Aurora Floyd

by M. E. Braddon

"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.