 Chapter 25 of Aurora Floyd. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading done by Jules Harlick of Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. Aurora Floyd by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. Chapter 25. The deed that had been done in the wood. The bare-headed seafarer man who stood in the center of the hall was Captain Samuel Proder. The scared faces of the servants gathered round him told more plainly than his words, which came hoarsely from his parched white lips, the nature of the tidings that he brought. John Mellish strode across the hall with an awful calmness on his white face and parting the hustled group of servants with his strong arms as a mighty wind rends asunder the storm-beaten waters, he placed himself face to face with Captain Proder. Who are you? he asked sternly. And what has brought you here? The Indian officer had been aroused by the clamor and had emerged red and bristling with self-importance to take his part in the business in hand. There are some pies in the making of which everybody yearns to have a finger. It is a great privilege after some social convulsion has taken place to be able to say, I was there at the time the scene occurred. Sir, or I was standing as close to him when the blow was struck. Ma'am, as I am to you at this moment, people are apt to take pride out of strange things. An elderly gentleman at Doncaster, showing me his comfortably furnished apartments, informed me with evidence satisfaction that Mr. William Palmer had lodged in these very rooms. Colonel Madison pushed aside his daughter and her husband and struggled out into the hall. Come, my man, he said, echoing John's interrogatory. Let us hear what has brought you here at such a remarkably unseasonable hour. The sailor gave no direct answer to the question. He pointed with his thumb across his shoulders toward that dismal spot in the lonely wood, which was as present to his mental vision now as it had been to his bodily eyes a quarter of an hour before. A man, he gasped, a man lying close again the water's edge, shot through the heart, dead as someone in an awful tone. The voices and the questions came from whom they would in the ostrich and terror of those first moments of overwhelming horror and surprise. No one knew who spoke except the speakers, perhaps even they were scarcely aware that they had spoken. Dead, asked one of these eager listeners, stone dead. A man, shot dead in the wood, cried John Melish. What man? I beg your pardon, sir, said the grave old butler laying his hand gently upon his master's shoulder. I think from what this person says that the man who has been shot is the new trainer. Mr. Conyers exclaimed John. Conyers, who should shoot him? The question was asked in a hoarse whisper. It was impossible for the speaker's face to grow wider than it had been from the moment in which he had opened the drawing room door and looked out into the hall. But some terrible change not to be translated into words came over it at the mention of the trainer's name. He stood motionless and silent, pushing his hair from his forehead and staring wildly about him. The grave butler laid his warning hand for a second time upon his master's shoulder. Sir, Mr. Melish, he said, eager to arouse the young man from the dull, stupid quiet into which he had fallen. Excuse me, sir, but if my mistress should come in suddenly and hear of this, she might be upset. Perhaps wouldn't it be better to... Yes, yes, cried John Melish, lifting his head suddenly as if aroused into immediate action by the mere suggestion of his wife's name. Yes, clear out the hall, every one of you, he said, addressing the eager crowd of pale-faced servants. And you, sir, he added to Captain Prodder, come with me. He walked toward the dining room door. The sailor followed him still bare-headed, still with a semi-bewildered expression in his dusky face. It ain't the first time I've seen a man shot, he thought, but it's the first time I've ever felt like this. Before Mr. Melish could reach the dining room, before the servants could disperse and return to their proper quarters, one of the half-glass doors, which had been left ajar, was pushed open by the light touch of a woman's hand, and Aurora Melish entered the hall. Ah-ha! thought the ensign's widow, who looked on the scene snugly sheltered by Mr. and Mrs. Laugh House. My ladies caught a second time in her evening rambles. What will he say to her goings-on? Tonight I wonder. Aurora's manner presented a singular contrast to the terror and agitation of the assembly in the hall. A vivid crimson flush glowed in her cheeks and lit up her shining eyes. She carried her head high in that queenly defiance, which was her peculiar grace. She walked with a light step, she moved with easy careless gestures. It seemed as if some burden which she had long carried had been suddenly removed from her. But at sight of the crowd in the hall, she drew back with a look of alarm. When it happened, John, she cried, what is wrong? He lifted his hand with a warning gesture, a gesture that plainly said, Whatever trouble or sorrow there may be, let her be spared the knowledge of it. Let her be sheltered from the pain. Yes, my darling, he answered quietly, taking her hand and leading her into the drawing room. There is something wrong. An accident has happened in the wood yonder, but it concerns no one whom you care for. Go, dear, I will tell you all by and by. Mrs. Loftaus, you will take care of my wife. Loftaus, come with me. Allow me to shut the door, Mrs. Powell, if you please. He added to the insign's widow, who did not seem inclined to leave her post upon the threshold of the drawing room. Any curiosity which you may have about the business shall be satisfied in due time. For the present, you will oblige me by remaining with my wife and Mrs. Loftaus. He paused with his hand upon the drawing room door and looked at Aurora. She was standing with her shawl upon her arm, watching her husband. And she advanced eagerly to him as she met his glance. Upon she exclaimed, for mercy's sake, tell me the truth, what is this accident? He was silent for a moment, gazing at her eager face, that face whose exquisite mobility expressed every thought. Then, looking at her with a strange solemnity, he said gravely, you were in the wood just now, Aurora? I was, she answered. Finally just left the grounds. A man passed me, running violently about a quarter of an hour ago. I thought he was a poacher. Was it to him the accident happened? No, there was a shot fired in the wood sometime since. Did you hear it? I did, replied Mrs. Melish, looking at him with sudden terror and surprise. I knew there were often poachers about near the road, and I was not alarmed by it. Was there anything wrong in that shot? Was anyone hurt? Her eyes were fixed upon his face, dilated with that look of wandering terror. Yes, a man was hurt. Aurora looked at him in silence, looked at him with a stony face, whose only expression was an utter bewilderment. Every other feeling seemed blotted away in that one sense of wonder. John Melish led her to the chair near Mrs. Lofthouse, who had been seated with Mrs. Powell at the other end of the room, close to the piano, and too far from the door to overhear the conversation, which had just taken place between John and his wife. People do not talk very loudly in moments of intense agitation. They are liable to be deprived of some portion of their vocal power in the fearful crisis of terror and despair. A numbness seizes the organ of speech. A partial paralysis disables the ready tongue. The trembling lips refuse to do their duty. The soft pedal of the human instrument is down, and the tones are feeble and muffled, wandering into weak minor shrillness or sinking to husky basses beyond the ordinary compass of the speaker's voice. The stentorian accents in which Claude Melnott bids adieu to Mademoiselle de Chappelle mingle very effectively with the brazen clamor of the Marseille's hymn. The sonorous tones in which Mistress Julia appeals to her hunchback guardian are pretty sure to bring down the approving thunder of the 18-penny gallery. But I doubt if the noisy energy of stage grief is true to nature. However wise in art, I'm afraid that an actor who would play Claude Melnott with a pre-Raphaelite fidelity to nature would be an insufferable bore and utterly inaudible beyond the third row in the pit. The artist must draw his own line between nature and art and map out the extent of his own territory. If he finds that cream-colored marble is more artistically beautiful than a rigid presentment of actual flesh and blood, let him stain his marble of that delicate hue until the end of time. If he can represent five acts of agony and despair without once turning his back to his audience or sitting down, let him do it. If he is conscientiously true to his art, let him choose for himself how true he shall be to nature. John Millish took his wife's hand in his own and grasped it with a convulsive pressure that almost crushed the delicate fingers. Stay here, my dear, till I come back to you, he said. Now, Mr. Loughhouse. Mr. Loughhouse followed his friend into the hall where Colonel Madison had been making the best use of his time by questioning the merchant captain. Come, gentlemen, said John, leading the way to the dining room. Come, Colonel, and you too, Loughhouse and you, sir, he added to the sailors, step this way. The debris of the dessert still covered the table, but the men did not advance far into the room. John stood aside as the others went in, and, entering the last, closed the door behind him and stood with his back against it. Now, he said, turning sharply upon Samuel Proder, what is this business? I'm afraid it's suicide or murder, answered the sailor gravely. I've told this good gentleman all about it. This good gentleman was Colonel Madison, who seemed delighted to plunge into the conversation. Yes, my dear Melish, he said eagerly, our friend who describes himself as a sailor and who had come down to see Mrs. Melish, whose mother he knew when he was a boy, has told me all about this shocking affair. Of course, the body must be removed immediately, and the sooner your servants go out with lanterns for that purpose, the better. Decision, my dear Melish, decision and prompt action are indispensable in these sad catastrophes. The body removed, repeated John Melish, the man is dead then? Quite dead, answered the sailor. He was dead when I found him, though it wasn't above seven minutes after the shot was fired. I left the man with him. A young man has drove me from Doncaster and a dog, some big dog that watched beside him, howling awful and wouldn't leave him. Did you see the man's face? Yes. You are a stranger here, said John Melish. It is useless, therefore, to ask you if you know who the man is. No, sir, answered the sailor. I didn't know him, but the young man from the reindeer. He recognized him? Yes. He said he'd seen the man in Doncaster only the night before, and that he was your trainer. I think he called him. Yes, yes, a lame chap. Come, gentlemen, said John, turning to his friends, what are we to do? Send the servants into the wood, replied Colonel Madison, and have the body carried. Not here, cried John Melish, interrupting him. Not here. It would kill my wife. Where did the man live? asked the Colonel in the North Lodge, a cottage against the northern gates which are never used now. Then let the body be taken there, answered the Indian soldier. Let one of your people run for the parish constable, and you'd better send for the nearest surgeon immediately. Though, from what our friend here says, a hundred of them couldn't do any good. It's an awful business, some poaching fray, I suppose. Yes, yes, answered John quickly. No doubt. Was the man disliked in the neighborhood? asked Colonel Madison. Had he made himself in any manner obnoxious? I should hardly think it likely, he had only been with me about a week. The servants who had dispersed that John's command had not gone very far. They had lingered in corridors and lobbies, ready at a moment's notice to rush out into the hall again, and act their minor parts in the tragedy. They preferred doing anything to returning quietly to their own quarters. They came out eagerly at Mr. Mellish's summons. He gave his orders briefly, selecting two of the men and sending the others about their business. Bring a couple of lanterns, he said, and follow us across the park toward the pond in the wood. Colonel Madison, Mr. Loft House, Captain Prodder and John Mellish left the house together. The moon still slowly rising in the broad, cloudless heavens, silvered the quiet lawn and shimmered upon the tree tops in the distance. The three gentlemen walked at a rapid pace, led by Samuel Prodder, who kept a little way in advance and followed by a couple of grooms who carried dark and stable lanterns. As they entered the wood, they stopped involuntarily, arrested by that solemn sound which had first drawn the sailor's attention to the dreadful deed that had been done, the howling of the dog. It sounded in the distance like a low, feeble wail, a long, monotonous death cry. They followed that dismal indication of the spot to which they were to go. They made their way through the shadowy avenue and emerged upon the silvery patch of turf and fern, where the rotting summer house stood in its solitary decay. The two figures, the prostrate figure on the brink of the water and the figure of the dog with uplifted head still remained exactly as the sailor had left them three quarters of an hour before. The young man from the reindeer stood aloof from these two figures against to meet the newcomers that they drew near. Colonel Madison took a lantern from one of the men and ran forward to the water's edge. The dog rose as he approached and walked slowly around the prostrate form, sniffling at it and whining piteously. John Millish called the animal away. This man was in a sitting posture and he was shot, said Colonel Madison decisively. He was sitting upon this bench here. He pointed to a dilapidated rustic seat close to the margin of the stagnant water. He was sitting upon this bench, repeated the Colonel, for he's fallen close against it, as you see. Unless I'm very much mistaken, he was shot from behind. I don't think he shot himself then, asked John Millish. Shot himself, cried the Colonel, not a bit of it, but we'll soon settle that. If he shot himself, the pistol must be close against him. Here, bring the loose plank from that summer house and lay the body upon it, added the Indian officer, speaking to the servants. Captain Potter and the two grooms selected the broadest plank they could find. It was moss grown and rotten, and strangling wreaths of wild Clematis were entwined about it. But it served the purpose for which it was wanted. They laid it upon the grass and lifted the body of James Conyers onto it, with his handsome face, ghastly and horrible in the fixed agony of sudden death, turned upward to the moonlit sky. It was wonderful how mechanically and quietly they went to work, promptly and silently obeying the Colonel's orders. John Millish and Mr. Loft Host searched the slippery grass upon the bank and groped among the fringe of fern without result. There was no weapon to be found anywhere within a considerable radius of the body. While they were searching in every direction for this missing link in the mystery of the man's death, the parish constable arrived with the servant who had been sent to summon him. He had very little to say for himself, except that he supposed it was poachers as had done it, and that he also supposed all particulars would come out at the inquest. He was a simple, rural, functionary, accustomed to petty dealings with refactory tramps, conchumatious poachers, an impounded cattle, and was scarcely master of the situation in any great emergency. Mr. Prodder and the servants left the plank upon which the body lay and struck into the long avenue leading northward, walking a little ahead of the three gentlemen and the constable. The young man from the reindeer returned to look after his horse and to drive round to the north lodge where he was to meet Mr. Prodder. All had been done so quietly that the knowledge of the catastrophe had not passed beyond the domains of Mellish Park. In the holy summer evening stillness, James Conyers was carried back to the chamber from whose narrow window he had looked out upon the beautiful world, weary of its beauty only a few hours before. The purposeless life was suddenly closed. The careless wanderers' journey had come to an unthought of end. What a melancholy record! What a meaningless and unfinished page! Nature, blindly bountiful to the children whom she has yet to know, had bestowed her richest gifts upon this man. She had created a splendid image and had chosen a soul at random, ignorantly enshrining it in her most perfectly fashioned clay. Of all who read the story of this man's death in the following Sunday newspapers, there was not one who shed a tear for him. There was not one who could say, that man once stepped out of his way to do me a kindness and made the Lord have mercy upon his soul. Shall I be sentimental then because he is dead and regret that he was not spared a little longer and allow a day of grace in which he might repent? Had he lived forever, I do not think he would have lived long enough to become that which is not in his nature to be. May God in his infinite compassion have pity upon the souls which he himself created and where he has withheld the light may he excuse the darkness. The phrenologist who examined the head of William Palmer declared that he was so utterly deficient in moral perception, so entirely devoid of conscientious restraint that he could not help being what he was. Heaven keep us from too much credence in that horrible fatalism. Is a man's destiny here and hereafter to depend upon bulbous projections, scarcely perceptible to uneducated fingers and good and evil propensities which can be measured by the compass or weight in the scale? The dismal cortege slowly made its way under the silver moonlight. The trembling leaves making a murmuring music in the faint summer air. The pale glowworms shining here and there amid the tangled verdure. The bearers of the dead walked with a slow but steady tramp in advance of the rest. All walked in silence. What should they say? In the presence of death's awful mystery, life made a pause. There was a brief interval in the hard business of existence. A hushed and solemn break in the working of life's machinery. There will be an inquest thought, Mr. Prodder, and I shall have to give evidence. I wonder what the questions they'll ask me. He did not think this once, but perpetually, dwelling with a half-stupid persistence upon the thought of that inquisition which must most infallibly be made and those questions that might be asked. The honest sailor's simple mind was cast astray in the utter bewilderment of his night's mysterious horror. The story of life was changed. He had come to play his humble part in some sweet domestic drama of love and confidence, and he found himself involved in a tragedy. A horrible mystery of hatred, secrecy, and murder. A dreadful maze from whose obscurity he saw no hope of issue. A beacon light glimmered in the lower window of the cottage by the north gates. A feeble ray that glittered like a gem from out of a bower of honeysuckle and clementis. The little garden gate was closed, but it only fastened with a latch. The bearers of the body paused before entering the garden, and the constable stepped aside to speak to Mr. Mellish. Is there anybody lives in the cottage, he asked. Yes, answered John. The trainer employed an old hanger on of my own, a half-witted fellow called Hargraves. It's him as burns the light in there most likely then, said the constable. I'll go in and speak to him first. Do you wait here until I come out again? He added, turning to the man who carried the body. The large door was on a latch. The constable opened it softly and went in. A rush light was burning upon the table, the candlestick placed in a basin of water. A bottle half filled with brandy and a tumbler stood near the light, but the room was empty. The constable took his shoes off and crept up the little staircase. The upper floor of the lodge consisted of two rooms, one sufficiently large and comfortable, looking toward the stable gates. The other, smaller and darker, looked out upon the patch of kitchen garden and on the fence which separated Mr. Mellish's estate from the high road. The larger chamber was empty, but the door of the smaller was ajar and the constable pausing to listen at that half-open door heard the regular breathing of a heavy sleeper. He knocked sharply upon the panel. Who's there? asked the person within, starting up from a truckled bedstead. Is it thou, Mr. Conyers? Noel answered the constable. It's me, William Dork of Little Mezzlingham. Come downstairs, I want to speak to you. Is there ought wrong? Yes, poachers. That's as may be, answered Mr. Dork. Come downstairs, will you? Mr. Hargraves muttered something to the effect that he would make his appearance as soon as he could find sundry portions of his rather fragmentary toilet. The constable looked into the room and watched the softy groping for his garments in the moonlight. Three minutes afterwards, Stephen Hargraves slowly shambled down the angular wooden stairs, which wound in a corkscrew fashion affected by the builders of small dwellings from the upper to the lower floor. Now, said Mr. Dork, planning the softy opposite to him with the feeble rays of the rush light upon his sickly face, now then I want you to answer me a question. At what time did your master leave the house? At half past seven o'clock, answered the softy in his whispering voice, she was striking the half hour as he went out. He pointed to a small Dutch clock in a corner of the room. His countrymen always speak of a clock as she. Oh, he went out at half past seven o'clock, did he? Said the constable. And you haven't seen him since, I suppose. No, he told me he should be late, and I wasn't to sit oop for him. He swore at me last night for sitting oop for him, but is there ought wrong, asked the softy? Mr. Dork did not condescend to reply to this question. He walked straight to the door, opened it, and back into those who stood without in the summer moonlight, patiently waiting for his summons. You may bring him in, he said. They carried their ghastly burden into the pleasant rustic chamber, the chamber in which Mr. James Conyers had sat smoking and drinking a few hours before. Mr. Morton, the surgeon from Messlingham, the village nearest to the park gates, arrived as the body was being carried in and ordered a temporary couch of mattresses to be spread upon a couple of tables placed together in the lower room for the reception of the trainer's corpse. John Melish, Samuel Proder, and Mr. Loft House remained outside the cottage. Colonel Madison, the servants, the constable, and the doctor were all clustered around the corpse. He has been dead about an hour and a quarter, said the doctor, after a brief inspection of the body. He has been shot in the back. The bullet has not penetrated the heart, for in that case there would have been no hemorrhage. He has respired after receiving the shot, but death must have been almost instantaneous. Before making his examination, the surgeon had assisted Mr. Dork, the constable, to draw off the coat and waistcoat of the deceased. The bosom of the waistcoat was saturated with the blood that had flowed from the parted lips of the dead man. It was Mr. Dork's business to examine these garments in the hope of finding some shred of evidence which might become a clue to the secret of the trainer's death. He turned out the pockets of the shooting coat and of the waistcoat. One of these pockets contained a handful of half-pence, a couple of shillings, a four-penny piece, and a rusty watch key. Another held a little parcel of tobacco wrapped in an old bedding list and a broken meersham pipe, black and greasy, with the essential oil of bygone shag and bird's eye. In one of the waistcoat pockets, Mr. Dork found the dead man's silver watch with a blood-stained ribbon and a worthless gilt seal. Among all these things, there was nothing calculated to throw any light upon the mystery. Colonel Madison shrugged his shoulders as the constable emptied the paltry contents of the trainer's pockets onto a little dresser at one end of the room. There's nothing here that makes the business any clearer, he said, but to my mind, it's plain enough. The man was new here, and he brought new ways with him from his last situation. The poachers and vagabonds have been used to have it all their own way about Melish Park, and they didn't like this poor fellow's interference. He wanted to play the tyrant, I dare say, and make himself obnoxious to some of the worst of the lot. And he caught it hot, poor chap. That's all I've got to say. Colonel Madison, with the recollection of a refactory punjab strong upon him, had no very great reverence for the mysterious spark that lights the human temple. If a man made himself obnoxious to other men, other men were very likely to kill him. This was the soldier's simple theory, and having delivered himself of his opinion respecting the trainer's death, he emerged from the cottage and was ready to go home with John Melish and drink another bottle of that celebrated Tawny Port, which had been laid in by his host's father 20 years before. The constable stood close against a candle that had been hastily lighted and thrust unceremoniously into a disused blacking bottle with the waist-goat still in his hands. He was turning the blood-stained garment inside out for, while emptying the pockets, he had felt a thick substance that seemed like a folded paper but the whereabouts of which he had not been able to discover. He uttered a suppressed exclamation of surprise presently for he found the solution of this difficulty. The paper was sewn between the inner lining and the outer material of the waist-goat. He discovered this by examining the seam, a part of which was sewn with coarse stitches and a thread of a different color to the rest. He ripped open this part of the seam and drew out the paper, which was so much blood-stained as to be undecipherable to Mr. Dork's rather obtuse vision. I'll say not about it and keep it to show to the corner, he thought. I'll lay he'll make something out of it. The constable folded the document and secured it in a leather-in-pocket book, a bulky receptacle, the very aspect of which was want to strike terror to the rustic defaulters. I'll show it to the corner, he thought, and if a particular comes out, I may get something for my trouble. The village surgeon, having done his duty, was prepared to leave the crowded little room where the gaping servants still lingered as if loathed to tear themselves away from the ghastly figure of the dead man, over which Mr. Morton had spread a patchwork carverlette taken from the bed in the chamber above. The softy had looked on quietly enough at the dismal scene, watching the faces of the small assembly glancing furtively from one to the other beneath the shadow of his bushy red eyebrows. His haggard face, always of a sickly white, seemed tonight no more colorless than usual. His slow whispering tones were not more suppressed than they always were. If he had a hangdog manner and a furtive glance, the manner and the glance were both common to him. No one looked at him. No one heeded him. After the first question as to the hour at which the trainer left the lodge, had been asked and answered, no one spoke to him. If he got in anybody's way, he was pushed aside. If he said anything, nobody listened to him. The dead man was the sole monarch of the dismal scene. It was to him they looked with awestruck and glances. It was of him they spoke and subdued whispers. All their questions, their suggestions, their conjectures were about him and him alone. There is this to be observed in the physiology of every murder, that before the corners inquest the sole object of public curiosity is the murdered man, while immediately after that judicial investigation the tide of feeling turns. The dead man is buried and forgotten and the suspected murderer becomes the hero of men's morbid imaginations. John Millish looked in at the door of the cottage to ask a few questions. Have you found anything, dork, he asked? Nothing particular, sir. Nothing that shows any light upon this business? No, sir. You are going home then, I suppose. Yes, sir. I must be going back now. If you leave someone here to watch, yes, yes, John. One of the servants shall stay. Very well then, sir. I'll take the names of the witnesses that will be examined at the inquest and I'll go over and see the coroner early tomorrow morning. The witnesses, ah, to be sure, who will you want? Mr. Dork hesitated for a moment rubbing the bristles upon his chin. Well, there's this man here, Hargraves, I think you call him, he said presently, we shall want him for it seems he was the last that saw the deceased alive, least away as I can hear on yet. Then we shall want the gentleman as found the body and the young man as was with him when he heard the shot and the gentleman as found the body is the most particular of all and I'll speak to him at once. John Mellish turned round, fully expecting to see Mr. Prodder at his elbow, where he had been some time before. John had a perfect recollection of seeing the loosely clad, seafaring figures standing behind him in the moonlight, but in the terrible confusion of his mind he could not remember exactly when it was that he had last seen the sailor. It might have been only five minutes before. It might have been a quarter of an hour. John's idea of time were annihilated by the horror of the catastrophe which had marked this night with the red brand of murder. It seemed to him as if he had been standing for hours in the little cottage garden with Reginald Loft House by his side listening to the lo-hum of the voices in the crowded room and waiting to see the end of the dreary business. Mr. Dork looked about him in the moonlight entirely bewildered by the disappearance of Samuel Prodder. Why? Where on earth has he gone? exclaimed the constable. We must have him before the coroner. What will Mr. Hayward say to me for letting him slip through my fingers? The man was here a quarter of an hour ago so he can't be very far off, suggested Mr. Loft House. Does anyone know who he is? No. Nobody knew anything about him. He had appeared as mysteriously as if he had risen from the earth to bring terror and confusion upon it with the evil tidings which he bore. Staying. Someone suddenly remembered that he had been accompanied by Bill Jarvis and that he had ordered the young man to drive his trap to the north gates and wait from there. The constable ran to the gates upon receiving this information but there was no vestige of the horse and gig or of the young man. Samuel Prodder had evidently taken advantage of the confusion and had driven off in the gig under cover of the general bewilderment. I'll tell you what I'll do, sir, said William Dork addressing Mr. Melich. If you lend me a horse and trap, I'll drive into Doncaster and see if this man's to be found at the reindeer. We must have him for a witness. John Melich ascended to this arrangement. He left one of the grooms to keep watch in the death chamber in company with Stephen Hargraves, the softee, and after bidding the surgeon good night, walked slowly homeward with his friends. The church clock was striking twelve as the three gentlemen left the wood and passed through the little iron gateway onto the lawn. We had better not tell the ladies more than we are obliged to tell them about this business, said John Melich as they approached the house where the lights were still burning in the hall and drawing room. We shall only agitate them by letting them know the worst. To be sure, to be sure, my boy, answered the colonel, my poor little Maggie always cries if she hears anything of this kind. And Loft House, as almost as big a baby, added the soldier, glancing rather contemptuously at his son-in-law, who had not spoken once during that slow homeward walk. John Melich thought very little of the strange disappearance of Captain Prodder. The man had objected to be summoned as a witness, perhaps, and had gone. It was only natural. He did not even know his name. He only knew him as the mouthpiece of evil tidings, which had shaken him to the very soul. That this man conures, this man of all others, this man toward whom he had conceived a deeply rooted aversion and an unspoken horror should have perished mysteriously by an unknown hand, was an event so strange and appalling as to deprive him for a time of all power of thought, all capability of reasoning. Who had killed this man, this penniless good-for-nothing trainer, who could have had any motive for such a deed? Who, the cold sweat broke out upon his brow in the anguish of the thought? Who had done this deed? It was not the work of any poacher. No, it was very well for Colonel Madison in his ignorance of antecedent facts to account for it in that manner. But John Melish knew that he was wrong. James Conyers had only been at the park a week. He had neither time nor opportunity for making himself obnoxious. And beyond that, he was not the man to make himself obnoxious. He was a selfish, indolent rascal who only loved his own ease and who would have allowed the young partridges to be wired under his very nose. Who then had done this deed? There was only one person who had any motive for wishing to be rid of this man. One person who, made desperate by some great despair, enmeshed perhaps by some net, hellishly contrived by a villain, hopeless of any means of extrication, in a moment of madness, might have no in the face of every evidence that earth could offer against reason, against hearing, eyesight, judgment and memory, he would say as he said now, no, she was innocent, she was innocent. She had looked in her husband's face, the clear light had shone from her luminous eyes, a stream of electric radiance penetrating straight to his heart, and he had trusted her. I'll trust her at the worst, he thought, if all living creatures upon this wide earth join their voices in one great cry of abrading. I'd stand by her to the very end and defy them. Aurora and Mrs. Lofthouse had fallen asleep upon opposite solfice. Mrs. Powell was walking softly up and down the long drawing room, waiting and watching, waiting for a fuller knowledge of this room which had come upon her employer's household. Mrs. Melish sprang up suddenly at the sound of her husband's step as he entered the drawing room. Oh John, she cried, running to him and laying her hands upon his broad shoulders. Thank heaven, you are come back. Now tell me all. Tell me all John. I'm prepared to hear anything, no matter what. This is no ordinary accident. The man who was hurt. Her eyes dilated as she looked at him with a glance of intelligence that plainly said, I can guess what has happened. The man was very seriously hurt, Lolly, her husband, answered quietly. What man? The trainer recommended to me by John Pasteurne. She looked at him for a few moments in silence. He is dead, she said, after that brief pause. He is. Her head sank forward upon her breast and she walked away, quietly returning to the sofa from which she had arisen. I am very sorry for him, she said. Not a good man. I am sorry he was not allowed time to repent of his wickedness. You knew him then, asked Mrs. Lofthouse, who had expressed unbound consternation at the trainer's death. Yes, he was in my father's service some years ago. Mr. Lofthouse's carriage had been waiting ever since 11 o'clock and the rector's wife was only too glad to bid her friends good night and to drive away from Mellish Park and its fatal associations. So, though Colonel Madison would have preferred stopping to smoke another cheroot while he discussed the business with John Mellish, he was feigned to submit to feminine authority and to take his seat by his daughter's side in the comfortable landow, or a closed carriage, as the convenience of its proprietor dictated. The vehicle rolled away upon the smooth carriage drive. The servants closed the hall doors and lingered about, whispering to each other in little groups in the corridor and on the staircases, waiting until their master and mistress should have retired for the night. It was difficult to think that the business of life would go on just the same, though a murder had been done upon the outskirts of the park. And even the housekeeper, a severe matron at ordinary times, yielded to the common influence and forgot to drive the maids to their dormitories in the gabled roof. All was very quiet in the drawing room where the visitors had left their host and hostess to hug those ugly skeletons which are put away in the presence of company. John Melish walked slowly up and down the room. Aurora sat staring vacantly at the guttering wax candles in the old-fashioned silver branches. And Mrs. Powell with her embroidery in full working order threaded her needles and snipped away the fragments of her delicate cotton as carefully as if there had been no such thing as a crime or trouble in the world and no higher purpose in life than the achievement of elaborate devices upon French Cambridge. She paused now and then to utter some polite commonplace. She regretted such an unpleasant catastrophe. She lamented the disagreeable circumstances of the trainer's death. Indeed, she in a manner inferred that Mr. Connors had shown himself wanting respect for his employer by the mode of his death. But the point to which she recurred most frequently was the fact of Aurora's presence in the grounds at the time of the murder. I so much regret that you should have been out of doors at the time, my dear Mrs. Melish, she said. And as I should imagine from the direction which you took on leaving the house actually near the place of his death, it will be so unpleasant for you to have to appear at the inquest. Appear at the inquest cried Mr. Melish stopping suddenly and turning fiercely upon the placid speaker. Who says that my wife will have to appear at the inquest? I merely imagined it probable that. Then you'd know business to imagine it, ma'am, retorted Mr. Melish a great show of politeness. My wife will not appear. Who should ask her to do so? Who should wish her to do so? What has she to do with tonight's business? Or what does she know of it more than you or I? Or anyone else in this house? Mrs. Powell shrugged her shoulders. I thought that from Mrs. Melish's previous knowledge of this unfortunate person, she was able to throw some light upon his habits and associations she suggested mildly. Previous knowledge roared John what knowledge should Mrs. Melish have of her father's grooms? What interest should she take in their habits or associations? Stop! said Aurora rising and laying her hand lightly on her husband's shoulder. My dear, impetuous John, why do you put yourself into a passion about this business? If they choose to call me as a witness, I will tell all I know about this man's death which is nothing but that I heard a shot fired while I was in the grounds. She was very pale but she spoke with a quiet determination a calm, resolute defiance of the worst that fate could reserve for her. I will tell anything that is necessary to tell, she said. I care very little what. With her hand still upon her husband's shoulder she rested her head on his breast like some weary child nestling in its only safe shelter. Mrs. Powell rose and gathered together her embroidery in a pretty ladylike receptacle of fragile wicker work. She glided to the door, selected her candlestick and paused on the threshold to bid Mr. and Mrs. Melish goodnight. I am sure you must need rest after this terrible affair, she simpered. So I will take the initiative. It is nearly one o'clock. Good night. If she had lived in the thane of Coudor's family she would have wished Macbeth and his wife a goodnight's rest after Duncan's murder would have hoped that they would sleep well. She would have curtsied and simpered amid the tolling of alarm bells, the clashing of vengeful swords and the blood-bedabbled visages of the drunken grooms. It must have been the Scottish Queen's companion who watched with the truckling physician and played the spy upon her mistress's remorseful wanderings and told how was the conscious-stricken lady's habit to do thus and thus. No one but a gentile mercenary would have been so sleepless in the dead hours of the night, lying in wait for the revelation of horrible secrets, the muttered clues to deadly mysteries. Thank God she's gone at last, cried John Melish as the door closed very softly and very slowly upon Mrs. Powell. I hate that woman, lolly. Heaven knows I have never called John Melish a hero. I have never set him up as a model of manly perfection or infallible virtue. And if he is not faultless, if he has those flaws and blemishes which seem a constituent part of our imperfect clay, I make no apology for him, but trust him to the tender mercies of you not being quite perfect themselves will, I'm sure, be merciful to him. He hated those who hated his wife or did her any wrong, however small. He loved those who loved her. In the great power of his wide affection, all self- esteem was annihilated. To love her was to love him. To serve her was to do him trouble service. To praise her was to make her more vainer than the vainest schoolgirl. He freely took upon his shoulder every debt she owed, whether of love or of hate, and he was ready to pay either species of account to the utmost farthing and with no mean interest upon the sum total. I hate that woman, lolly, he repeated, and I shan't be able to stand her much longer. Aurora did not for some moments, and when she did speak it was evident that Mrs. Powell was very far away from her thoughts. My poor John, she said, in a low, soft voice whose melancholy tenderness went straight to her husband's heart. My dear, how happy we were together for a little time. How very happy we were, my poor boy. Always lolly, he answered, always my darling. No, no, no, said Aurora suddenly, only for a little while. What a horrible fatality has pursued us. What a frightful curse has clung to me, the curse of disobedience. John, the curse of heaven upon my disobedience to think that this man should have been sent here and that he she stopped shivering violently and clinging to the faithful breast that sheltered her. John Mellish quietly led her to her dressing room and placed her in the care of her maid. Your mistress has been very much agitated by this night's business, he said to the girl, keep her as quiet as you possibly can. Mrs. Mellish's bedroom, a comfortable and roomy apartment with a low ceiling and bay windows opened into a morning room in which it was John's habit to read the newspapers and sporting periodicals. While his wife wrote letters, drew pencil sketches of dogs and horses, or played with her favorite bow-wow. They had been very childish and idle and happy in this pretty chins-hung chamber and going into it tonight in utter desolation Mr. Mellish felt his sorrows all the more bitterly for the remembrance of those bygone joys. The shaded lamp was lighted on the Morocco covered writing table and glimmered softly on the picture frames, caressing the pretty modern paintings, the simple domestic story pictures which adorned the subdued grade walls. This wing of the old house had been refurnished for Aurora and there was not a chair or a table in the room that had not been chosen by John Mellish with a special view to the comfort and the pleasure of his wife. The upholster had found him a liberal employer, the painter and the sculptor a noble patron. He had walked about the Royal Academy with a catalog and a pencil in his hand choosing all the pretty pictures for the wife's room. A lady in a scarlet riding habit and a three cornered beaver hat, a white pony and a pack of greyhounds, a bit of stone terrace and sloping turf, a flower bed and a fountain made poor John's idea of a pretty picture. And he had half a dozen variations of such familiar subjects in his spacious mansion. He sat down tonight and looked endlessly around the pleasant chamber wondering whether Aurora and he would ever be happy again, wondering if this dark, mysterious storm threatening cloud would ever pass from the horizon of his life and leave the future bright and clear. I have not been good enough he thought. I have intoxicated myself with my happiness and have made no return for it. What am I to have won the woman I love for my wife while other men are laying down the best desires of their hearts, a willing sacrifice and going out to fight the battle for their fellow men. What an indolent good for nothing wretch I have been, how blind, how ungrateful, how undeserving. John Melish buried his face in his broad hands and repented of the carelessly happy life which he had lived for ten and thirty thoughtless years. He had been awakened from his unthinking bliss by a thunder clap that had shattered the fairy castle of his happiness and laid it level with the ground and in his simple faith he looked into his own life for the cause of the rune which had overtaken him. Yes, it must be so. He had not deserved his happiness. He had not earned his good fortune. Have you ever thought of this? Ye simple country squires who give blankets and beef to your poor neighbors in the cruel winter time, who are good and gentle masters, faithful husbands and tender fathers and who lounge away your easy lives in the pleasant places of this beautiful earth. Have you ever thought that when all your good deeds have been gathered together and set in the balance that some of them are too small when set against the benefits you have received? It will be a very small percentage which you will yield your master for the ten talents entrusted to your care. Remember John Howard, fever stricken and dying, Mrs. Fry laboring in criminal prisons, Florence Nightingale in the bare hospital chambers in the close and noxious atmosphere among the dead dying. These are the people who return cent percent for the gifts entrusted to them. These are the saints whose good deeds shine among the stars forever and ever. These are the indefatigable workers who when the toil and turmoil of the day is done, hear the master's voice in the still even time welcoming them to his rest. John Melish looking back at his life humbly acknowledged that it had been a comparatively useless one. He had distributed happiness to the people who had come in his way, but he had never gone out of his way to make people happy. I dare say that Dives was a liberal master of his own servants, although he did not trouble himself to look after the beggar who sat at his gates. The Israelite taught instruction from the lips of inspiration was willing to do his duty to his neighbor, but had yet to learn the broad signification of the familiar epithet and poor John, like the rich young man, was ready to serve his master faithfully, but had yet to learn the manner of his service. If I could save her from the shadow of sorrow and disgrace, I would start on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, he thought. What is there that I would not do for her? What sacrifice would seem too great? What burden too heavy to bear? End of Chapter 25 THE DEED THAT HAD BEEN DONE IN THE WOOD Chapter 26 of Aurora Floyd This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Aurora Floyd by Mary Elizabeth Braddon Chapter 26 at the Golden Lion Mr. William Dork, the Constable, reached Doncaster at about quarter-past one o'clock upon the morning after the murder and drove straight to the reindeer. It was 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 servant-stair case in a semi-somnolent state to answer the Constable's inquiries. He had driven the seafaring gentleman, whose name he did at Doncaster Station in time to catch the mail train which started at twelve-fifty. 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 ordinary, he scratched his stubble 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. He thanked so very particular, 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 Naya's much as to other chap, he added, turning to the young man. You was with him when the shot were fired and you weren't far when he found the body. You'll have to appear and give evidence whenever the inquests held. I doubt if it'll be to-morrow, for there won't be much time to give notice to the young man. 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 Melish'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 little dwelling puzzling him 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 Melish 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 far noon. Visitors who came to condole and to sympathise 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. Was there 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. Tempt to argue the question he was too weary and sick at heart, too anxious for the inquest to be over, and he 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. Melish 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 softie 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 tomorrow morning, Mr. Melish said to the men, you Har Graves 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. A customed 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 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, hesitantly 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 Melish 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 I 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 Melish 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 and trapped into the power of a mean-spirited hireling who was only too willing to have 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. 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 Otello 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 Melish would not think 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 roadside in within a quarter of a mile of the North Gates, a quiet little place only frequented on market days by the country people going backward between Doncaster and the villages beyond Mezlingham. The coroner and his jury sat in a long bear room in which the frequenters of the Golden Lion were wont to play bowls in wet weather. The surgeon, Steve Hargraves, Jarvis the young man from the reindeer, William Dork the Constable and Mr. Melish were the only witnesses called, but Colonel Madison and Mr. Loftaus 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 Melish 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. Melish 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 is it your opinion that he had made no enemies in the neighborhood? It is next to impossible that he could have done so. Because, 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. Melish, that the cause of death was not an ordinary gunshot wound. The shot heard was the report of a pistol and the deceased was killed by a pistol bullet. John Melish 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 last two days the smaller details of the awful event had escaped his memory. Do you know any one among your servants, Mr. Melish, 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. Melish, 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 in his successor. Langley, cried John Melish, 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. Hump, muttered the coroner, then you can throw no light upon this business, Mr. Melish? None whatever. I am well aware that the trainer in his 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 tomorrow'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 endeavored 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 impaneled to decide upon this awful question were simple agricultureists and petty tradesmen who grudged the days 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 once they emerged with a very rambling form of decision which Mr. Hayward reduced into a verdict of willful murder against some person or persons unknown. Very little had been said by the jurymen very little had been said about the disappearance of the seafaring man who had carried the tidings of the murder to Mr. Malish'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 significantly as his hurried flight might have been to the acute intelligence of a well-trained metropolitan police officer. No one among 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 Malish drew a deep breath along sigh of relief as he left the Golden Lion and walked homeward. Colonel Madison, 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 the man 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 Malish was free to carry his wife away with him with or so ever he would. Free have I said? No, forever and forever the shadow of that bygone mystery would hang like a funeral-paul between himself and the woman he loved, forever and forever 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 forever to be argued the spirits of faith and infidelity were forever 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 shutter and walked straight along the high road toward the principal entrance of the park. He was close to the gates and he heard a voice a strange suppressed voice calling feebly to him to stop. He turned round and saw the softy making his way toward 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 Steve Hargraves was the last man whom Mr. Melish 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 the coroner, gasped Steve Hargraves the coroner and Mr. Loftaus the parson. They want to speak to you, sir up at the lion. What about? Steve Hargraves gave a ghastly grin I don't know, sir, he whispered it's hardly likely they'd tell me there's some it up though I'll lay for Mr. Loftaus was as white as ashes and seemed strangely upset about some it. Would you be pleased to step up and speak to him 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. Steve Hargraves stood staring after him until he was out of sight and then turned and walked on slowly toward the turnstile leading into the wood. I know what they found, he muttered and I know what they want with him. He'll be some time up there so I'll slip across the wood and tell her. Yes, he paused rubbing his hands in 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. Chapter 27 My wife? My wife? What wife? I have no wife. Chapter 28 The coroner was sitting at the bottom of one of the long tables with Mr. Loftaus standing near him. William Dork, the messling unconstable, stood near the door with his hat in his hand and with rather an alarmed expression dimly visible in his ruddy face. Mr. Hayward and Mr. Loftaus were both very pale. One rapid glance was enough to show all this to Mr. Loftaus. The coroner was sitting in his glance was enough to show all this to John Mellish, enough to show him this and something more, a basin of blood-stained water before the coroner and an oblong piece of wet paper which lay under Mr. Hayward's clenched hand. What is the matter? Why did you send for me? he asked. Bewildered and alarmed as he had been by the message which had summoned him hurriedly back to the inn, he was still more so by the confusion evident in the coroner's manner as he answered this question. Pray sit down, Mr. Mellish, he said. I I sent for you at the advice of Mr. Loftaus who, who as a clergyman and a family man, thought it incumbent upon me. Reginald Loftaus laid his hand upon the coroner's arm with a warning gesture. Mr. Hayward stopped for a moment, cleared his throat and then continued speaking but in an altered tone. I have had occasion to reprimand William Dork for a breach of duty which, though I am aware it may have been as he says purely unintentional and accidental. It was indeed, sir, muttered the constable submissively, if I denote. The fact is, Mr. Mellish, that on the night of the murdered Dork in examining the close of the deceased, discovered a paper which had been concealed by the unhappy man between the material and the lining of his waistcoat. This paper was so stained by the blood in which the breast of the waistcoat was absolutely saturated that Dork was unable to decipher a word of its contents. He therefore was quite unaware of the importance of the paper and in the hurry and confusion consequent on the very hard duty he has done for the last two days, he forgot to produce it at the inquest. He had occasion to make some memorandum in his pocketbook almost immediately after the verdict had been given, and this circumstance recalled to his mind the existence of the paper. He came immediately to me and consulted me upon this very awkward business. I examined the document, washed away a considerable portion of the stains which had rendered it illegible, and have contrived to decipher the greater part of it. The document is of some importance then, John asked. He sat at a little distance from the table with his head bent and his fingers rattling nervously against the side of his chair. He chafed horribly at the coroner's pompous slowness. He suffered an agony of fear and bewilderment. Why had they called him back? What was this paper? How could it concern him? Yes, Mr. Hayward answered, the document is certainly an important subject. I have not shown it to Mr. Lofthaus for the purpose of taking his advice upon the subject. I have not shown it to Dork, but I detained Dork in order that you may hear from him how and where the paper was found and why it was not produced at the inquest. Why should I ask any questions upon the subject, cried John, lifting his head suddenly and looking from the coroner to the clergyman? How should this paper say that it does concern you very materially, Mr. Melish? the rector answered gently. John's angry spirit revolted against that gentleness. What right had they to speak to him like this? Why did they look at him with those grave, pitying faces? Why did they drop their voices to that horrible tone in which the bearers of evil tidings paved their way to the announcement of some overwhelming calamity? Then if it concerns me, John said very carelessly, oh my God, he thought, what is this misery that is coming upon me? What is this hideous avalanche of trouble which is slowly descending to crush me? You do not wish to hear anything from Dork, asked the coroner? No, no, cried John savagely. I only want to see that paper. He pointed as he spoke to the wet and blood-stained document under Mr. Hayward's cover. You may go then, Dork, the coroner said quietly, and be sure you do not mention this business to anyone. It is a matter of purely private interest and has no reference to the murder. You will remember? Yes, sir. The constable bowed respectfully to the three gentlemen and left the room. He was very glad to be so well out of the business. They needn't have called me, he thought. To call in the coroner and patois is to scold, to abuse. They needn't have said it was repre—what's its name—to keep the paper. I might have burnt it if I liked and said not about it. Now, said John, rising and walking to the table as the door closed upon the constable, now then, Mr. Hayward, let me see this paper. If it concerns me or anyone connected with me, I have a right to believe that the coroner answered gravely as he handed the blood stained document to Mr. Melish. I only beg you to believe in my heartfelt sympathy with you in this. Let me alone, cried John, waving the speaker away from him as he snatched the paper from his hand. Let me alone. Can't you see that I'm nearly mad? He walked to the window and, with his back to the coroner and Mr. Lofthaus, bent in his hands. He stared for a long time at those blurred and half-eligible lines before he became aware of their full meaning. But at last, at last, the signification of that miserable paper grew clear to him, and with a loud cry of anguish he dropped into the chair from which he had risen and covered his face with his strong right hand. He held the paper in the left, crumpled and crushed by his grasp. My God! he ejaculated after that first cry of anguish. My God! I never thought of this. I never could have imagined this. Neither the coroner nor the clergyman spoke. What could they say to him? Sympathetic words could have no power to lessen such a grief as this. They would only fret and harass the strong man in his agony. It was better to obey him. It was better to let him alone. He rose at last after a silence that seemed long to the spectators of his grief. Gentlemen, he said, in a loud, resolute voice that resounded through the little room, I give you my solemn word of honour that when Archibald Floyd's daughter married me, she believed this man, James Conyers, to be dead. He struck his clenched fists upon the table and looked out defiance at the two men. Then with his left hand, the hand that grasped the blood stained paper thrust into his breast, he walked out of the room. He walked out of the room and out of the house, but not homeward. A grassy lane opposite the Golden Lion led away to a great waste of brown turf called Harper's Common. John Melish walked slowly along this lane and out upon the quiet Common land, lonely even in the broad summer daylight. As he closed the five-barred gate at the end of the lane and emerged upon the open waste, he seemed to shut the door of the world that lay behind him and to stand alone with his great grief under the low, sunless summer sky. The dreary scene before him and the gray atmosphere above his head seemed in strange harmony The reedy water-pools unbroken by a ripple, the barren verger burnt a dull grayish brown by the summer sun, the bloomless heather and the flowerless rushes, all things upon which he looked took a dismal coloring from his own desolation and seemed to make him the more desolate. The spoiled child of fortune, the popular young squire who had never been contradicted in nearly two and thirty years. The happy husband, whose pride in his wife had touched upon that narrow boundary line which separates the sublime from the ridiculous, ah, wither had they fled all these shadows of the happy days that were gone. They had vanished away, they had fallen into the black gulf of the cruel past. The monster who devours his children had taken back these happy ones and a desolate man was left instead, a desolate man who looked at a broad ditch and a rushy bank a few paces from where he stood and thought, was it I who leaped that dyke a month ago to gather forget-me-nots for my wife? He asked himself that question-reader which we must all ask ourselves sometimes. Was he really that creature of the irrevocable past? Even as I write this I can see that common land of which I write, the low sky, the sun-burned grass, the reedy water-pools, the flat landscapes stretching far away on every side to regions that are strange to me. I can recall every object in that simple scene, the atmosphere of the sunless day, the sounds in the soft summer air, the voices of the people near me. I can recall everything except myself. This miserable ego is the one thing that I cannot bring back, the one thing that seems strange to me, the one thing that I can scarcely believe in. If I went back to that northern common land tomorrow I should recognize every hillock, every scrap of furs or patch of heather. The few years that have gone by since I saw it will have made a scarcely perceptible difference in the features of the familiar place, the slow changes of nature immutable in her harmonious law will have done their work according to that unalterable law. But this wretched me has undergone so complete a change that if you could bring me back that alter ego of the past I should be unable to recognize the strange creature. And yet it is by no volcanic shocks, no rending a sunder of rocky masses, no great convulsions or terrific agonies of nature that the change has come about. It is rather by a slow monotonous wearing away of salient points, an imperceptible adulteration of this or that constituent part, an addition here and a subtraction there that the transformation takes place. It is hard to make a man believe in the physiologists who declare that the hand which uses his pen today is not the same hand that guided the quill with which he wrote seven years ago. He finds it very difficult to believe this, but let him take out of some forgotten writing desk thrust into a corner of his lumber room those letters which he wrote seven years ago and which were afterward returned to him by the lady to whom they were addressed, and the question which he will ask himself as he reads the faded lines will most surely be, was it I who wrote this and called a lady with white eyelashes the guiding star of a lonely life? Was it I who was inexpressibly miserable with one S and looked forward with unutterable anxiety to the party in Anzlo Square at which I once more should look into those soft blue eyes? What party in Anzlo Square know me record oh those soft blue eyes were garnished with white lashes and the lady to whom the letters were written jilted me to marry a rich soap boiler. Even the law takes cognizance of this wonderful transformation. The debt which Smith contracts in 1850 is null and void in 1857. The Smith of 50 may have been an extravagant rogue. The Smith of 57 may be a conscientious man who would not cheat his creditors of a farthing. Shall Smith be called upon to pay the debts of Smith the First? I leave that question to Smith's conscience and the metaphysicians. Surely the same law should hold good in breach of promise of marriage. Smith the First may have adored Miss Brown. Smith the Second may detest her. Shall Smith of 1857 be called upon to perform the contract entered into by that other Smith of 1850? The French criminal law goes still farther. The murderer whose crime remains unsuspected for ten years can laugh at the police officers who discover his guilt in the eleventh. Surely this must be because the real murderer is no longer amenable to justice, because the hand that struck the blow and the brain that plotted the deed are alike extinct. Poor John Mellish with the world of the past crumbled at his feet looked out at the blank future and mourned for the people who were dead and gone. He flung himself at full length upon the stunted grass and taking the crumbled paper from his breast unfolded it and smoothed it out before him. It was a certificate of marriage, the certificate of a marriage which had been solemnized at the parish church of Dover upon the 2nd of July 1856 between James Conyers bachelor, rough rider of London son of Joseph Conyers stagecoachman and Susan his wife and Aurora Floyd spinster, daughter of Archibald Floyd, banker of Feldenwood's Kent. End of Chapter 27