Aurora Floyd

by M. E. Braddon

  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 prep
ared 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 be
droom, 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.