Aurora Floyd. Volume 3

"Yes, yes," she answered, interrupting him. "I know; I know."

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 towards 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 finger-posts upon life's high-road, and to choose the longest, and crookedest, and hardest way towards the goal she sought to reach.

Had she, upon the discovery of her 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 blest 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 Park 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 Park 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 that 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 had 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 oneself 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 park upon the night of the catastrophe, and to run away from her home on the day of the inquest.

"It was odd, you know," the cook said; "and them black-eyed women are generally regular spirity ones. I shouldn't like to offend Master John's wife. Do you remember how she paid into t' 'Softy'?"

"But there was naught 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 innuendos, 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-coloured 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 further 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 parlour of the Crooked Rabbit, had been overlooked in the servants' hall at Mellish Park. The Manchester journals were regularly forwarded to the young squire from that 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. 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 have 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 further 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 endeavour 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 barrel of a pistol; and I think 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 with the rearrangement of his guns upon the day of the murder.

CHAPTER X.

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 mask! 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 pre-matrimonial era? Would it not be wiser to gossip freely about Charles's dark eyes and moustache, 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 book that it will not be very easy to square; of a black list of play or pay engagements; of a crowd of angry book-men 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 fears, 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 that which I thought was right!"

The cold perspiration broke out upon his forehead as he remembered that bygone 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 couldn'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 by his side. 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 needlework 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-coloured 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.