Aurora Floyd

waiting for a pause in the conversation. She was too well bred to interrupt Mr. Mellish in his talk, and there was a chance that she might hear something by lingering. No contrast could be stronger than that presented by the two men. John, broad-shouldered and stalwart; his short crisp chestnut hair brushed away from his square forehead; his bright open blue eyes beaming honest sunshine upon all they looked at; his loose gray clothes neat and well made; his shirt in the first freshness of the morning’s toilet; everything about him made beautiful by the easy grace which is the peculiar property of the man who has been born a gentleman, and which neither all the cheap finery which Mr. Moses can sell, nor all the expensive absurdities which Mr. Tittlebat Titmouse can buy, will ever bestow upon the parvenu or the vulgarian. The trainer, handsomer than his master by as much as Antinous in Grecian marble is handsomer than the substantially-shod and loose-coated young squires in Mr. Millais’ designs; as handsome as it is possible for this human clay to be, with every feature moulded to the highest type of positive beauty, and yet, every inch of him, a boor. His shirt soiled and crumpled, his hair rough and uncombed; his unshaven chin, dark with the blue bristles of his budding beard, and smeared with the traces of last night’s liquor; his dingy hands, supporting this dingy chin, and his elbows bursting half out of the frayed sleeves of his shabby shooting-jacket, leaning on the table in an attitude of indifferent insolence. His countenance expressive of nothing but dissatisfaction with his own lot, and contempt for the opinions of other people. All the homilies that could be preached upon the timeworn theme of beauty and its worthlessness, could never argue so strongly as this mute evidence presented by Mr. Conyers himself in his slouching posture and his unkempt hair. Is beauty, then, so little, one asks, on looking at the trainer and his employer? Is it better to be clean, and well dressed, and gentlemanly, than to have a classical profile and a thrice-worn shirt?

Finding very little to interest her in John’s stable-talk, Mrs. Powell made her presence known, and once more asked the all-important question about Colonel Maddison.

“Yes,” John answered; “the old boy is sure to come. Let’s have plenty of chutnee, and boiled rice, and preserved ginger, and all the rest of the unpleasant things that Indian officers live upon. Have you seen Lolly?”

Mr. Mellish put on his hat, gave a last instruction to the trainer, and left the cottage.

“Have you seen Lolly?” he asked again.

“Ye⁠—es,” replied Mrs. Powell; “I have only lately left Mrs. Mellish in your room; she had been speaking to that half-witted person⁠—Hargraves, I think he is called.”

“Speaking to him?” cried John; “speaking to him in my room? Why, the fellow is forbidden to cross the threshold of the house, and Mrs. Mellish abominates the sight of him. Don’t you remember the day he flogged her dog, you know, and Lolly horse⁠—had hysterics?” added Mr. Mellish, choking himself with one word and substituting another.

“Oh, yes, I remember that little⁠—ahem!⁠—unfortunate occurrence perfectly,” replied Mrs. Powell, in a tone which, in spite of its amiability, implied that Aurora’s escapade was not a thing to be easily forgotten.

“Then it’s not likely, you know, that Lolly would talk to the man. You must be mistaken, Mrs. Powell.”

The ensign’s widow simpered and lifted her eyebrows, gently shaking her head, with a gesture that seemed to say, “Did you ever find me mistaken?”

“No, no, my dear Mr. Mellish,” she said, with a half-playful air of conviction, “there was no mistake on my part. Mrs. Mellish was talking to the half-witted person; but you know the person is a sort of servant to Mr. Conyers, and Mrs. Mellish may have had a message for Mr. Conyers.”

“A message for him!” roared John, stopping suddenly and planting his stick upon the ground in a movement of unconcealed passion; “what messages should she have for him? Why should she want people fetching and carrying between her and him?”

Mrs. Powell’s pale eyes lit up with a faint yellow flame in their greenish pupils as John broke out thus. “It is coming⁠—it is coming⁠—it is coming!” her envious heart cried, and she felt that a faint flush of triumph was gathering in her sickly cheeks.

But in another moment John Mellish recovered his self-command. He was angry with himself for that transient passion. “Am I going to doubt her again?” he thought. “Do I know so little of the nobility of her generous soul that I am ready to listen to every whisper, and terrify myself with every look?”

They had walked about a hundred yards away from the lodge by this time. John turned irresolutely, as if half inclined to go back.

“A message for Conyers,” he said to Mrs. Powell;⁠—“ay, ay, to be sure. It’s likely enough she might want to send him a message, for she’s cleverer at all the stable business than I am. It was she who told me not to enter Cherrystone for the Chester Cup, and, egad! I was obstinate, and I was licked; as I deserved to be, for not listening to my dear girl.”

Mrs. Powell would fain have boxed John’s ear, had she been tall enough to reach that organ. Infatuated fool! would he never open his dull eyes and see the ruin that was preparing for him?

“You are a good husband, Mr. Mellish,” she said with a gentle melancholy. “Your wife ought to be happy!” she added, with a sigh which plainly hinted that Mrs. Mellish was miserable.

“A good husband!” cried John, “not half good enough for her. What can I do to prove that I love her? What can I do? Nothing, except to let her have her own way; and what a little that seems! Why, if she wanted to set that house on fire, for the pleasure of making a bonfire,” he added, pointing