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, &c.; 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 dressmakers 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 heart 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 standstill 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 landowner, 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 afterwards. 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:' "John Mellish, Esq., of Mellish Park,
near Doncaster, to Aurora, only daughter of Archibald Floyd, Banker,
of Felden Woods, Kent." 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.
Towards 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-colour 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 in 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 stonemasons 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; amongst which figured the legend, "Welcom
to Melish!" 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 splendour of colour 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 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 cannot 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 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 cannot 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 as 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. Amongst 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 babyhood, doing odd jobs
for the grooms, and being reckoned, although a little "fond" upon
common matters, a very acute judge of horse-flesh. 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. 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; that arnt always though, 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 favourite 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 honour, I'm
sometimes half afraid of him, and begin to 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 stable-man. "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 colour 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 afterwards 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
cannot 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
favourite; 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
fire-light 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 favourite 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 to 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 towards 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 wasn'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 the 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 fast 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
upwards 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 towards 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.