JOHN MELLISH FINDS HIS HOME DESOLATE.
The sun was low in the western sky, and distant village clocks had
struck seven, when John Mellish walked slowly away from that lonely
waste of stunted grass called Harper's Common, and strolled homewards
in the peaceful evening.
The Yorkshire squire was still very pale. He walked with his head bent
forward upon his breast, and the hand that grasped the crumpled paper
thrust into the bosom of his waistcoat; but a hopeful light shone in
his eyes, and the rigid lines of his mouth had relaxed into a tender
smile--a smile of love and forgiveness. Yes, he had prayed for her and
forgiven her, and he was at peace. He had pleaded her cause a hundred
times in the dull quiet of that summer's afternoon, and had excused
her and forgiven her. Not lightly, Heaven is a witness; not without
a sharp and cruel struggle, that had rent his heart with tortures
undreamed of before.
This revelation of the past was such bitter shame to him; such horrible
degradation; such irrevocable infamy. His love, his idol, his empress,
his goddess--it was of her he thought. By what hellish witchcraft
had she been ensnared into the degrading alliance, recorded in this
miserable scrap of paper? The pride of five unsullied centuries arose,
fierce and ungovernable, in the breast of the country gentleman,
to resent this outrage upon the woman he loved. O God! had all his
glorification of her been the vain-boasting of a fool who had not known
what he talked about? He was answerable to the world for the past as
well as for the present. He had made an altar for his idol, and had
cried aloud to all who came near her, to kneel down and perform their
worship at her shrine; and he was answerable to these people for the
purity of their divinity. He could not think of her as less than the
idol which his love had made her--perfect, unsullied, unassailable.
Disgrace, where she was concerned, knew in his mind no degrees.
It was not his own humiliation he thought of when his face grew hot
as he imagined the talk there would be in the country if this fatal
indiscretion of Aurora's youth ever became generally known; it was
the thought of her shame that stung him to the heart. He never once
disturbed himself with any prevision of the ridicule which was likely
to fall upon himself.
It was here that John Mellish and Talbot Bulstrode were so widely
different in their manner of loving and suffering. Talbot had sought
a wife who should reflect honour upon himself, and had fallen away
from Aurora at the first trial of his faith, shaken with horrible
apprehensions of his own danger. But John Mellish had submerged his
very identity into that of the woman he loved. She was his faith and
his worship, and it was for her departed glory that he wept in this
cruel day of shame. The wrong which he found so hard to forgive was
not her wrong against him; but that other and more fatal wrong against
herself. I have said that his affection was universal, and partook of
all the highest attributes of that sublime self-abnegation which we
call Love. The agony which he felt to-day was the agony which Archibald
Floyd had suffered years before. It was vicarious torture, endured for
Aurora, and not for himself; and in his struggle against that sorrowful
anger which he felt for her folly, every one of her perfections took
up arms upon the side of indignation, and fought against their own
mistress. Had she been less beautiful, less queenly, less generous,
great and noble, he might have forgiven her that self-inflicted shame
more easily. But she was so perfect; and how could she, how could she?
He unfolded the wretched paper half a dozen times, and read and re-read
every word of that commonplace legal document, before he could convince
himself that it was not some vile forgery, concocted by James Conyers
for purposes of extortion. But he prayed for her, and forgave her. He
pitied her with more than a mother's tender pity, with more than a
sorrowful father's anguish.
"My poor dear!" he said, "my poor dear! she was only a school-girl when
this certificate was first written: an innocent child; ready to believe
in any lies told her by a villain."
A dark frown obscured the Yorkshireman's brow as he thought this; a
frown that would have promised no good to Mr. James Conyers, had not
the trainer passed out of the reach of all earthly good and evil.
"Will God have mercy upon a wretch like that?" thought John Mellish;
"will that man be forgiven for having brought disgrace and misery upon
a trusting girl?"
It will perhaps be wondered at, that John Mellish, who suffered his
servants to rule in his household, and allowed his butler to dictate
to him what wines he should drink; who talked freely to his grooms,
and bade his trainer sit in his presence,--it will be wondered at,
perhaps, that this frank, free-spoken, simple-mannered young man
should have felt so bitterly the shame of Aurora's unequal marriage.
It was a common saying in Doncaster, that Squire Mellish of the Park
had no pride; that he would clap poor folks on the shoulder and give
them good-day as he lounged in the quiet street; that he would sit
upon the cornchandler's counter, slashing his hunting-whip upon those
popular tops, about which a legend was current, to the effect that
they were always cleaned with champagne,--and discussing the prospects
of the September Meeting; and that there was not within the three
Ridings, a better landlord or a nobler-hearted gentleman. And all
this was perfectly true. John Mellish was entirely without personal
pride; but there was another pride, which was wholly inseparable from
his education and position, and this was the pride of caste. He was
strictly conservative; and although he was ready to talk to his good
friend the saddler, or his trusted retainer the groom, as freely as he
would have held converse with his equals, he would have opposed all the
strength of his authority against the saddler had that honest tradesman
attempted to stand for his native town, and would have annihilated the
groom with one angry flash of his bright blue eyes had the servant
infringed by so much as an inch upon the broad extent of territory that
separated him from his master.
The struggle was finished before John Mellish arose from the brown
turf and turned towards the home which he had left early that morning,
ignorant of the great trouble that was to fall upon him, and only
dimly conscious of some dark foreboding of the coming of an unknown
horror. The struggle was over, and there was now only hope in his
heart--the hope of clasping his wife to his breast, and comforting
her for all the past. However bitterly he might feel the humiliation
of this madness of her ignorant girlhood, it was not for him to remind
her of it; his duty was to confront the world's slander or the world's
ridicule, and oppose his own breast to the storm, while she was
shielded by the great shelter of his love. His heart yearned for some
peaceful foreign land, in which his idol would be far away from all who
could tell her secret, and where she might reign once more glorious and
unapproachable. He was ready to impose any cheat upon the world, in
his greediness of praise and worship for her--for her. How tenderly he
thought of her, walking slowly homewards in that tranquil evening! He
thought of her waiting to hear from him the issue of the inquest, and
he reproached himself for his neglect when he remembered how long he
had been absent.
"But my darling will scarcely be uneasy," he thought; "she will hear
all about the inquest from some one or other, and she will think that
I have gone into Doncaster on business. She will know nothing of
the finding of this detestable certificate. No one need know of it.
Lofthouse and Hayward are honourable men, and they will keep my poor
girl's secret; they will keep the secret of her foolish youth,--my
poor, poor girl!"
He longed for that moment which he fancied so near; the moment in which
he should fold her in his arms and say, "My dearest one, be at peace;
there is no longer any secret between us. Henceforth your sorrows are
my sorrows, and it is hard if I cannot help you to carry the load
lightly. We are one, my dear. For the first time since our wedding-day,
we are truly united."
He expected to find Aurora in his own room, for she had declared her
intention of sitting there all day; and he ran across the broad lawn to
the rose-shadowed verandah that sheltered his favourite retreat. The
blind was drawn down and the window bolted, as Aurora had bolted it in
her wish to exclude Mr. Stephen Hargraves. He knocked at the window,
but there was no answer.
"Lolly has grown tired of waiting," he thought.
The second dinner-bell rang in the hall while Mr. Mellish lingered
outside this darkened window. The commonplace sound reminded him of his
social duties.
"I must wait till dinner is over, I suppose, before I talk to my
darling," he thought. "I must go through all the usual business, for
the edification of Mrs. Powell and the servants, before I can take my
darling to my breast, and set her mind at ease for ever."
John Mellish submitted himself to the indisputable force of those
ceremonial laws which we have made our masters, and he was prepared
to eat a dinner for which he had no appetite, and wait two hours for
that moment for whose coming his soul yearned, rather than provoke Mrs.
Powell's curiosity by any deviation from the common course of events.
The windows of the drawing-room were open, and he saw the glimmer of a
pale muslin dress at one of them. It belonged to Mrs. Powell, who was
sitting in a contemplative attitude, gazing at the evening sky.
She was not thinking of that western glory of pale crimson and
shining gold. She was thinking that if John Mellish cast off the wife
who had deceived him, and who had never legally been his wife, the
Yorkshire mansion would be a fine place to live in; a fine place for a
housekeeper who knew how to obtain influence over her master, and who
had the secret of his married life and his wife's disgrace to help her
on to power.
"He's such a blind, besotted fool about her," thought the ensign's
widow, "that if he breaks with her to-morrow, he'll go on loving her
just the same, and he'll do anything to keep her secret. Let it work
which way it will, they're in my power--they're both in my power; and
I'm no longer a poor dependent, to be sent away, at a quarter's notice,
when it pleases them to be tired of me."
The bread of dependence is not a pleasant diet; but there are many
ways of eating the same food. Mrs. Powell's habit was to receive all
favours grudgingly, as she would have given, had it been her lot to
give instead of to receive. She measured others by her own narrow
gauge, and was powerless to comprehend or believe in the frank impulses
of a generous nature. She knew that she was a useless member of poor
John's household, and that the young squire could have easily dispensed
with her presence. She knew, in short, that she was retained by reason
of Aurora's pity for her friendlessness; and having neither gratitude
nor kindly feelings to give in return for her comfortable shelter,
she resented her own poverty of nature, and hated her entertainers
for their generosity. It is a property of these narrow natures so to
resent the attributes they can envy, but cannot even understand; and
Mrs. Powell had been far more at ease in households in which she had
been treated as a lady-like drudge than she had ever been at Mellish
Park, where she was received as an equal and a guest. She had eaten
the bitter bread upon which she had lived so long in a bitter spirit;
and her whole nature had turned to gall from the influence of that
disagreeable diet. A moderately-generous person can bestow a favour,
and bestow it well; but to receive a boon with perfect grace requires a
far nobler and more generous nature.
John Mellish approached the open window at which the ensign's widow was
seated, and looked into the room. Aurora was not there. The long saloon
seemed empty and desolate. The decorations of the temple looked cold
and dreary, for the deity was absent.
"No one here!" exclaimed Mr. Mellish, disconsolately.
"No one here but me," murmured Mrs. Powell, with an accent of mild
deprecation.
"But where is my wife, ma'am?"
He said those two small words, "my wife," with such a tone of resolute
defiance, that Mrs. Powell looked up at him as he spoke, and thought,
"He has seen the certificate."
"Where is Aurora?" repeated John.
"I believe that Mrs. Mellish has gone out."
"Gone out! where?"
"You forget, sir," said the ensign's widow reproachfully,--"you
appear to forget your special request that I should abstain from all
supervision of Mrs. Mellish's arrangements. Prior to that request,
which I may venture to suggest was unnecessarily emphatic, I had
certainly considered myself, as the humble individual chosen by Miss
Floyd's aunt, and invested by her with a species of authority over the
young lady's actions, in some manner responsible for----"
John Mellish chafed horribly under the merciless stream of long words,
which Mrs. Powell poured upon his head.
"Talk about that another time, for Heaven's sake, ma'am," he said
impatiently. "I only want to know where my wife is. Two words will tell
me that, I suppose?"
"I am sorry to say that I am unable to afford you any information upon
that subject," answered Mrs. Powell; "Mrs. Mellish quitted the house
at half-past three o'clock, dressed for walking. I have not seen her
since."
Heaven forgive Aurora for the trouble it had been her lot to bring upon
those who best loved her! John's heart grew sick with terror at this
first failure of his hope. He had pictured her waiting to receive him,
ready to fall upon his breast in answer to his passionate cry, "Aurora,
come! come, dear love! the secret has been discovered, and is forgiven."
"Somebody knows where my wife has gone, I suppose, Mrs. Powell?" he
said fiercely, turning upon the ensign's widow in his wrathful sense
of disappointment and alarm. He was only a big child, after all, with
a child's alternate hopefulness and despair; with a child's passionate
devotion for those he loved, and ignorant terror of danger to those
beloved ones.
"Mrs. Mellish may have made a confidante of Parsons," replied the
ensign's widow; "but she certainly did not enlighten _me_ as to her
intended movements. Shall I ring the bell for Parsons?"
"If you please."
John Mellish stood upon the threshold of the French window, not caring
to enter the handsome chamber of which he was the master. Why should
he go into the house? It was no home for him without the woman who had
made it so dear and sacred; dear, even in the darkest hour of sorrow
and anxiety; sacred, even in despite of the trouble his love had
brought upon him.
The maid Parsons appeared in answer to a message sent by Mrs. Powell;
and John strode into the room and interrogated her sharply as to the
departure of her mistress.
The girl could tell very little, except that Mrs. Mellish had said
that she was going into the garden, and that she had left a letter in
the study for the master of the house. Perhaps Mrs. Powell was even
better aware of the existence of this letter than the Abigail herself.
She had crept stealthily into John's room after her interview with the
"Softy" and her chance encounter of Aurora. She had found the letter
lying on the table, sealed with a crest and monogram that were engraved
upon a blood-stone worn by Mrs. Mellish amongst the trinkets on her
watch-chain. It was not possible therefore to manipulate this letter
with any safety, and Mrs. Powell had contented herself by guessing
darkly at its contents. The "Softy" had told her of the fatal discovery
of the morning, and she instinctively comprehended the meaning of that
sealed letter. It was a letter of explanation and farewell, perhaps;
perhaps only of farewell.
John strode along the corridor that led to his favourite room. The
chamber was dimly lighted by the yellow evening sunlight which streamed
from between the Venetian blinds, and drew golden bars upon the matted
floor. But even in that dusky and uncertain light he saw the white
patch upon the table, and sprang with tigerish haste upon the letter
his wife had left for him.
He drew up the Venetian blind, and stood in the embrasure of the
window, with the evening sunlight upon his face, reading Aurora's
letter. There was neither anger nor alarm visible in his face as he
read; only supreme love and supreme compassion.
"My poor darling! my poor girl! How could she think that there could
ever be such a word as good-bye between us! Does she think so lightly
of my love as to believe that it could fail her now, when she wants it
most? Why, if that man had lived," he thought, his face darkening with
the memory of that unburied clay which yet lay in the still chamber
at the north lodge,--"if that man had lived, and had claimed her, and
carried her from me by the right of the paper in my breast, I would
have clung to her still; I would have followed wherever he went, and
would have lived near him, that she might have known where to look for
a defender from every wrong: I would have been his servant, the willing
servant and contented hanger-on of a boor, if I could have served her
by enduring his insolence. So, my dear, my dear," murmured the young
squire, with a tender smile, "it was worse than foolish to write this
letter to me, and even more useless than it was cruel to run away from
the man who would follow you to the farthest end of this wide world."
He put the letter into his pocket, and took his hat from the table. He
was ready to start--he scarcely knew for what destination; for the end
of the world, perhaps--in his search for the woman he loved. But he was
going to Felden Woods before beginning the longer journey, as he fully
believed that Aurora would fly to her father in her foolish terror.
"To think that anything could ever happen to change or lessen my love
for her," he said; "foolish girl! foolish girl!"
He rang for his servant, and ordered the hasty packing of his smallest
portmanteau. He was going to town for a day or two, and he was going
alone. He looked at his watch; it was only a quarter after eight, and
the mail left Doncaster at half-past twelve. There was plenty of time,
therefore; a great deal too much time for the feverish impatience of
Mr. Mellish, who would have chartered a special engine to convey him,
had the railway officials been willing. There were four long hours
during which he must wait, wearing out his heart in his anxiety to
follow the woman he loved, to take her to his breast and comfort and
shelter her, to tell her that true love knows neither decrease nor
change. He ordered the dog-cart to be got ready for him at eleven
o'clock. There was a slow train that left Doncaster at ten; but as
it reached London only ten minutes before the mail, it was scarcely
desirable as a conveyance. Yet after the hour had passed for its
starting, Mr. Mellish reproached himself bitterly for that lost ten
minutes, and was tormented by a fancy that, through the loss of those
very ten minutes, he should miss the chance of an immediate meeting
with Aurora.
It was nine o'clock before he remembered the necessity of making some
pretence of sitting down to dinner. He took his place at the end of the
long table, and sent for Mrs. Powell, who appeared in answer to his
summons, and seated herself with a well-bred affectation of not knowing
that the dinner had been put off for an hour and a half.
"I'm sorry I've kept you so long, Mrs. Powell," he said, as he sent the
ensign's widow a ladleful of clear soup, that was of the temperature of
lemonade. "The truth is, that I--I--find I shall be compelled to run up
to town by the mail."
"Upon no unpleasant business, I hope?"
"Oh, dear no, not at all. Mrs. Mellish has gone up to her father's
place, and--and--has requested me to follow her," added John, telling a
lie with considerable awkwardness, but with no very great remorse. He
did not speak again during dinner. He ate anything that his servants
put before him, and took a good deal of wine; but he ate and drank
alike unconsciously, and when the cloth had been removed, and he
was left alone with Mrs. Powell, he sat staring at the reflection
of the wax-candles in the depths of the mahogany. It was only when
the lady gave a little ceremonial cough, and rose with the intention
of simpering out of the room, that he roused himself from his long
reverie, and looked up suddenly.
"Don't go just this moment, if you please, Mrs. Powell," he said. "If
you'll sit down again for a few minutes, I shall be glad. I wished to
say a word or two to you before I leave Mellish Park."
He rose as he spoke, and pointed to a chair. Mrs. Powell seated
herself, and looked at him earnestly; with an eager, viperish
earnestness, and a nervous movement of her thin lips.
"When you came here, Mrs. Powell," said John, gravely, "you came as my
wife's guest, and as my wife's friend. I need scarcely say that you
could have had no better claim upon my friendship and hospitality.
If you had brought a regiment of dragoons with you, as the condition
of your visit, they would have been welcome; for I believed that
your coming would give pleasure to my poor girl. If my wife had been
indebted to you for any word of kindness, for any look of affection, I
would have repaid that debt a thousand-fold, had it lain in my power to
do so by any service, however difficult. You would have lost nothing by
your love for my poor motherless girl, if any devotion of mine could
have recompensed you for that tenderness. It was only reasonable that I
should look to you as the natural friend and counsellor of my darling;
and I did so, honestly and confidently. Forgive me if I tell you that I
very soon discovered how much I had been mistaken in entertaining such
a hope. I soon saw that you were no friend to my wife."
"Mr. Mellish!"
"Oh, my dear madam, you think because I keep hunting-boots and guns
in the room I call my study, and because I remember no more of the
Latin that my tutor crammed into my head than the first line of the
Eton Syntax,--you think, because I'm not clever, that I must needs be
a fool. That's your mistake, Mrs. Powell; I'm not clever enough to
be a fool, and I've just sufficient perception to see any danger that
assails those I love. You don't like my wife; you grudge her her youth
and her beauty, and my foolish love for her; and you've watched, and
listened, and plotted--in a lady-like way, of course--to do her some
evil. Forgive me if I speak plainly. Where Aurora is concerned, I feel
very strongly. To hurt her little finger is to torture my whole body.
To stab her once is to stab me a hundred times. I have no wish to be
discourteous to a lady; I am only sorry that you have been unable to
love a poor girl who has rarely failed to win friends amongst those who
have known her. Let us part without animosity, but let us understand
each other for the first time. You do not like us, and it is better
that we should part before you learn to hate us."
The ensign's widow waited in utter stupefaction until Mr. Mellish
stopped, from want of breath, perhaps, rather than from want of words.
All her viperish nature rose in white defiance of him as he walked up
and down the room, chafing himself into a fury with his recollection of
the wrong she had done him in not loving his wife.
"You are perhaps aware, Mr. Mellish," she said, after an awful pause,
"that under such circumstances the annual stipend due to me for my
services cannot be expected to cease at your caprice; and that,
although you may turn me out of doors,"--Mrs. Powell descended to this
very commonplace locution, and stooped to the vernacular in her desire
to be spiteful,--"you must understand that you will be liable for my
salary until the expiration of----"
"Oh, pray do not imagine that I shall repudiate any claim you may make
upon me, Mrs. Powell," said John, eagerly; "Heaven knows it has been no
pleasure to me to speak as plainly as I have spoken to-night. I will
write a cheque for any amount you may consider proper as compensation
for this change in our arrangements. I might have been more polite,
perhaps; I might have told you that my wife and I think of travelling
on the Continent, and that we are, therefore, breaking up our
household. I have preferred telling you the plain truth. Forgive me if
I have wounded you."
Mrs. Powell rose, pale, menacing, terrible; terrible in the intensity
of her feeble wrath, and in the consciousness that she had power to
stab the heart of the man who had affronted her.
"You have merely anticipated my own intention, Mr. Mellish," she said.
"I could not possibly have remained a member of your household after
the very unpleasant circumstances that have lately transpired. My worst
wish is, that you may find yourself involved in no greater trouble
through your connection with Mr. Floyd's daughter. Let me add one
word of warning before I have the honour of wishing you good evening.
Malicious people might be tempted to smile at your enthusiastic
mention of your 'wife;' remembering that the person to whom you allude
is Aurora Conyers, the widow of your groom, and that she has never
possessed any legal claim to the title you bestow upon her."
If Mrs. Powell had been a man, she would have found her head in contact
with the Turkey carpet of John's dining-room before she could have
concluded this speech; as she was a woman, John Mellish stood looking
her full in the face, waiting till she had finished speaking. But he
bore the stab she inflicted without flinching under its cruel pain, and
he robbed her of the gratification she had hoped for. He did not let
her see his anguish.
"If Lofthouse has told her the secret," he cried, when the door had
closed upon Mrs. Powell, "I'll horsewhip him in the church."