruptly concluded his brief service.
No; every pang that Aurora had felt, every agony that John had
endured, had left a certain impress upon the scene in which it had been
suffered. The subtle influences of association hung heavily about the
familiar place. We are the slaves of such associations, and we are
powerless to stand against their silent force. Scraps of color and
patches of gilding upon the walls will bear upon them, as plainly as if
they were covered with hieroglyphical inscriptions, the shadows of the
thoughts of those who have looked upon them. Transient and chance
effects of light or shade will recall the same effects, seen and
observed—as Fagin observed the broken spike upon the guarded dock—in
some horrible crisis of misery and despair. The commonest household
goods and chattels will bear mute witness of your agonies: an
easy-chair will say to you, "It was upon me you cast yourself in that
paroxysm of rage and grief;" the pattern of a dinner-service may recall
to you that fatal day on which you pushed your food untasted from you,
and turned your face, like grief-stricken King David, to the wall. The
bed you lay upon, the curtains that sheltered you, the pattern of the
paper on the walls, the common every-day sounds of the household,
coming muffled and far-away to that lonely room in which you hid
yourself, all these bear record of your sorrow, and of that hideous
double action of the mind which impresses these things most vividly
upon you at the very time when it would seem they should be most
indifferent.
But every sorrow, every pang of wounded love, or doubt, or jealousy,
or despair, is a fact—a fact once, and a fact for ever; to be
outlived, but very rarely to be forgotten; leaving such an impress upon
our lives as no future joys can quite wear out. The murder has been
done, and the hands are red. The sorrow has been suffered; and, however
beautiful Happiness may be to us, she can never be the bright virginal
creature she once was, for she has passed through the valley of the
shadow of death, and we have discovered that she is not immortal.
It is not to be expected, then, that John Mellish and his wife
Aurora could feel quite the same in the pretty chambers of the
Yorkshire mansion as they had felt before the first shipwreck of their
happiness. They had been saved from peril and destruction, and landed,
by the mercy of Providence, high and dry upon a shore that seemed to
promise them pleasure and security henceforth. But the memory of the
tempest was yet new to them; and upon the sands that were so smooth
to-day they had seen yesterday the breakers beating with furious
menace, and hurrying onward to destroy them.
The funeral of the trainer had not yet taken place, and it was
scarcely a pleasant thing for Mr. Mellish to remember that the body of
the murdered man still lay, stark and awful, in the oak coffin that
stood upon trestles in the rustic chamber at the north lodge.
"I'll pull that place down, Lolly," said John, as he turned away
from an open window, through which he could see the Gothic chimneys of
the trainer's late habitation glimmering redly above the trees. "I'll
pull the place down, my pet. The gates are never used, except by the
stable-boys; I'll knock them down, and the lodge too, and build some
loose boxes for the brood-mares with the materials. And we'll go away
to the south of France, darling, and run across to Italy, if you like,
and forget all about this horrid business."
"The funeral will take place to-morrow, John, will it not?" Aurora
asked.
"To-morrow, dear! to-morrow is Wednesday, you know. It was upon
Thursday night that—"
"Yes, yes," she answered, interrupting him, "I know—I remember."
She shuddered as she spoke, remembering the ghastly circumstances of
the night to which he alluded—remembering how the dead man had stood
before her, strong in health and vitality, and had insolently defied
her hatred. Away from Mellish Park, she had only remembered that the
burden of her life had been removed from her, and that she was free.
But here—here, upon the scene of the hideous story—she recollected
the manner of her release, and that memory oppressed her even more
terribly than her old secret, her only sorrow.
She had never seen or known in this man who had been murdered one
redeeming quality, one generous thought. She had known him as a liar, a
schemer, a low and paltry swindler, a selfish spendthrift, extravagant
to wantonness upon himself, but meaner than words could tell toward
others; a profligate, a traitor, a glutton, a drunkard. This is what
she had found behind her school-girl's fancy for a handsome face, for
violet-tinted eyes, and soft brown curling hair. Do not call her hard,
then, if sorrow had no part in the shuddering horror she felt as she
conjured up the image of him in his death-hour, and saw the glazing
eyes turned angrily upon her. She was little more than twenty; and it
had been her fate always to take the wrong step, always to be misled by
the vague fingerposts upon life's high-road, and to choose the longest,
and crookedest, and hardest way toward the goal she sought to reach.
Had she, upon the discovery of the first husband's infidelity,
called the law to her aid—she was rich enough to command its utmost
help, though Sir Cresswell Cresswell did not then keep the turnpike
upon such a royal road to divorce as he does now—she might have freed
herself from the hateful chains so foolishly linked together, and might
have defied this dead man to torment or assail her.
But she had chosen to follow the counsel of expediency, and it had
led her upon the crooked way through which I have striven to follow
her. I feel that there is much need of apology for her. Her own hands
had sown the dragon's teeth, from whose evil seed had sprung up armed
men strong enough to rend and devour her. But then, if she had been
faultless, she could not have been the heroine of this story; for I
think some wise man of old remarked that the perfect women were those
who left no histories behind them, but went through life upon such a
tranquil course of quiet well-doing as left no footprints on the sands
of time; only mute records hidden here and there, deep in the grateful
hearts of those who had been blessed by them.
The presence of the dead man within the boundary of Mellish Park
made itself felt throughout the household that had once been such a
jovial one. The excitement of the catastrophe had passed away, and only
the dull gloom remained—a sense of oppression not to be cast aside. It
was felt in the servants' hall as well as in Aurora's luxurious
apartments. It was felt by the butler as well as by the master. No
worse deed of violence than the slaughter of an unhappy stag, who had
rushed for a last refuge to the Mellish flower-garden, and had been run
down by furious hounds upon the velvet lawn, had ever before been done
within the boundary of the young squire's home. The house was an old
one, and had stood, gray and ivy-shrouded, through the perilous days of
civil war. There were secret passages, in which loyal squires of
Mellish had hidden from ferocious Roundheads bent upon riot and
plunder. There were broad hearth-stones, upon which sturdy blows had
been given and exchanged by strong men in leathern jerkins and clumsy
iron-heeled boots; but the Royalist Mellish had always ultimately
escaped—up a chimney, or down a cellar, or behind a curtain of
tapestry; and the wicked Praise-the-Lord Thompsons and
Smiter-of-the-Philistines Joneses had departed after plundering the
plate-chest and emptying the wine-barrels. There had never before been
set upon the place in which John Mellish had first seen the light the
red hand of MURDER.
It was not strange, then, that the servants sat long over their
meals, and talked in solemn whispers of the events of the past week.
There was more than the murder to talk about. There was the flight of
Mrs. Mellish from beneath her husband's roof upon the very day of the
inquest. It was all very well for John to give out that his wife had
gone up to town upon a visit to her cousin, Mrs. Bulstrode. Such ladies
as Mrs. Mellish do not go upon visits without escort, without a word of
notice, without the poorest pretence of bag and baggage. No; the
mistress of Mellish Park had fled away from her home under the
influence of some sudden panic. Had not Mrs. Powell said as much, or
hinted as much? for when did the lady-like creature ever vulgarize her
opinions by stating them plainly? The matter was obvious. Mr. Mellish
had taken, no doubt, the wisest course; he had pursued his wife, and
brought her back, and had done his best to hush up the matter; but
Aurora's departure had been a flight—a sudden and unpremeditated
flight.
The lady's maid—ah! how many handsome dresses, given to her by a
generous mistress, lay neatly folded in the girl's boxes on the second
story!—told how Aurora had come to her room, pale and wild-looking,
and had dressed herself unassisted for that hurried journey upon the
day of the inquest. The girl liked her mistress, loved her, perhaps;
for Aurora had a wondrous and almost dangerous faculty for winning the
love of those who came near her; but it was so pleasant to have
something to say about this all-absorbing topic, and to be able to make
one's self a feature in the solemn conclave. At first they had talked
only of the murdered man, speculating upon his life and history, and
building up a dozen theoretical views of the murder. But the tide had
turned now, and they talked of their mistress; not connecting her in
any positive or openly-expressed manner with the murder, but commenting
upon the strangeness of her conduct, and dwelling much upon those
singular coincidences by which she had happened to be roaming in the
dark upon the night of the catastrophe, and to run away from her home
upon the day of the inquest.
"It was odd, you know," the cook said; "and them black-eyed
women are generally regular spirity ones. I should n't like to
offend Master John's wife. Do you remember how she paid into t' softy?"
"But there was nought o' sort between her and the trainer, was
there?' asked some one.
"I don't know about that. But softy said she hated him like poison,
and that there was no love lost between 'em."
But why should Aurora have hated the dead man? The ensign's widow
had left the sting of her venom behind her, and had suggested to these
servants, by hints and innuendoes, something so far more base and
hideous than the truth that I will not sully these pages by recording
it. But Mrs. Powell had of course done this foul thing without the
utterance of one ugly word that could have told against her gentility,
had it been repeated aloud in a crowded drawing-room. She had only
shrugged her shoulders, and lifted her straw-colored eyebrows, and
sighed half regretfully, half deprecatingly; but she had blasted the
character of the woman she hated as shamefully as if she had uttered a
libel too gross for Holywell street. She had done a wrong that could
only be undone by the exhibition of the blood-stained certificate in
John's keeping, and the revelation of the whole story connected with
that fatal scrap of paper. She had done this before packing her boxes;
and she had gone away from the house that had sheltered her well
pleased at having done this wrong, and comforting herself yet farther
by the intention of doing more mischief through the medium of the
penny-post.
It is not to be supposed that the Manchester paper, which had caused
so serious a discussion in the humble parlor of the "Crooked Rabbit,"
had been overlooked in the servants' hall at Mellish. The Manchester
journals were regularly forwarded to the young squire from the
metropolis of cotton-spinning and horse-racing, and the mysterious
letter in the Guardian had been read and commented upon. Every
creature in that household, from the fat housekeeper who had kept the
keys of the store-room through nearly three generations, to the
rheumatic trainer, Langley, had a certain interest in the awful
question. A nervous footman turned pale as that passage was read which
declared that the murder had been committed by some member of the
household; but I think there were some younger and more adventurous
spirits—especially a pretty housemaid, who had seen the thrilling
drama of Susan Hopley performed at the Doncaster Theatre during
the spring meeting—who would have rather liked to be accused of the
crime, and to emerge spotless and triumphant from the judicial ordeal,
through the evidence of an idiot, or a magpie, or a ghost, or some
other witness common and popular in criminal courts.
Did Aurora know anything of all this? No; she only knew that a dull
and heavy sense of oppression in her own breast made the very summer
atmosphere floating in at the open windows seem stifling and poisonous;
that the house, which had once been so dear to her, was as painfully
and perpetually haunted by the ghastly presence of the murdered man as
if the dead trainer had stalked palpably about the corridors wrapped in
a blood-stained winding-sheet.
She dined with her husband alone in the great dining-room. Many
people had called during the two days that Mr. and Mrs. Mellish had
been absent; among others, the rector, Mr. Lofthouse, and the coroner,
Mr. Hayward.
"Lofthouse and Heyward will guess why we went away," John thought,
as he tossed the cards over in the basket; "they will guess that I have
taken the proper steps to make my marriage legal, and to make my
darling quite my own."
They were very silent at dinner, for the presence of the servants
sealed their lips upon the topic that was uppermost in their minds.
John looked anxiously at his wife every now and then, for he saw that
her face had grown paler since her arrival at Mellish; but he waited
until they were alone before he spoke.
"My darling," he said, as the door closed behind the butler and his
subordinate, "I am sure you are ill. This business has been too much
for you."
"It is the air of this house that seems to oppress me, John,"
answered Aurora. "I had forgotten all about this dreadful business
while I was away. Now that I come back, and find that the time which
has been so long to me—so long in misery and anxiety, and so long in
joy, my own dear love, through you—is in reality only a few days, and
that the murdered man still lies near us, I—I shall be better
when—when the funeral is over, John."
"My poor darling, I was a fool to bring you back. I should never
have done so but for Talbot's advice. He urged me so strongly to come
back directly. He said that if there should be any disturbance about
the murder, we ought to be upon the spot."
"Disturbance! What disturbance?" cried Aurora.
Her face blanched as she spoke, and her heart sank within her. What
farther disturbance could there be? Was the ghastly business as yet
unfinished then? She knew—alas! only too well—that there could be no
investigation of this matter which would not bring her name before the
world linked with the name of the dead man. How much she had endured in
order to keep that shameful secret from the world! How much she had
sacrificed in the hope of saving her father from humiliation! And now,
at the last, when she had thought that the dark chapter of her life was
finished, the hateful page blotted out—now, at the very last, there
was a probability of some new disturbance which would bring her name
and her history into every newspaper in England.
"Oh, John, John!" she cried, bursting into a passion of hysterical
sobs, and covering her face with her clasped hands, "am I never to hear
the last of this? Am I never, never, never to be released from the
consequences of my miserable folly?"
The butler entered the room as she said this; she rose hurriedly,
and walked to one of the windows, in order to conceal her face from the
man.
"I beg your pardon, sir," the old servant said, "but they've found
something in the Park, and I thought perhaps you might like to know—"
"They've found something? What," exclaimed John, utterly bewildered
between his agitation at the sight of his wife's grief and his endeavor
to understand the man.
"A pistol, sir. One of the stable-lads found it just now. He went to
the wood with another boy to look at the place where—the—the man was
shot, and he's brought back a pistol he found there. It was close
against the water, but hid away among the weeds and rushes. Whoever
threw it there, thought, no doubt, to throw it in the pond; but Jim,
that's one of the boys, fancied he saw something glitter, and sure
enough it was the band of a pistol; and I think it must be the one that
the trainer was shot with, Mr. John."
"A pistol!" cried Mr. Mellish; "let me see it."
His servant handed him the weapon. It was small enough for a toy,
but none the less deadly in a skilful hand. It was a rich man's fancy,
deftly carried out by some cunning gunsmith, and enriched by elaborate
inlaid work of purple steel and tarnished silver. It was rusty, from
exposure to rain and dew; but Mr. Mellish knew the pistol well, for it
was his own.
It was his own; one of his pet playthings; and it had been kept in
the room which was only entered by privileged persons—the room in
which his wife had busied herself upon the day of the murder with the
rearrangement of his guns.
CHAPTER XXXV.
UNDER A CLOUD.
Talbot Bulstrode and his wife came to Mellish Park a few days after
the return of John and Aurora. Lucy was pleased to come to her
cousin—pleased to be allowed to love her without reservation—grateful
to her husband for his gracious goodness in setting no barrier between
her and the friend she loved.
And Talbot—who shall tell the thoughts that were busy in his mind,
as he sat in a corner of the first-class carriage, to all outward
appearance engrossed in the perusal of a Times leader?
I wonder how much of the Thunderer's noble Saxon-English Mr.
Bulstrode comprehended that morning? The broad white paper on which the Times is printed serves as a convenient screen for a man's face.
Heaven knows what agonies have been sometimes endured behind that
printed mass. A woman, married, and a happy mother, glances carelessly
enough at the Births, and Marriages, and Deaths, and reads, perhaps,
that the man she loved, and parted with, and broke her heart for
fifteen or twenty years before, has fallen shot through the heart, far
away upon an Indian battle-field. She holds the paper firmly enough
before her face, and her husband goes on with his breakfast, and stirs
his coffee, or breaks his egg, while she suffers her agony—while the
comfortable breakfast-table darkens and goes away from her, and the
long-ago day comes back upon which the cruel ship left Southampton, and
the hard voices of well-meaning friends held forth monotonously upon
the folly of improvident marriages. Would it not be better, by the by,
for wives to make a practice of telling their husbands all the
sentimental little stories connected with the prematrimonial era? Would
it not be wiser to gossip freely about Charles' dark eyes and
mustache, and to hope that the poor fellow is getting on well in the
Indian service, than to keep a skeleton, in the shape of a phantom
ensign in the 87th, hidden away in some dark chamber of the feminine
memory?
But other than womanly agonies are suffered behind the Times.
The husband reads bad news of the railway company in whose shares he
has so rashly invested that money which his wife believes safely lodged
in the jog-trot, three-per-cent-yielding Consols. The dashing son, with
Newmarket tendencies, reads evil tidings of the horse he has backed so
boldly, perhaps at the advice of a Manchester prophet, who warranted
putting his friends in the way of winning a hatful of money for the
small consideration of three and sixpence in postage stamps. Visions of
a wall that it will not be very easy to square; of a black-list of play
or pay engagements; of a crowd of angry bookmen clamorous for their
dues, and not slow to hint at handy horse-ponds, and possible tar and
feathers, for defaulting swells and sneaking welshers—all these things
flit across the disorganized brain of the young man, while his sisters
are entreating to be told whether the Crown Diamonds is to be
performed that night, and if "dear Miss Pyne" will warble Rode's air
before the curtain falls. The friendly screen hides his face; and by
the time he has looked for the Covent Garden advertisements, and given
the required information, he is able to set the paper down, and proceed
calmly with his breakfast, pondering ways and means as he does so.
Lucy Bulstrode read a High-Church novel, while her husband sat with
the Times before his face, thinking of all that had happened to
him since he had first met the banker's daughter. How far away that old
love-story seemed to have receded since the quiet domestic happiness of
his life had begun in his marriage with Lucy! He had never been false,
in the remotest shadow of a thought, to his second love; but, now that
he knew the secret of Aurora's life, he could but look back and wonder
how he should have borne that cruel revelation if John's fate had been
his; if he had trusted the woman he loved in spite of the world, in
spite of her own strange words, which had so terribly strengthened his
worst fear, so cruelly redoubled his darkest doubts.
"Poor girl," he thought; "it was scarcely strange that she should
shrink from telling that humiliating story. I was not tender enough. I
confronted her in my obstinate and pitiless pride. I thought of myself
rather than of her and of her sorrow. I was barbarous and
ungentlemanly; and then I wondered that she refused to confide in me."
Talbot Bulstrode, reasoning after the fact, saw the weak points of
his conduct with a preternatural clearness of vision, and could not
repress a sharp pang of regret that he had not acted more generously.
There was no infidelity to Lucy in this thought. He would not have
exchanged his devoted little wife for the black-browed divinity of the
past, though an all-powerful fairy had stood at his side ready to
cancel his nuptials, and tie a fresh knot between him and Aurora. But
he was a gentleman, and he felt that he had grievously wronged,
insulted, and humiliated a woman whose worst fault had been the
trusting folly of an innocent girl.
"I left her on the ground in that room at Felden," he
thought—"kneeling on the ground, with her beautiful head bowed down
before me. O my God, can I ever forget the agony of that moment? Can I
ever forget what it cost me to do what I thought was right?"
The cold perspiration broke out upon his forehead as he remembered
that by-gone pain, as it may do with a cowardly person who recalls too
vividly the taking out of a three-pronged double tooth, or the cutting
off of a limb.
"John Mellish was ten times wiser than I," thought Mr. Bulstrode;
"he trusted to his instinct, and recognized a true woman when he met
her. I used to despise him at Rugby because he could n't construe
Cicero. I never thought he'd live to be wiser than me."
Talbot Bulstrode folded the Times newspaper, and laid it down
in the empty seat beside him. Lucy shut the third volume of her novel.
How should she care to read when it pleased her husband to desist from
reading?
"Lucy," said Mr. Bulstrode, taking his wife's hand (they had the
carriage to themselves, a piece of good fortune which often happens to
travellers who give the guard half a crown), "Lucy, I once did your
cousin a great wrong; I want to atone for it now. If any trouble, which
no one yet foresees, should come upon her, I want to be her friend. Do
you think I am right in wishing this, dear?"
"Right, Talbot!"
Mrs. Bulstrode could only repeat the word in unmitigated surprise.
When did she ever think him anything but the truest, and wisest, and
most perfect of created beings?
Everything seemed very quiet at Mellish when the visitors arrived.
There was no one in the drawing-room, nor in the smaller room within
the drawing room; the Venetians were closed, for the day was close and
sultry; there were vases of fresh flowers upon the tables, but there
were no open books, no litter of frivolous needle-work or drawing
materials, to indicate Aurora's presence.
"Mr. and Mrs. Mellish expected you by the later train, I believe
sir," the servant said, as he ushered Talbot and his wife into the
drawing-room.
"Shall I go and look for Aurora?" Lucy said to her husband. "She is
in the morning-room, I dare say."
Talbot suggested that it would be better, perhaps, to wait till Mrs.
Mellish came to them. So Lucy was fain to remain where she was. She
went to one of the open windows, and pushed the shutters apart. The
blazing sunshine burst into the room, and drowned it in light. The
smooth lawn was aflame with scarlet geraniums and standard roses, and
all manner of gaudily-colored blossoms; but Mrs. Bulstrode looked
beyond this vividly-tinted parterre to the thick woods, that
loomed darkly purple against the glowing sky.
It was in that very wood that her husband had declared his love for
her; the same wood that had since been outraged by violence and murder.
"The—the man is buried, I suppose, Talbot?" she said to her husband.
"I believe so, my dear."
"I should never care to live in this place again, if I were Aurora."
The door opened before Mrs. Bulstrode had finished speaking, and the
mistress of the house came toward them. She welcomed them
affectionately and kindly, taking Lucy in her arms, and greeting her
very tenderly; but Talbot saw that she had changed terribly within the
few days that had passed since her return to Yorkshire, and his heart
sank as he observed her pale face and the dark circles about her hollow
eyes.
Could she have heard—Could anybody have given her reason to
suppose—
"You are not well, Mrs. Mellish," he said, as he took her hand.
"No, not very well. This oppressive weather makes my head ache."
"I am sorry to see you looking ill. Where shall I find John?" asked
Mr. Bulstrode.
Aurora's pale face flushed suddenly.
"I—I—don't know," she stammered. "He is not in the house; he has
gone out—to the stables—or to the farm, I think. I'll send for him."
"No, no," Talbot said, intercepting her hand on its way to the bell.
"I'll go and look for him. Lucy will be glad of a chat with you, I dare
say, Aurora, and will not be sorry to get rid of me."
Lucy, with her arm about her cousin's waist, assented to this
arrangement. She was grieved to see the change in Aurora's looks, the
unnatural constraint of her manner.
Mr. Bulstrode walked away, hugging himself upon having done a very
wise thing.
"Lucy is a great deal more likely to find out what is the matter
than I am," he thought. "There is a sort of freemasonry between women,
an electric affinity, which a man's presence always destroys. How
deathly pale Aurora looks! Can it be possible that the trouble I
expected has come so soon?"
He went to the stables, but not so much to look for John Mellish as
in the hope of finding somebody intelligent enough to furnish him with
a better account of the murder than any he had yet heard.
"Some one else, as well as Aurora, must have had a reason for
wishing to get rid of this man," he thought. "There must have been some
motive—revenge, gain—something which no one has yet fathomed."
He went into the stable-yard; but he had no opportunity of making
his investigation, for John Mellish was standing in a listless attitude
before a small forge, watching the shoeing of one of his horses. The
young squire looked up with a start as he recognized Talbot, and gave
him his hand, with a few straggling words of welcome. Even in that
moment Mr. Bulstrode saw that there was perhaps a greater change in
John's appearance than in that of Aurora. The Yorkshireman's blue eyes
had lost their brightness, his step its elasticity; his face seemed
sunken and haggard, and he evidently avoided meeting Talbot's eye. He
lounged listlessly away from the forge, walking at his guest's side, in
the direction of the stable-gates; but he had the air of a man who
neither knows nor cares whither he is going.
"Shall we go to the house?" he said. "You must want some luncheon
after your journey." He looked at his watch as he said this. It was
half-past three, an hour after the usual time for luncheon at Mellish.
"I've been in the stables all the morning," he said. "We're busy
making our preparations for the York Summer."
"What horses do you run?" Mr. Bulstrode asked, politely affecting to
be interested in a subject that was utterly indifferent to him, in the
hope that stable-talk might rouse John from his listless apathy.
"What horses?" repeated Mr. Mellish, vaguely. "I—I hardly know.
Langley manages all that for me, you know; and—I—I forget the names
of the horses he proposed, and—"
Talbot Bulstrode turned suddenly upon his friend, and looked him
full in the face. They had left the stables by this time, and were in a
shady pathway that led through a shrubbery toward the house.
"John Mellish," he said, "this is not fair toward an old friend. You
have something on your mind, and you are trying to hide it from me."
The squire turned away his head.
"I have something on my mind, Talbot," he said, quietly. "If you
could help me, I'd ask your help more than any man's. But you can't,
you can't!"
"But suppose I think I can help you?" cried Mr. Bulstrode.
"Suppose I mean to try and do so, whether you will or no? I think I can
guess what your trouble is, John, but I thought you were a braver man
than to give way under it; I thought you were just the sort of man to
struggle through it nobly and bravely, and to get the better of it by
your own strength of will."
"What do you mean?" exclaimed John Mellish. "You can guess—you
know—you thought! Have you no mercy upon me, Talbot Bulstrode? Can't
you see that I'm almost mad, and that this is no time for you to force
your sympathy upon me? Do you want me to betray myself? Do you want me
to betray—"
He stopped suddenly, as if the words had choked him, and,
passionately stamping his foot upon the ground, walked on hurriedly,
with his friend still by his side.
The dining-room looked dreary enough when the two men entered it,
although the table gave promise of a very substantial luncheon; but
there was no one to welcome them, or to officiate at the banquet.
John seated himself wearily in a chair at the bottom of the table.
"You had better go and see if Mrs. Bulstrode and your mistress are
coming to luncheon," he said to a servant, who left the room with his
master's message, and returned three minutes afterward to say that the
ladies were not coming.
The ladies were seated side by side upon a low sofa in Aurora's
morning-room. Mrs. Mellish sat with her head upon her cousin's
shoulder. She had never had a sister, remember, and gentle Lucy stood
in place of that near and tender comforter. Talbot was perfectly right;
Lucy had accomplished that which he would have failed to bring about.
She had found the key to her cousin's unhappiness.
"Ceased to love you, dear!" exclaimed Mrs. Bulstrode, echoing the
words that Aurora had last spoken. "Impossible!"
"It is true, Lucy," Mrs. Mellish answered, despairingly. "He has
ceased to love me. There is a black cloud between us now, now that all
secrets are done away with. It is very bitter for me to bear, Lucy, for
I thought we should be so happy and united. But—but it is only
natural. He feels the degradation so much. How can he look at me
without remembering who and what I am? The widow of his groom! Can I
wonder that he avoids me?"
"Avoids you, dear!"
"Yes, avoids me. We have scarcely spoken a dozen words to each other
since the night of our return. He was so good to me, so tender and
devoted during the journey home, telling me again and again that this
discovery had not lessened his love, that all the trial and horror of
the past few days had only shown him the great strength of his
affection; but on the night of our return, Lucy, he changed—changed
suddenly and inexplicably; and now I feel that there is a gulf between
us that can never be passed again. He is alienated from me for ever."
"Aurora, all this is impossible," remonstrated Lucy. "It is your own
morbid fancy, darling."
"My fancy!" cried Aurora, bitterly. "Ah! Lucy, you can not know how
much I love my husband, if you think that I could be deceived in one
look or tone of his. Is it my fancy that he averts his eyes when he
speaks to me? Is it my fancy that his voice changes when he pronounces
my name? Is it my fancy that he roams about the house like a ghost, and
paces up and down his room half the night through? If these things are
my fancy, Heaven have mercy upon me, Lucy, for I must be going mad."
Mrs. Bulstrode started as she looked at her cousin. Could it be
possible that all the trouble and confusion of the past week or two had
indeed unsettled this poor girl's intellect?
"My poor Aurora," she murmured, smoothing the heavy hair away from
her cousin's tearful eyes, "my poor darling, how is it possible that
John should change toward you? He loved you so dearly, so devotedly;
surely nothing could alienate him from you."
"I used to think so, Lucy," Aurora murmured in a low, heart-broken
voice; "I used to think nothing could ever come to part us. He said he
would follow me to the uttermost end of the world; he said that no
obstacle on earth should ever separate us; and now—"
She could not finish the sentence, for she broke into convulsive
sobs, and hid her face upon her cousin's shoulder, staining Mrs.
Bulstrode's pretty silk dress with her hot tears.
"Oh, my love, my love," she cried, piteously, "why did n't I run
away and hide myself from you? why did n't I trust to my first
instinct, and run away from you for ever? Any suffering would be better
than this—any suffering would be better than this!"
Her passionate grief merged into a fit of hysterical weeping, in
which she was no longer mistress of herself. She had suffered for the
past few days more bitterly than she had ever suffered yet. Lucy
understood all that. She was one of those people whose tenderness
instinctively comprehends the griefs of others. She knew how to treat
her cousin; and in less than an hour after this emotional outbreak
Aurora was lying on her bed, pale and exhausted, but sleeping
peacefully. She had carried the burden of her sorrow in silence during
the past few days, and had spent sleepless nights in brooding over her
trouble. Her conversation with Lucy had unconsciously relieved her, and
she slumbered calmly after the storm. Lucy sat by the bed watching the
sleeper for some time, and then stole on tip-toe from the room.
She went, of course, to tell her husband all that had passed, and to
take counsel from his sublime wisdom.
She found Talbot in the drawing-room alone; he had eaten a dreary
luncheon in John's company, and had been hastily left by his host
immediately after the meal. There had been no sound of carriage-wheels
upon the gravelled drive all that morning; there had been no callers at
Mellish since John's return; for a horrible scandal had spread itself
throughout the length and breadth of the county, and those who spoke of
the young squire and his wife talked in solemn undertones, and gravely
demanded of each other whether some serious step should not be taken
about the business which was uppermost in everybody's mind.
Lucy told Talbot all that Aurora had said to her. This was no breach
of confidence in the young wife's code of morality; for were not she
and her husband immutably one, and how could she have any secret
from him?
"I thought so!" Mr. Bulstrode said, when Lucy had finished her story.
"You thought what, dear?"
"That the breach between John and Aurora was a serious one. Don't
look so sorrowful, my darling. It must be our business to reunite these
divided lovers. You shall comfort Aurora, Lucy, and I'll look after
John."
Talbot Bulstrode kissed his little wife, and went straight away upon
his friendly errand. He found John Mellish in his own room—the room in
which Aurora had written to him upon the day of her flight—the room
from which the murderous weapon had been stolen by some unknown hand.
John had hidden the rusty pistol in one of the locked drawers of his
Davenport; but it was not to be supposed that the fact of its discovery
could be locked up or hidden away. That had been fully discussed
in the servants' hall; and who shall doubt that it had travelled
farther, percolating through some of those sinuous channels which lead
away from every household?
"I want you to come for a walk with me, Mr. John Mellish," said
Talbot, imperatively; "so put on your hat, and come into the Park. You
are the most agreeable gentleman I ever had the honor to visit, and the
attention you pay your guests is really something remarkable."
Mr. Mellish made no reply to this speech. He stood before his friend
pale, silent, and sullen. He was no more like the hearty Yorkshire
squire whom we have known than he was like Viscount Palmerston or Lord
Clyde. He was transformed out of himself by some great trouble that was
preying upon his mind, and, being of a transparent and childishly
truthful disposition, was unable to disguise his anguish.
"John, John," cried Talbot, "we were little boys together at Rugby,
and have backed each other in a dozen childish fights. Is it kind of
you to withhold your friendship from me now, when I have come here on
purpose to be a friend to you—to you and to Aurora?"
John Mellish turned away his head as his friend mentioned that
familiar name, and the gesture was not lost upon Mr. Bulstrode.
"John, why do you refuse to trust me?"
"I don't refuse. I—why did you come to this accursed house?" cried
John Mellish, passionately; "why did you come here, Talbot Bulstrode?
You don't know the blight that is upon this place, and those who live
in it, or you would have no more come here than you would willingly go
to a plague-stricken city. Do you know that since I came back from
London not a creature has called at this house? Do you know that when I
and—and—my wife—went to church on Sunday, the people we knew sneaked
away from our path as if we had just recovered from typhus fever? Do
you know that the cursed gaping rabble come from Doncaster to stare
over the Park palings, and that this house is a show to half the West
Riding? Why do you come here? You will be stared at, and grinned at,
and scandalized—you, who—Go back to London to-night, Talbot, if you
don't want to drive me mad."
"Not till you trust me with your troubles, John," answered Mr.
Bulstrode, firmly. "Put on your hat, and come out with me. I want you
to show me the spot where the murder was done."
"You may get some one else to show it you," muttered John, sullenly;
"I'll not go there!"
"John Mellish," cried Talbot, suddenly, "am I to think you a coward
and a fool? By the Heaven that's above me, I shall think so if you
persist in this nonsense. Come out into the Park with me; I have the
claim of past friendship upon you, and I'll not have that claim set
aside by any folly of yours."
The two men went out upon the lawn, John complying moodily enough
with his friend's request, and walked silently across the Park toward
that portion of the wood in which James Conyers had met his death. They
had reached one of the loneliest and shadiest avenues in this wood, and
were, in fact, close against the spot from which Samuel Prodder had
watched his niece and her companion on the night of the murder, when
Talbot stopped suddenly, and laid his hand on the squire's shoulder.
"John," he said, in a determined tone, "before we go to look at the
place where this bad man died, you must tell me your trouble."
Mr. Mellish drew himself up proudly, and looked at the speaker with
gloomy defiance lowering upon his face.
"I will tell no man that which I do not choose to tell," he said,
firmly; and then, with a sudden change that was terrible to see, he
cried impetuously, "Why do you torment me, Talbot? I tell you that I
can't trust you—I can't trust any one upon earth. If—if I told
you—the horrible thought that—if I told you, it would be your duty
to—I—Talbot, Talbot, have pity upon me—let me alone—go away from
me—I—"
Stamping furiously, as if he would have trampled down the cowardly
despair for which he despised himself, and beating his forehead with
his clenched fists, John Mellish turned away from his friend, and,
leaning against the gnarled branch of a great oak, wept aloud. Talbot
Bulstrode waited till the paroxysm had passed away before he spoke
again; but when his friend had grown calmer, he linked his arm about
him, and drew him away almost as tenderly as if the big Yorkshireman
had been some sorrowing woman, sorely in need of manly help and comfort.
"John, John," he said gravely, "thank God for this; thank God for
anything that breaks the ice between us. I know what your trouble is,
poor old friend, and I know that you have no cause for it. Hold up your
head, man, and look forward to a happy future. I know the black thought
that has been gnawing at your poor, foolish, manly, heart: you think
that Aurora murdered the groom!"
John Mellish started, shuddering convulsively.
"No, no," he gasped; "who said so—who said—"
"You think this, John," continued Talbot Bulstrode, "and you do her
the most grievous wrong that ever yet was done to woman—a more
shameful wrong than I committed when I thought that Aurora Floyd had
been guilty of some base intrigue."
"You don't know—" stammered John.
"I don't know! I know all, and foresaw trouble for you before
you
saw the cloud that was in the sky. But I never dreamed of this. I
thought the foolish country-people would suspect your wife, as it
always pleases people to try and fix a crime upon the person in whom
that crime would be more particularly atrocious. I was prepared for
this; but to think that you—you, John, who should have learned to know
your wife by this time—to think that you should suspect the woman you
have loved of a foul and treacherous murder!"
"How do we know that the—that the man was murdered?" cried John,
vehemently. "Who says that the deed was treacherously done? He may have
goaded her beyond endurance, insulted her generous pride, stung her to
the very quick, and in the madness of her passion—having that wretched
pistol in her possession—she may—"
"Stop!" interrupted Talbot. "What pistol? You told me the weapon had
not been found."
"It was found upon the night of our return."
"Yes; but why do you associate this weapon with Aurora? What do you
mean by saying that the pistol was in her possession?"
"Because—O my God! Talbot, why do you wring these things from me?"
"For your own good, and for the justification of an innocent woman,
so help me Heaven!" answered Mr. Bulstrode. "Do not be afraid to be
candid with me, John. Nothing would ever make me believe Aurora Mellish
guilty of this crime."
The Yorkshireman turned suddenly toward his friend, and, leaning
upon Talbot Bulstrode's shoulder, wept for the second time during that
woodland ramble.
"May God in heaven bless you for this, Talbot!" he cried,
passionately. "Ah! my love, my dear, what a wretch I have been to you!
but Heaven is my witness that, even in my worst agony of doubt and
horror, my love has never lessened. It never could, it never could!"
"John, old fellow," said Mr. Bulstrode, cheerfully, "perhaps,
instead of talking this nonsense (which leaves me entirely in the dark
as to everything that has happened since you left London), you will do
me the favor to enlighten me as to the cause of these foolish
suspicions."
They had reached the ruined summer-house, and the pool of stagnant
water on the margin of which James Conyers had met with his death. Mr.
Bulstrode seated himself upon a pile of broken timber, while John
Mellish paced up and down the smooth patch of turf between the
summer-house and the water, and told, disjointedly enough, the story of
the finding of the pistol which had been taken out of his room.
"I saw that pistol upon the day of the murder," said he. "I took
particular notice of it; for I was cleaning my guns that morning, and I
left them all in confusion while I went down to the lodge to see the
trainer. When I came back—I—"
"Well, what then?"
"Aurora had been setting my guns in order."
"You argue, therefore, that your wife took the pistol?"
John looked piteously at his friend; but Talbot's grave smile
reassured him.
"No one else had permission to go into the room," he answered. "I
keep my papers and accounts there, you know, and it's an understood
thing that none of the servants are allowed to go there except when
they clean the room."
"To be sure! But the room is not locked, I suppose?"
"Locked! of course not."
"And the windows, which open to the ground, are sometimes left open,
I dare say?"
"Almost always, in such weather as this."
"Then, my dear John, it may be just possible that some one who had
not permission to enter the room did nevertheless enter it for the
purpose of abstracting this pistol. Have you asked Aurora why she took
upon herself to rearrange your guns? She had never done such a thing
before, I suppose?"
"Oh, yes, very often. I'm rather in the habit of leaving them about
after cleaning them, and my darling understands all about them as well
as I do. She has often put them away for me."
"Then there was nothing particular in her doing so upon the day of
the murder. Have you asked her how long she was in your room, and
whether she can remember seeing this particular pistol among others?"
"Ask her!" exclaimed John; "how could I ask her when—"
"When you had been mad enough to suspect her. No, my poor old
friend, you made the same mistake that I committed at Felden. You
presupposed the guilt of the woman you loved, and you were too great a
coward to investigate the evidence upon which your suspicions were
built. Had I been wise enough, instead of blindly questioning this
poor, bewildered girl, to tell her plainly what it was that I
suspected, the incontrovertible truth would have flashed out of her
angry eyes, and one indignant denial would have told me how basely I
had wronged her. You shall not make the mistake that I made, John. You
must go frankly and fearlessly to the wife you love, tell her of the
suspicion that overclouds her fame, and implore her to help you to the
uttermost of her power in unravelling the mystery of this man's death.
The assassin must be found, John; for, so long as he remains
undiscovered, you and your wife will be the victims of every
penny-a-liner who finds himself at a loss for a paragraph."
"Yes," Mr. Mellish answered bitterly, "the papers have been hard at
it already; and there's been a fellow hanging about the place for the
last few days whom I've had a very strong inclination to thrash. Some
reporter, I suppose, come to pick up information."
"I suppose so," Talbot answered, thoughtfully; "what sort of a man
was he?"
"A decent-looking fellow enough; but a Londoner, I fancy,
and—stay!" exclaimed John, suddenly, "there's a man coming toward us
from the turnstile, and, unless I'm considerably mistaken, it's the
very fellow."
Mr. Mellish was right.
The wood was free to any foot-passenger who pleased to avail himself
of the pleasant shelter of spreading beeches, and the smooth carpet of
mossy turf, rather than tramp wearily upon the dusty highway.
The stranger advancing from the turnstile was a decent-looking
person, dressed in dark, tight-fitting clothes, and making no
unnecessary or ostentatious display of linen, for his coat was buttoned
tightly to the chin. He looked at Talbot and John as he passed them,
not insolently, or even inquisitively, but with one brightly rapid and
searching glance, which seemed to take in the most minute details in
the appearance of both gentlemen. Then, walking on a few paces, he
stopped, and looked thoughtfully at the pond, and the bank above it.
"This is the place, I think, gentlemen?" he said, in a frank and
rather free-and-easy manner.
Talbot returned his look with interest.
"If you mean the place where the murder was committed, it is," he
said.
"Ah! I understood so," answered the stranger, by no means abashed.
He looked at the bank, regarding it, now from one point, now from
another, like some skilful upholsterer taking the measure of a piece of
furniture. Then, walking slowly round the pond, he seemed to plumb the
depth of th |