STILL CONSTANT.
Mr. James Conyers took his breakfast in his own apartment upon the
morning after his visit to Doncaster, and Stephen Hargraves waited upon
him; carrying him a basin of muddy coffee, and enduring his ill-humour
with the long-suffering which seemed peculiar to this hump-backed,
low-voiced stable-helper.
The trainer rejected the coffee, and called for a pipe, and lay smoking
half the summer morning, with the scent of the roses and honeysuckle
floating into his close chamber, and the July sunshine glorifying the
sham roses and blue lilies that twisted themselves in floricultural
monstrosity about the cheap paper on the walls.
The "Softy" cleaned his master's boots, set them in the sunshine
to air, washed the breakfast-things, swept the door-step, and then
seated himself upon it to ruminate, with his elbows on his knees and
his hands twisted in his coarse red hair. The silence of the summer
atmosphere was only broken by the drowsy hum of the insects in the
wood, and the occasional dropping of some early-blighted leaf.
Mr. Conyers's temper had been in no manner improved by his night's
dissipation in the town of Doncaster. Heaven knows what entertainment
he had found in those lonely streets, that grass-grown market-place and
tenantless stalls, or that dreary and hermetically-sealed building,
which looks like a prison on three sides and a chapel on the fourth,
and which, during the September meeting, bursts suddenly into life and
light with huge posters flaring against its gaunt walls, and a bright
blue-ink announcement of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Mathews, or Mr. and Mrs.
Charles Kean, for five nights only. Normal amusement in the town of
Doncaster between these two oases in the year's dreary circle, the
spring and autumn meetings, there is none. But of abnormal and special
entertainment there may be much; only known to such men as Mr. James
Conyers, to whom the most sinuous alley is a pleasant road, so long as
it leads, directly or indirectly, to the betting-man's god--Money.
However this might be, Mr. Conyers bore upon him all the symptoms of
having, as the popular phrase has it, made a night of it. His eyes were
dim and glassy; his tongue hot and furred, and uncomfortably large
for his parched mouth; his hand so shaky that the operation which he
performed with a razor before his looking-glass was a toss-up between
suicide and shaving. His heavy head seemed to have been transformed
into a leaden box full of buzzing noises; and after getting half
through his toilet he gave it up for a bad job, and threw himself upon
the bed he had just left, a victim to that biliary derangement which
inevitably follows an injudicious admixture of alcoholic and malt
liquors.
"A tumbler of Hochheimer," he muttered, "or even the third-rate
Chablis they give one at a _table-d'hôte_, would freshen me up a
little; but there's nothing to be had in this abominable place except
brandy-and-water."
He called to the "Softy," and ordered him to mix a tumbler of the
last-named beverage, cold and weak.
Mr. Conyers drained the cool and lucid draught, and flung himself back
upon the pillow with a sigh of relief. He knew that he would be thirsty
again in five or ten minutes, and that the respite was a brief one; but
still it was a respite.
"Have they come home?" he asked.
"Who?"
"Mr. and Mrs. Mellish, you idiot!" answered the trainer fiercely. "Who
else should I bother my head about? Did they come home last night while
I was away?"
The "Softy" told his master that he had seen one of the carriages drive
past the north gates at a little after ten o'clock on the preceding
night, and that he supposed it contained Mr. and Mrs. Mellish.
"Then you'd better go up to the house and make sure," said Mr. Conyers;
"I want to know."
"Go up to th' house?"
"Yes, coward!--yes, sneak! Do you suppose that Mrs. Mellish will eat
you?"
"I don't suppose nought o' t' sort," answered the "Softy" sulkily; "but
I'd rather not go."
"But I tell you I want to know," said Mr. Conyers; "I want to know if
Mrs. Mellish is at home, and what she's up to, and whether there are
any visitors at the house, and all about her. Do you understand?"
"Yes, it's easy enough to understand, but it's rare and difficult to
do," replied Steeve Hargraves. "How am I to find out? Who's to tell me?"
"How do I know?" cried the trainer, impatiently; for Stephen
Hargraves's slow, dogged stupidity was throwing the dashing James
Conyers into a fever of vexation. "How do I know? Don't you see that
I'm too ill to stir from this bed? I'd go myself if I wasn't. And can't
you go and do what I tell you without standing arguing there until you
drive me mad?"
Steeve Hargraves muttered some sulky apology, and shuffled out of the
room. Mr. Conyers's handsome eyes followed him with a dark frown. It is
not a pleasant state of health which succeeds a drunken debauch; and
the trainer was angry with himself for the weakness which had taken him
to Doncaster upon the preceding evening, and thereby inclined to vent
his anger upon other people.
There is a great deal of vicarious penance done in this world.
Lady's-maids are apt to suffer for the follies of their mistresses, and
Lady Clara Vere de Vere's French Abigail is extremely likely to have
to atone for young Laurence's death by patient endurance of my lady's
ill-temper and much unpicking and remaking of bodices, which would
have fitted her ladyship well enough in any other state of mind than
the remorseful misery which is engendered of an evil conscience. The
ugly gash across young Laurence's throat, to say nothing of the cruel
slanders circulated after the inquest, may make life almost unendurable
to the poor meek nursery-governess who educates Lady Clara's younger
sisters; and the younger sisters themselves, and mamma and papa, and my
lady's youthful confidantes, and even her haughtiest adorers, all have
their share in the expiation of her ladyship's wickedness. For she will
not--or she _cannot_--meekly own that she has been guilty, and shut
herself away from the world, to make her own atonement and work her own
redemption. So she thrusts the burden of her sins upon other people's
shoulders, and travels the first stage to captious and disappointed
old-maidism.
The commercial gentlemen who make awkward mistakes in the City,
the devotees of the turf whose misfortunes keep them away from Mr.
Tattersall's premises on a settling-day, can make innocent women and
children carry the weight of their sins, and suffer the penalties of
their foolishness. Papa still smokes his Cabanas at fourpence-halfpenny
apiece, or his mild Turkish at nine shillings a pound, and still dines
at the Crown and Sceptre in the drowsy summer weather, when the bees
are asleep in the flowers at Morden College, and the fragrant hay
newly stacked in the meadows beyond Blackheath. But mamma must wear
her faded silk, or have it dyed, as the case may be; and the children
must forego the promised happiness, the wild delight, of sunny rambles
on a shingly beach, bordered by yellow sands that stretch away to hug
an ever changeful and yet ever constant ocean in their tawny arms.
And not only mamma and the little ones, but other mothers and other
little ones, must help in the heavy sum of penance for the defaulter's
iniquities. The baker may have calculated upon receiving that
long-standing account, and may have planned a new gown for his wife,
and a summer treat for his little ones, to be paid for by the expected
money; and the honest tradesman, soured by the disappointment of having
to disappoint those he loves, is likely to be cross to them into the
bargain; and even to grudge her Sunday out to the household drudge who
waits at his little table. The influence of the strong man's evil deed
slowly percolates through insidious channels of which he never knows
or dreams. The deed of folly or of guilt does its fatal work when the
sinner who committed it has forgotten his wickedness. Who shall say
where or when the results of one man's evil doing shall cease? The seed
of sin engenders no common root, shooting straight upwards through the
earth, and bearing a given crop. It is the germ of a foul running weed,
whose straggling suckers travel underground beyond the ken of mortal
eye, beyond the power of mortal calculation. If Louis XV. had been a
conscientious man, terror and murder, misery and confusion, might never
have reigned upon the darkened face of beautiful France. If Eve had
rejected the fatal fruit we might all have been in Eden to-day.
Mr. James Conyers, then, after the manner of mankind, vented his spleen
upon the only person who came in his way, and was glad to be able to
despatch the "Softy" upon an unpleasant errand, and make his attendant
as uncomfortable as he was himself.
"My head rocks as if I was on board a steam-packet," he muttered, as he
lay alone in his little bedroom, "and my hand shakes so that I can't
hold my pipe steady while I fill it. I'm in a nice state to have to
talk to _her_. As if it wasn't as much as I can do at the best of times
to be a match for her."
He flung aside his pipe half filled, and turned his head wearily upon
the pillow. The hot sun and the buzz of the insects tormented him.
There was a big bluebottle fly blundering and wheeling about amongst
the folds of the dimity bed-curtains; a fly which seemed the very
genius of delirium tremens; but the trainer was too ill to do more than
swear at his purple-winged tormentor.
He was awakened from a half-doze by the treble voice of a small
stable-boy in the room below. He called out angrily for the lad to come
up and state his business. His business was a message from Mr. John
Mellish, who wished to see the trainer immediately.
"_Mr._ Mellish," muttered James Conyers to himself. "Tell your master
I'm too ill to stir, but that I'll wait upon him in the evening," he
said to the boy. "You can see I'm ill, if you've got any eyes, and you
can say that you found me in bed."
The lad departed with these instructions, and Mr. Conyers returned to
his own thoughts, which appeared to be by no means agreeable to him.
To drink spirituous liquors and play all-fours in the sanded taproom of
a sporting public is no doubt a very delicious occupation, and would be
altogether Elysian and unobjectionable if one could always be drinking
spirits and playing all-fours. But as the finest picture ever painted
by Raphael or Rubens is but a dead blank of canvas upon the reverse, so
there is generally a disagreeable _other_ side to all the pleasures of
earth, and a certain reaction after card-playing and brandy-drinking
which is more than equivalent in misery to the pleasures which have
preceded it. Mr. Conyers, tossing his hot head from side to side upon
a pillow which seemed even hotter, took a very different view of life
to that which he had expounded to his boon companions only the night
before in the tap-room of the Lion and Lamb, Doncaster.
"I should liked to have stopped over the Leger," he muttered, "for I
meant to make a hatful of money out of the Conjuror; for if what they
say at Richmond is anything like truth, he's safe to win. But there's
no going against my lady when her mind's made up. It's take it or leave
it--yes or no--and be quick about it."
Mr. Conyers garnished his speech with two or three expletives common
enough amongst the men with whom he had lived, but not to be recorded
here; and, closing his eyes, fell into a doze; a half-waking,
half-sleeping torpidity; in which he felt as if his head had become a
ton-weight of iron, and was dragging him backwards through the pillow
into a bottomless abyss.
While the trainer lay in this comfortless semi-slumber Stephen
Hargraves walked slowly and sulkily through the wood on his way to the
invisible fence, from which point he meant to reconnoitre the premises.
The irregular façade of the old house fronted him across the smooth
breadth of lawn, dotted and broken by particoloured flower-beds; by
rustic clumps of gnarled oak supporting mighty clusters of vivid
scarlet geraniums, all aflame in the sunshine; by trellised arches
laden with trailing roses of every varying shade, from palest blush to
deepest crimson; by groups of evergreens, whose every leaf was rich in
beauty and luxuriance, whose every tangled garland would have made a
worthy chaplet for a king.
The "Softy," in the semi-darkness of his soul, had some glimmer of
that light which was altogether wanting in Mr. James Conyers. He felt
that these things were beautiful. The broken lines of the ivy-covered
house-front, Gothic here, Elizabethan there, were in some manner
pleasant to him. The scattered rose-leaves on the lawn; the flickering
shadows of the evergreens upon the grass; the song of a skylark too
lazy to soar, and content to warble among the bushes; the rippling
sound of a tiny waterfall far away in the wood,--made a language of
which he only understood a few straggling syllables here and there, but
which was not altogether a meaningless jargon to him, as it was to the
trainer; to whose mind Holborn Hill would have conveyed as much of the
sublime as the untrodden pathways of the Jungfrau. The "Softy" dimly
perceived that Mellish Park was beautiful, and he felt a fiercer hatred
against the person whose influence had ejected him from his old home.
The house fronted the south, and the Venetian shutters were all closed
upon this hot summer's day. Stephen Hargraves looked for his old enemy
Bow-wow, who was likely enough to be lying on the broad stone steps
before the hall-door; but there was no sign of the dog's presence
anywhere about. The hall-door was closed, and the Venetian shutters,
under the rose and clematis shadowed verandah which sheltered John
Mellish's room, were also closed. The "Softy" walked round by the fence
which encircled the lawn to another iron gate which opened close to
John's room, and which was so completely overshadowed by a clump of
beeches as to form a safe point of observation. This gate had been left
ajar by Mr. Mellish himself, most likely, for that gentleman had a
happy knack of forgetting to shut the doors and gates which he opened;
and the "Softy," taking courage from the stillness round and about
the house, ventured into the garden, and crept stealthily towards the
closed shutters before the windows of Mr. Mellish's apartment, with
much of the manner which might distinguish some wretched mongrel cur
who trusts himself within ear-shot of a mastiff's kennel.
The mastiff was out of the way on this occasion, for one of the
shutters was ajar; and when Stephen Hargraves peeped cautiously
into the room, he was relieved to find it empty. John's elbow-chair
was pushed a little way from the table, which was laden with open
pistol-cases and breech-loading revolvers. These, with two or three
silk handkerchiefs, a piece of chamois-leather, and a bottle of oil,
bore witness that Mr. Mellish had been beguiling the morning in the
pleasing occupation of inspecting and cleaning the fire-arms, which
formed the chief ornament of his study.
It was his habit to begin this operation with great preparation, and
altogether upon a gigantic scale; to reject all assistance with scorn;
to put himself in a violent perspiration at the end of half an hour,
and to send one of the servants to finish the business, and restore the
room to its old order.
The "Softy" looked with a covetous eye at the noble array of guns
and pistols. He had that innate love of these things which seems to
be implanted in every masculine breast, whatever its owner's state
or station. He had hoarded his money once to buy himself a gun;
but when he had saved the five-and-thirty shillings demanded by a
certain pawnbroker of Doncaster for an old-fashioned musket, which
was almost as heavy as a small cannon, his courage failed him, and he
could not bring himself to part with the precious coins, whose very
touch could send a shrill of rapture through the slow current of his
blood. No, he could not surrender such a sum of money to the Doncaster
pawnbroker even for the possession of his heart's desire; and as the
stern money-lender refused to take payment in weekly instalments of
sixpences, Stephen was fain to go without the gun, and to hope that
some day or other Mr. John Mellish would reward his services by the
gift of some disused fowling-piece by Forsythe or Manton. But there was
no hope of such happiness now. A new dynasty reigned at Mellish, and a
black-eyed queen, who hated him, had forbidden him to sully her domain
with the traces of his shambling foot. He felt that he was in momentary
peril upon the threshold of that sacred chamber, which, during his
long service at Mellish Park, he had always regarded as a very temple
of the beautiful; but the sight of fire-arms upon the table had a
magnetic attraction for him, and he drew the Venetian shutter a little
way further ajar, and slid himself in through the open window. Then,
flushed and trembling with excitement, he dropped into John's chair,
and began to handle the precious implements of warfare upon pheasants
and partridges, and to turn them about in his big, clumsy hands.
Delicious as the guns were, and delightful though it was to draw one
of the revolvers up to his shoulder, and take aim at an imaginary
pheasant, the pistols were even still more attractive; for with them he
could not refrain from taking imaginary aim at his enemies. Sometimes
at James Conyers, who had snubbed and abused him, and had made the
bread of dependence bitter to him; very often at Aurora; once or twice
at poor John Mellish; but always with a darkness upon his pallid face
which would have promised little mercy, had the pistol been loaded and
the enemy near at hand.
There was one pistol, a small one, and an odd one apparently, for he
could not find its fellow, which took a peculiar hold upon his fancy.
It was as pretty as a lady's toy, and small enough to be carried in a
lady's pocket, but the hammer snapped upon the nipple, when the "Softy"
pulled the trigger, with a sound that evidently meant mischief.
"To think that such a little thing as this could kill a big man like
you," muttered Mr. Hargraves, with a jerk of his head in the direction
of the north lodge.
He had this pistol still in his hand when the door was suddenly opened,
and Aurora Mellish stood upon the threshold.
She spoke as she opened the door, almost before she was in the room.
"John, dear," she said, "Mrs. Powell wants to know whether Colonel
Maddison dines here to-day with the Lofthouses."
She drew back with a shudder that shook her from head to foot, as her
eyes met the "Softy's" hated face instead of John's familiar glance.
In spite of the fatigue and agitation which she had endured within the
last few days, she was not looking ill. Her eyes were unnaturally
bright, and a feverish colour burned in her cheeks. Her manner, always
impetuous, was restless and impatient to-day, as if her nature had been
charged with a terrible amount of electricity, till she were likely at
any moment to explode in some tempest of anger or woe.
"_You_ here!" she exclaimed.
The "Softy" in his embarrassment was at a loss for an excuse for his
presence. He pulled his shabby hair-skin cap off, and twisted it round
and round in his great hands; but he made no other recognition of his
late master's wife.
"Who sent you to this room?" asked Mrs. Mellish; "I thought you had
been forbidden this place. The house at least," she added, her face
crimsoning indignantly as she spoke, "although Mr. Conyers may choose
to bring you to the north lodge. Who sent you here?"
"Him," answered Mr. Hargraves, doggedly, with another jerk of his head
towards the trainer's abode.
"James Conyers?"
"Yes."
"What does he want here, then?"
"He told me to come down t' th' house, and see if you and master'd come
back."
"Then you can go and tell him that we have come back," she said
contemptuously; "and that if he'd waited a little longer he would have
had no occasion to send his spies after me."
The "Softy" crept towards the window, feeling that his dismissal was
contained in these words, and looking rather suspiciously at the
array of driving and hunting whips over the mantelpiece. Mrs. Mellish
might have a fancy for laying one of these about his shoulders, if he
happened to offend her.
"Stop!" she said impetuously, as he had his hand upon the shutter to
push it open; "since you are here, you can take a message, or a scrap
of writing," she said contemptuously, as if she could not bring herself
to call any communication between herself and Mr. Conyers a note, or a
letter. "Yes; you can take a few lines to your master. Stop there while
I write."
She waved her hand with a gesture which expressed plainly, "Come no
nearer; you are too obnoxious to be endured except at a distance," and
seated herself at John's writing-table.
She scratched two lines with a quill-pen upon a slip of paper, which
she folded while the ink was still wet. She looked for an envelope
amongst her husband's littered paraphernalia of account-books, bills,
receipts, and price-lists, and finding one after some little trouble,
put the folded paper into it, fastened the gummed flap with her lips,
and handed the missive to Mr. Hargraves, who had watched her with
hungry eyes, eager to fathom this new stage in the mystery.
Was the two thousand pounds in that envelope? he thought. No; surely,
such a sum of money must be a huge pile of gold and silver,--a mountain
of glittering coin. He had seen cheques sometimes, and bank-notes, in
the hands of Langley the trainer, and he had wondered how it was that
money could be represented by those pitiful bits of paper.
"I'd rayther hav't i' goold," he thought: "if 'twas mine, I'd have it
all i' goold and silver."
He was very glad when he found himself safely clear of the whips and
Mrs. John Mellish, and as soon as he reached the shelter of the thick
foliage upon the northern side of the Park, he set to work to examine
the packet which had been intrusted to him.
Mrs. Mellish had liberally moistened the adhesive flap of the
envelope, as people are apt to do when they are in a hurry; the
consequence of which carelessness was that the gum was still so wet
that Stephen Hargraves found no difficulty in opening the envelope
without tearing it. He looked cautiously about him, convinced himself
that he was unobserved, and then drew out the slip of paper. It
contained very little to reward him for his trouble, only these few
words, scrawled in Aurora's most careless hand:--
"Be on the southern side of the wood, near the turnstile, between
half-past eight and nine."
The "Softy" grinned as he slowly made himself master of this
communication.
"It's oncommon hard wroitin', t' make out th' shapes o' th' letters,"
he said, as he finished his task. "Whoy can't gentlefolks wroit like
Ned Tiller, oop at th' Red Lion,--printin' loike? It's easier to read,
and a deal prettier to look at."
He refastened the envelope, pressing it down with his dirty thumb to
make it adhere once more, and not much improving its appearance thereby.
"He's one of your rare careless chaps," he muttered as he surveyed the
letter; "_he_ won't stop t' examine if it's been opened before. What's
insoide were hardly worth th' trouble of openin' it; but perhaps it's
as well to know it too."
Immediately after Stephen Hargraves had disappeared through the open
window Aurora turned to leave the room by the door, intending to go in
search of her husband.
She was arrested on the threshold by Mrs. Powell, who was standing
at the door, with the submissive and deferential patience of paid
companionship depicted in her insipid face.
"_Does_ Colonel Maddison dine here, my dear Mrs. Mellish?" she asked
meekly; yet with a pensive earnestness which suggested that her life,
or at any rate her peace of mind, depended upon the answer. "I am _so_
anxious to know, for of course it will make a difference with the
fish,--and perhaps we ought to have some mulligatawny; or at any rate
a dish of curry amongst the _entrées;_ for these elderly East-Indian
officers are so----"
"I don't know," answered Aurora, curtly. "Were you standing at the door
long before I came out, Mrs. Powell?"
"Oh, no," answered the ensign's widow, "not long. Did you not hear me
knock?"
Mrs. Powell would not have allowed herself to be betrayed into anything
so vulgar as an abbreviation by the torments of the rack; and would
have neatly rounded her periods while the awful wheel was stretching
every muscle of her agonized frame, and the executioner waiting to give
the _coup de grâce_.
"Did you not hear me knock?" she asked.
"No," said Aurora; "you didn't knock! Did you?"
Mrs. Mellish made an alarming pause between the two sentences.
"Oh, yes, too-wice," answered Mrs. Powell, with as much emphasis as was
consistent with gentility upon the elongated word; "I knocked too-wice;
but you seemed so very much preoccupied that----"
"I didn't hear you," interrupted Aurora; "you should knock rather
louder when you _want_ people to hear, Mrs. Powell. I--I came here
to look for John, and I shall stop and put away his guns. Careless
fellow!--he always leaves them lying about."
"Shall I assist you, dear Mrs. Mellish?"
"Oh, no, thank you."
"But pray allow me--guns are _so_ interesting. Indeed, there is very
little either in art or nature which, properly considered, is not----"
"You had better find Mr. Mellish, and ascertain if the colonel _does_
dine here, I think, Mrs. Powell," interrupted Aurora, shutting the lids
of the pistol-cases, and replacing them upon their accustomed shelves.
"Oh, if you wish to be alone, certainly," said the ensign's widow,
looking furtively at Aurora's face bending over the breech-loading
revolvers, and then walking genteelly and noiselessly out of the room.
"Who was she talking to?" thought Mrs. Powell. "I could hear her voice,
but not the other person's. I suppose it was Mr. Mellish; and yet he is
not generally so quiet."
She stopped to look out of a window in the corridor, and found the
solution of her doubts in the shambling figure of the "Softy," making
his way northwards, creeping stealthily under shadow of the plantation
that bordered the lawn. Mrs. Powell's faculties were all cultivated to
a state of unpleasant perfection, and she was able, actually as well as
figuratively, to see a great deal farther than most people.
John Mellish was not to be found in the house, and on making inquiries
of some of the servants, Mrs. Powell learnt that he had strolled up to
the north lodge to see the trainer, who was confined to his bed.
"Indeed!" said the ensign's widow; "then I think, as we really ought to
know about the colonel and the mulligatawny, I will walk to the north
lodge myself, and see Mr. Mellish."
She took a sun-umbrella from the stand in the hall, and crossed the
lawn northwards at a smart pace, in spite of the heat of the July
noontide.
"If I can get there before Hargraves," she thought, "I may be able to
find out why he came to the house."
The ensign's widow did reach the lodge before Stephen Hargraves, who
stopped, as we know, under shelter of the foliage in the loneliest
pathway of the wood, to decipher Aurora's scrawl. She found John
Mellish seated with the trainer, in the little parlour of the lodge,
discussing the stable arrangement; the master talking with considerable
animation, the servant listening with a listless _nonchalance_ which
had a certain air of depreciation, not to say contempt, for poor
John's racing stud. Mr. Conyers had risen from his bed at the sound of
his employer's voice in the little room below, and had put on a dusty
shooting-coat and a pair of shabby slippers, in order to come down and
hear what Mr. Mellish had to say.
"I'm sorry to hear you're ill, Conyers," John said heartily, with a
freshness in his strong voice which seemed to carry health and strength
in its very tone. "As you weren't well enough to look in at the house,
I thought I'd come over here and talk to you about business. I want to
know whether we ought to take Monte Christo out of his York engagement,
and if you think it would be wise to let Northern Dutchman take his
chance for the Great Ebor. Hey?"
Mr. Mellish's query resounded through the small room, and made the
languid trainer shudder. Mr. Conyers had all the peevish susceptibility
to discomfort or inconvenience which go to make a man above his
station. Is it a merit to be above one's station, I wonder, that people
make such a boast of their unfitness for honest employments, and
sturdy but progressive labour? The flowers in the fables, that want
to be trees, always get the worst of it, I remember. Perhaps that is
because they can do nothing but complain. There is no objection to
their growing into trees, if they can, I suppose; but a great objection
to their being noisy and disagreeable because they can't. With the son
of the simple Corsican advocate who made himself Emperor of France
the world had every sympathy; but with poor Louis Philippe, who ran
away from a throne at the first shock that disturbed its equilibrium,
I fear, very little. Is it quite right to be angry with the world
because it worships success? for is not success, in some manner, the
stamp of divinity? Self-assertion may deceive the ignorant for a time;
but when the noise dies away, we cut open the drum, and find that
it was emptiness that made the music. Mr. Conyers contented himself
with declaring that he walked on a road which was unworthy of his
footsteps; but as he never contrived to get an inch farther upon the
great highway of life, there is some reason to suppose that he had his
opinion entirely to himself. Mr. Mellish and his trainer were still
discussing stable matters when Mrs. Powell reached the north lodge. She
stopped for a few minutes in the rustic doorway, waiting for a pause
in the conversation. She was too well bred to interrupt Mr. Mellish
in his talk, and there was a chance that she might hear something by
lingering. No contrast could be stronger than that presented by the
two men. John, broad-shouldered and stalwart; his short crisp chestnut
hair brushed away from his square forehead; his bright open blue eyes
beaming honest sunshine upon all they looked at; his loose gray clothes
neat and well made; his shirt in the first freshness of the morning's
toilet; everything about him made beautiful by the easy grace which is
the peculiar property of the man who has been born a gentleman, and
which neither all the cheap finery which Mr. Moses can sell, nor all
the expensive absurdities which Mr. Tittlebat Titmouse can buy, will
ever bestow upon the _parvenu_ or the vulgarian. The trainer, handsomer
than his master by as much as Antinous in Grecian marble is handsomer
than the substantially-shod and loose-coated young squires in Mr.
Millais' designs; as handsome as it is possible for this human clay to
be, with every feature moulded to the highest type of positive beauty,
and yet, every inch of him, a boor. His shirt soiled and crumpled, his
hair rough and uncombed; his unshaven chin, dark with the blue bristles
of his budding beard, and smeared with the traces of last night's
liquor; his dingy hands, supporting this dingy chin, and his elbows
bursting half out of the frayed sleeves of his shabby shooting-jacket,
leaning on the table in an attitude of indifferent insolence. His
countenance expressive of nothing but dissatisfaction with his own
lot, and contempt for the opinions of other people. All the homilies
that could be preached upon the time-worn theme of beauty and its
worthlessness, could never argue so strongly as this mute evidence
presented by Mr. Conyers himself in his slouching posture and his
unkempt hair. Is beauty, then, so little, one asks, on looking at the
trainer and his employer? Is it better to be clean, and well dressed,
and gentlemanly, than to have a classical profile and a thrice-worn
shirt?
Finding very little to interest her in John's stable-talk, Mrs. Powell
made her presence known, and once more asked the all-important question
about Colonel Maddison.
"Yes," John answered; "the old boy is sure to come. Let's have plenty
of chutnee, and boiled rice, and preserved ginger, and all the rest of
the unpleasant things that Indian officers live upon. Have you seen
Lolly?"
Mr. Mellish put on his hat, gave a last instruction to the trainer, and
left the cottage.
"Have you seen Lolly?" he asked again.
"Ye-es," replied Mrs. Powell; "I have only lately left Mrs. Mellish in
your room; she had been speaking to that half-witted person--Hargraves,
I think he is called."
"Speaking to _him?_" cried John; "speaking to him in my room? Why,
the fellow is forbidden to cross the threshold of the house, and Mrs.
Mellish abominates the sight of him. Don't you remember the day he
flogged her dog, you know, and Lolly horse--had hysterics?" added Mr.
Mellish, choking himself with one word and substituting another.
"Oh, yes, I remember that little--ahem!--unfortunate occurrence
perfectly," replied Mrs. Powell, in a tone which, in spite of its
amiability, implied that Aurora's escapade was not a thing to be easily
forgotten.
"Then it's not likely, you know, that Lolly would talk to the man. You
must be mistaken, Mrs. Powell."
The ensign's widow simpered and lifted her eyebrows, gently shaking
her head, with a gesture that seemed to say, "Did you ever find _me_
mistaken?"
"No, no, my dear Mr. Mellish," she said, with a half-playful air of
conviction, "there was no mistake on my part. Mrs. Mellish was talking
to the half-witted person; but you know the person is a sort of servant
to Mr. Conyers, and Mrs. Mellish may have had a message for Mr.
Conyers."
"A message for _him!_" roared John, stopping suddenly and planting
his stick upon the ground in a movement of unconcealed passion; "what
messages should she have for _him?_ Why should she want people fetching
and carrying between her and him?"
Mrs. Powell's pale eyes lit up with a faint yellow flame in their
greenish pupils as John broke out thus. "It is coming--it is coming--it
is coming!" her envious heart cried, and she felt that a faint flush of
triumph was gathering in her sickly cheeks.
But in another moment John Mellish recovered his self-command. He was
angry with himself for that transient passion. "Am I going to doubt
her again?" he thought. "Do I know so little of the nobility of her
generous soul that I am ready to listen to every whisper, and terrify
myself with every look?"
They had walked about a hundred yards away from the lodge by this time.
John turned irresolutely, as if half inclined to go back.
"A message for Conyers," he said to Mrs. Powell;--"ay, ay, to be sure.
It's likely enough she might want to send him a message, for she's
cleverer at all the stable business than I am. It was she who told
me not to enter Cherry-stone for the Chester Cup, and, egad! I was
obstinate, and I was licked; as I deserved to be, for not listening to
my dear girl."
Mrs. Powell would fain have boxed John's ear, had she been tall enough
to reach that organ. Infatuated fool! would he never open his dull eyes
and see the ruin that was preparing for him?
"You _are_ a good husband, Mr. Mellish," she said with a gentle
melancholy. "Your wife _ought_ to be happy!" she added, with a sigh
which plainly hinted that Mrs. Mellish was miserable.
"A good husband!" cried John, "not half good enough for her. What can
I do to prove that I love her? What can I do? Nothing, except to let
her have her own way; and what a little that seems! Why, if she wanted
to set that house on fire, for the pleasure of making a bonfire," he
added, pointing to the rambling mansion in which his blue eyes had
first seen the light, "I'd let her do it, and look on with her at the
blaze."
"Are you going back to the lodge?" Mrs. Powell asked quietly, not
taking any notice of this outbreak of marital enthusiasm.
They had retraced their steps, and were within a few paces of the
little garden before the north lodge.
"Going back?" said John; "no--yes."
Between his utterance of the negative and the affirmative he had
looked up, and seen Stephen Hargraves entering the little garden-gate.
The "Softy" had come by the short cut through the wood. John Mellish
quickened his pace, and followed Steeve Hargraves across the little
garden to the threshold of the door. At the threshold he paused. The
rustic porch was thickly screened by the spreading branches of the
roses and honeysuckle, and John was unseen by those within. He did
not himself deliberately listen; he only waited for a few moments,
wondering what to do next. In those few moments of indecision he heard
the trainer speak to his attendant.
"Did you see her?" he asked.
"Ay, sure, I see her."
"And she gave you a message?"
"No, she gave me this here."
"A letter?" cried the trainer's eager voice; "give it me."
John Mellish heard the tearing of the envelope and the crackling
of the crisp paper; and knew that his wife had been writing to his
servant. He clenched his strong right hand until the nails dug into
the muscular palm; then turning to Mrs. Powell, who stood close behind
him, simpering meekly, as she would have simpered at an earthquake, or
a revolution, or any other national calamity not peculiarly affecting
herself, he said quietly--
"Whatever directions Mrs. Mellish has given are sure to be right; I
won't interfere with them." He walked away from the north lodge as he
spoke, looking straight before him, homewards; as if the unchanging
lode-star of his honest heart were beckoning to him across the dreary
Slough of Despond, and bidding him take comfort.
"Mrs. Powell," he said, turning rather sharply upon the ensign's widow,
"I should be very sorry to say anything likely to offend you, in your
character of--of a guest beneath my roof; but I shall take it as a
favour to myself if you will be so good as to remember, that I require
no information respecting my wife's movements from you, or from any
one. Whatever Mrs. Mellish does, she does with my full consent, my
perfect approbation. Cæsar's wife must not be suspected, and by Jove,
ma'am!--you'll pardon the expression,--John Mellish's wife must not be
watched."
"Watched!--information!" exclaimed Mrs. Powell, lifting her pale
eyebrows to the extreme limits allowed by nature. "My dear Mr. Mellish,
when I really only casually remarked, in reply to a question of your
own, that I believed Mrs. Mellish had----"
"Oh, yes," answered John, "I understand. There are several ways by
which you can go to Doncaster from this house. You can go across the
fields, or round by Harper's Common, an out-of-the-way, roundabout
route, but you get there all the same, you know, ma'am. _I_ generally
prefer the high road. It mayn't be the shortest way, perhaps; but it's
certainly the straightest."
The corners of Mrs. Powell's thin lower lip dropped, perhaps the eighth
of an inch, as John made these observations; but she very quickly
recovered her habitually genteel simper, and told Mr. Mellish that
he really had such a droll way of expressing himself as to make his
meaning scarcely so clear as could be wished.
But John had said all that he wanted to say, and walked steadily
onwards; looking always towards that quarter in which the pole-star
might be supposed to shine, guiding him back to his home.
That home so soon to be desolate!--with such ruin brooding above it as
in his darkest doubts, his wildest fears, he had never shadowed forth!