Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  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 c
hance 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 13

  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 lit
tle 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.