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Volume II: see https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/48021
AURORA FLOYD.
by
M. E. BRADDON,
Author of "Lady Audley's Secret."
In Three Volumes.
VOL. III.
Fifth Edition.
London:
Tinsley Brothers, 18 Catherine Steeet,
Strand.
1863.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I. AT THE GOLDEN LION
II. MY WIFE! MY WIFE! WHAT WIFE? I HAVE NO WIFE
III. AURORA'S FLIGHT
IV. JOHN MELLISH FINDS HIS HOME DESOLATE
V. AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR
VI. TALBOT BULSTRODE'S ADVICE
VII. ON THE WATCH
VIII. CAPTAIN PRODDER GOES BACK TO DONCASTER
IX. THE DISCOVERY OF THE WEAPON WITH WHICH JAMES
CONYERS HAD BEEN SLAIN
X. UNDER A CLOUD
XI. REUNION
XII. THE BRASS BUTTON BY CROSBY, BIRMINGHAM
XIII. OFF THE SCENT
XIV. TALBOT BULSTRODE MAKES ATONEMENT FOR THE PAST
CHAPTER I.
AT THE GOLDEN LION.
Mr. William Dork, the constable, reached Doncaster at about a
quarter-past one o'clock upon the morning after the murder, and drove
straight to the Reindeer. That hotel had been closed for a couple of
hours, and it was only by the exercise of his authority that Mr. Dork
obtained access, and a hearing from the sleepy landlord. The young man
who had driven Mr. Prodder was found after considerable difficulty,
and came stumbling down the servants' staircase in a semi-somnolent
state to answer the constable's inquiries. He had driven the seafaring
gentleman, whose name he did not know, direct to the Doncaster station,
in time to catch the mail-train, which started at 12.50. He had parted
with the gentleman at the door of the station three minutes before the
train started.
This was all the information that Mr. Dork could obtain. If he had
been a sharp London detective, he might have made his arrangements for
laying hands upon the fugitive sailor at the first station at which
the train stopped; but being merely a simple rural functionary, he
scratched his stubbled head, and stared at the landlord of the Reindeer
in utter mental bewilderment.
"He was in a devil of a hurry, this chap," he muttered rather sulkily.
"What did he want to coot away for?"
The young man who had acted as charioteer could not answer this
question. He only knew that the seafaring gentleman had promised him
half a sovereign if he caught the mail-train, and that he had earned
his reward.
"Well, I suppose it aint so very particklar," said Mr. Dork, sipping a
glass of rum, which he had ordered for his refreshment. "You'll have to
appear to-morrow, and you can tell nigh as much as t'other chap," he
added, turning to the young man. "You was with him when the shot were
fired, and you warn't far when he found the body. You'll have to appear
and give evidence whenever the inquest's held. I doubt if it'll be
to-morrow; for there won't be much time to give notice to the coroner."
Mr. Dork wrote the young man's name in his pocket-book, and the
landlord vouched for his being forthcoming when called upon. Having
done thus much, the constable left the inn, after drinking another
glass of rum, and refreshing John Mellish's horse with a handful of
oats and a drink of water. He drove at a brisk pace back to the Park
stables, delivered the horse and gig to the lad who had waited for his
coming, and returned to his comfortable dwelling in the village of
Meslingham, about a mile from the Park gates.
I scarcely know how to describe that long, quiet, miserable day which
succeeded the night of the murder. Aurora Mellish lay in a dull
stupor, not able to lift her head from the pillows upon which it
rested, scarcely caring to raise her eyelids from the aching eyes they
sheltered. She was not ill, nor did she affect to be ill. She lay upon
the sofa in her dressing-room, attended by her maid, and visited at
intervals by John, who roamed hither and thither about the house and
grounds, talking to innumerable people, and always coming to the same
conclusion, namely, that the whole affair was a horrible mystery, and
that he heartily wished the inquest well over. He had visitors from
twenty miles round his house,--for the evil news had spread far and
wide before noon,--visitors who came to condole and to sympathize, and
wonder, and speculate, and ask questions, until they fairly drove him
mad. But he bore all very patiently. He could tell them nothing except
that the business was as dark a mystery to him as it could be to them,
and that he had no hope of finding any solution to the ghastly enigma.
They one and all asked him the same question: "Had any one a motive for
killing this man?"
How could he answer them? He might have told them that if twenty
persons had had a powerful motive for killing James Conyers, it was
possible that a one-and-twentieth person who had no motive might have
done the deed. That species of argument which builds up any hypothesis
out of a series of probabilities may, after all, lead very often to
false conclusions.
Mr. Mellish did not attempt to argue the question. He was too weary and
sick at heart, too anxious for the inquest to be over, and be free to
carry Aurora away with him, and turn his back upon the familiar place,
which had been hateful to him ever since the trainer had crossed its
threshold.
"Yes, my darling," he said to his wife, as he bent over her pillow, "I
shall take you away to the south of France directly this business is
settled. You shall leave the scene of all past associations, all bygone
annoyances. We will begin the world afresh."
"God grant that we may be able to do so," Aurora answered gravely. "Ah,
my dear, I cannot tell you that I am sorry for this man's death. If he
had died nearly two years ago, when I thought he did, how much misery
he would have saved me!"
Once in the course of that long summer's afternoon Mr. Mellish walked
across the park to the cottage at the north gates. He could not
repress a morbid desire to look upon the lifeless clay of the man
whose presence had caused him such vague disquietude, such instinctive
terror. He found the "Softy" leaning on the gate of the little garden,
and one of the grooms standing at the door of the death-chamber.
"The inquest is to be held at the Golden Lion, at ten o'clock
to-morrow morning," Mr. Mellish said to the men. "You, Hargraves, will
be wanted as a witness."
He walked into the darkened chamber. The groom understood what he came
for, and silently withdrew the white drapery that covered the trainer's
dead face.
Accustomed hands had done their awful duty. The strong limbs had been
straightened. The lower jaw, which had dropped in the agony of sudden
death, was supported by a linen bandage; the eyelids were closed over
the dark-violet eyes; and the face, which had been beautiful in life,
was even yet more beautiful in the still solemnity of death. The clay
which in life had lacked so much, in its lack of a beautiful soul to
light it from within, found its level in death. The worthless soul
was gone, and the physical perfection that remained had lost its only
blemish. The harmony of proportion, the exquisitely-modelled features,
the charms of detail,--all were left; and the face which James Conyers
carried to the grave was handsomer than that which had smiled insolent
defiance upon the world in the trainer's lifetime.
John Mellish stood for some minutes looking gravely at that marble face.
"Poor fellow!" thought the generous-hearted young squire; "it was a
hard thing to die so young. I wish he had never come here. I wish Lolly
had confided in me, and let me make a bargain with this man to stop
away and keep her secret. Her secret! her father's secret more likely.
What secret could she have had, that a groom was likely to discover? It
may have been some mercantile business, some commercial transaction of
Archibald Floyd's, by which the old man fell into his servant's power.
It would be only like my glorious Aurora, to take the burden upon her
own shoulders, and to bear it bravely through every trial."
It was thus that John Mellish had often reasoned upon the mystery
which divided him from his wife. He could not bear to impute even
the shadow of evil to her. He could not endure to think of her as
a poor helpless woman entrapped into the power of a mean-spirited
hireling, who was only too willing to make his market out of her
secrets. He could not tolerate such an idea as this; and he sacrificed
poor Archibald Floyd's commercial integrity for the preservation of
Aurora's womanly dignity. Ah, how weak and imperfect a passion is
this boundless love! How ready to sacrifice others for that one loved
object, which _must_ be kept spotless in our imaginations, though a
hecatomb of her fellow-creatures are to be blackened and befouled for
her justification! If Othello could have established Desdemona's purity
by the sacrifice of the reputation of every lady in Cyprus, do you
think he would have spared the fair inhabitants of the friendly isle?
No; he would have branded every one of them with infamy, if he could
by so doing have rehabilitated the wife he loved. John Mellish _would_
not think ill of his wife. He resolutely shut his eyes to all damning
evidence. He clung with a desperate tenacity to his belief in her
purity, and only clung the more tenaciously as the proofs against her
became more numerous.
The inquest was held at a road-side inn, within a quarter of a mile of
the north gates--a quiet little place, only frequented on market-days
by the country people going backwards and forwards between Doncaster
and the villages beyond Meslingham. The coroner and his jury sat in a
long bare room, in which the frequenters of the Golden Lion were wont
to play bowls in wet weather. The surgeon, Steeve Hargraves, Jarvis,
the young man from the Reindeer, William Dork the constable, and Mr.
Mellish, were the only witnesses called: but Colonel Maddison and Mr.
Lofthouse were both present during the brief proceedings.
The inquiry into the circumstances of the trainer's death occupied a
very short time. Nothing was elicited by the brief examination of the
witnesses which in any way led to the elucidation of the mystery. John
Mellish was the last person interrogated, and he answered the questions
put to him with prompt decision. There was one inquiry, however,
which he was unable to answer, although it was a very simple one. Mr.
Hayward, the coroner, anxious to discover so much of the history of the
dead man as might lead eventually to the discovery of his murderer,
asked Mr. Mellish if his trainer had been a bachelor or a married man.
"I really cannot answer that question," said John; "I should imagine
that he was a single man, as neither he nor Mr. Pastern told me
anything to the contrary. Had he been married, he would have brought
his wife with him, I should suppose. My trainer, Langley, was married
when he entered my service, and his wife and children have occupied the
premises over my stables for some years."
"You infer, then, that James Conyers was unmarried?"
"Most decidedly."
"And it is your opinion that he had made no enemies in the
neighbourhood?"
"It is next to impossible that he could have done so."
"To what cause, then, do you attribute his death?"
"To an unhappy accident. I can account for it in no other way. The path
through the wood is used as a public thoroughfare, and the whole of
the plantation is known to be infested with poachers. It was past ten
o'clock at night when the shot was heard. I should imagine that it was
fired by a poacher whose eyes deceived him in the shadowy light."
The coroner shook his head. "You forget, Mr. Mellish," he said, "that
the cause of death was not an ordinary gun-shot wound. The shot
heard was the report of a pistol, and the deceased was killed by a
pistol-bullet."
John Mellish was silent. He had spoken in good faith as to his
impression respecting the cause of the trainer's death. In the press
and hurry, the horror and confusion of the two last days, the smaller
details of the awful event had escaped his memory.
"Do you know any one amongst your servants, Mr. Mellish," asked the
coroner, "whom you would consider likely to commit an act of violence
of this kind? Have you any one of an especially vindictive character in
your household?"
"No," answered John, decisively; "I can answer for my servants as I
would for myself. They were all strangers to this man. What motive
could they possibly have had to seek his death?"
Mr. Hayward rubbed his chin, and shook his head reflectively.
"There was this superannuated trainer whom you spoke of just now, Mr.
Mellish," he said. "I am well aware that the post of trainer in your
stables is rather a good thing. A man may save a good deal of money out
of his wages and perquisites with such a master as you. This former
trainer may not have liked being superseded by the deceased. He may
have felt some animus towards his successor."
"Langley!" cried John Mellish; "he is as good a fellow as ever
breathed. He was not superseded; he resigned the active part of his
work at his own wish, and he retained his full wages by mine. The poor
fellow has been confined to his bed for the last week."
"Humph," muttered the coroner. "Then you can throw no light upon this
business, Mr. Mellish?"
"None whatever. I have written to Mr. Pastern, in whose stables
the deceased was employed, telling him of the circumstances of the
trainer's death, and begging him to forward the information to any
relative of the murdered man. I expect an answer by to-morrow's post;
and I shall be happy to submit that answer to you."
Prior to the examination of the witnesses, the jurymen had been
conducted to the north lodge, where they had beheld the mortal remains
of James Conyers. Mr. Morton had accompanied them, and had endeavoured
to explain to them the direction which the bullet had taken, and the
manner in which, according to his own idea, the shot must have been
fired. The jurymen who had been empanelled to decide upon this awful
question were simple agriculturists and petty tradesmen, who grudged
the day's lost labour, and who were ready to accept any solution of the
mystery which might be suggested to them by the coroner. They hurried
back to the Golden Lion, listened deferentially to the evidence and
to Mr. Hayward's address, retired to an adjoining apartment, where
they remained in consultation for the space of about five minutes, and
whence they emerged with a very rambling form of decision, which Mr.
Hayward reduced into a verdict of wilful murder against some person or
persons unknown.
Very little had been said about the disappearance of the seafaring
man who had carried the tidings of the murder to Mr. Mellish's house.
Nobody for a moment imagined that the evidence of this missing witness
might have thrown some ray of light upon the mystery of the trainer's
death. The seafaring man had been engaged in conversation with the
young man from the Reindeer at the time when the shot was fired; he
was therefore not the actual murderer; and strangely significant as
his hurried flight might have been to the acute intelligence of a
well-trained metropolitan police-officer, no one amongst the rustic
officials present at the inquest attached any importance to the
circumstance. Nor had Aurora's name been once mentioned during the
brief proceedings. Nothing had transpired which in any way revealed her
previous acquaintance with James Conyers; and John Mellish drew a deep
breath, a long sigh of relief, as he left the Golden Lion and walked
homewards. Colonel Maddison, Mr. Lofthouse, and two or three other
gentlemen lingered on the threshold of the little inn, talking to Mr.
Hayward, the coroner.
The inquest was terminated; the business was settled; and the mortal
remains of James Conyers could be carried to the grave at the
pleasure of his late employer. All was over. The mystery of death
and the secrets of life would be buried peacefully in the grave of
the murdered man; and John Mellish was free to carry his wife away
with him whithersoever he would. Free, have I said? No; for ever and
for ever the shadow of that bygone mystery would hang like a funeral
pall between himself and the woman he loved. For ever and for ever
the recollection of that ghastly undiscovered problem would haunt him
in sleeping and in waking, in the sunlight and in the darkness. His
nobler nature, triumphing again and again over the subtle influences
of damning suggestions and doubtful facts, was again and again shaken,
although never quite defeated. He fought the battle bravely, though it
was a very hard one, and it was to endure perhaps to the end of time.
That voiceless argument was for ever to be argued; the spirits of Faith
and Infidelity were for ever to be warring with each other in that
tortured breast, until the end of life; until he died, perhaps, with
his head lying upon his wife's bosom, with his cheek fanned by her warm
breath; but ignorant to the very last of the real nature of that dark
something, that nameless and formless horror with which he had wrestled
so patiently and so long.
"I'll take her away with me," he thought; "and when we are divided by a
thousand miles of blue water from the scene of her secret, I will fall
on my knees before her, and beseech her to confide in me."
He passed by the north lodge with a shudder, and walked straight along
the high road towards the principal entrance of the Park. He was close
to the gates when he heard a voice, a strange suppressed voice, calling
feebly to him to stop. He turned round and saw the "Softy" making
his way towards him with a slow, shambling run. Of all human beings,
except perhaps that one who now lay cold and motionless in the darkened
chamber at the north lodge, this Steeve Hargraves was the last whom Mr.
Mellish cared to see. He turned with an angry frown upon the "Softy,"
who was wiping the perspiration from his pale face with the ragged end
of his neck-handkerchief, and panting hoarsely.
"What is the matter?" asked John. "What do you want with me?"
"It's th' coroner," gasped Stephen Hargraves,--"th' coroner and Mr.
Lofthouse, th' parson. They want to speak to ye, sir, oop at the Loion."
"What about?"
Steeve Hargraves gave a ghastly grin.
"I doan't know, sir," he whispered. "It's hardly loikely they'd tell
me. There's summat oop, though, I'll lay; for Mr. Lofthouse was as
whoite as ashes, and seemed strangely oopset about summat. Would you
be pleased to step oop and speak to 'un directly, sir?--that was my
message."
"Yes, yes; I'll go," answered John absently.
He had taken his hat off, and was passing his hand over his hot
forehead in a half-bewildered manner. He turned his back upon the
"Softy," and walked rapidly away, retracing his steps in the direction
of the roadside inn.
Stephen Hargraves stood staring after him until he was out of sight,
and then turned and walked on slowly towards the turnstile leading into
the wood.
"_I_ know what they've found," he muttered; "and _I_ know what they
want with him. He'll be some time oop there; so I'll slip across the
wood and tell her. Yes,"--he paused, rubbing his hands, and laughing
a slow voiceless laugh, which distorted his ugly face, and made him
horrible to look upon,--"yes, it will be nuts for me to tell her."