Aurora Floyd · Chapter 22 (2/3)

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 moneylender 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 firearms 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 today 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 today, 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 banknotes, 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 entrusted 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?”