“Are you going back to the lodge?” Mrs. Powell asked quietly, not taking any notice of this outbreak of marital enthusiasm.
They had retraced their steps, and were within a few paces of the little garden before the north lodge.
“Going back?” said John; “no—yes.”
Between his utterance of the negative and the affirmative he had looked up, and seen Stephen Hargraves entering the little garden-gate. The “Softy” had come by the shortcut through the wood. John Mellish quickened his pace, and followed Steeve Hargraves across the little garden to the threshold of the door. At the threshold he paused. The rustic porch was thickly screened by the spreading branches of the roses and honeysuckle, and John was unseen by those within. He did not himself deliberately listen; he only waited for a few moments, wondering what to do next. In those few moments of indecision he heard the trainer speak to his attendant.
“Did you see her?” he asked.
“Ay, sure, I see her.”
“And she gave you a message?”
“No, she gave me this here.”
“A letter?” cried the trainer’s eager voice; “give it me.”
John Mellish heard the tearing of the envelope and the crackling of the crisp paper; and knew that his wife had been writing to his servant. He clenched his strong right hand until the nails dug into the muscular palm; then turning to Mrs. Powell, who stood close behind him, simpering meekly, as she would have simpered at an earthquake, or a revolution, or any other national calamity not peculiarly affecting herself, he said quietly—
“Whatever directions Mrs. Mellish has given are sure to be right; I won’t interfere with them.” He walked away from the north lodge as he spoke, looking straight before him, homewards; as if the unchanging lodestar of his honest heart were beckoning to him across the dreary Slough of Despond, and bidding him take comfort.
“Mrs. Powell,” he said, turning rather sharply upon the ensign’s widow, “I should be very sorry to say anything likely to offend you, in your character of—of a guest beneath my roof; but I shall take it as a favour to myself if you will be so good as to remember, that I require no information respecting my wife’s movements from you, or from anyone. Whatever Mrs. Mellish does, she does with my full consent, my perfect approbation. Caesar’s wife must not be suspected, and by Jove, ma’am!—you’ll pardon the expression—John Mellish’s wife must not be watched.”
“Watched!—information!” exclaimed Mrs. Powell, lifting her pale eyebrows to the extreme limits allowed by nature. “My dear Mr. Mellish, when I really only casually remarked, in reply to a question of your own, that I believed Mrs. Mellish had—”
“Oh, yes,” answered John, “I understand. There are several ways by which you can go to Doncaster from this house. You can go across the fields, or round by Harper’s Common, an out-of-the-way, roundabout route, but you get there all the same, you know, ma’am. I generally prefer the high road. It mayn’t be the shortest way, perhaps; but it’s certainly the straightest.”
The corners of Mrs. Powell’s thin lower lip dropped, perhaps the eighth of an inch, as John made these observations; but she very quickly recovered her habitually genteel simper, and told Mr. Mellish that he really had such a droll way of expressing himself as to make his meaning scarcely so clear as could be wished.
But John had said all that he wanted to say, and walked steadily onwards; looking always towards that quarter in which the polestar might be supposed to shine, guiding him back to his home.
That home so soon to be desolate!—with such ruin brooding above it as in his darkest doubts, his wildest fears, he had never shadowed forth!
XXIII
On the Threshold of Darker Miseries
John went straight to his own apartment to look for his wife; but he found the guns put back in their usual places, and the room empty. Aurora’s maid, a smartly dressed girl, came tripping out of the servants’ hall, where the rattling of knives and forks announced that a very substantial dinner was being done substantial justice to, to answer John’s eager inquiries. She told him that Mrs. Mellish had complained of a headache, and had gone to her room to lie down. John went upstairs, and crept cautiously along the carpeted corridor, fearful of every footfall which might break the repose of his wife. The door of her dressing-room was ajar: he pushed it softly open, and went in. Aurora was lying upon the sofa, wrapped in a loose white dressing-gown, her masses of ebon hair uncoiled and falling about her shoulders in serpentine tresses, that looked like shining blue-black snakes released from poor Medusa’s head to make their escape amid the folds of her garments. Heaven knows what a stranger sleep may have been for many a night to Mrs. Mellish’s pillow; but she had fallen into a heavy slumber on this hot summer’s day. Her cheeks were flushed with a feverish crimson, and one small hand lay under her head twisted in the tangled masses of her glorious hair.
John bent over her with a tender smile.
“Poor girl!” he thought; “thank God that she can sleep, in spite of the miserable secrets which have come between us. Talbot Bulstrode left her because he could not bear the agony that I am suffering now. What cause had he to doubt her? What cause compared to that which I have had a fortnight ago—the other night—this morning? And yet—and yet I trust her, and will trust her, please God, to the very end.”
He seated himself in a low easy-chair close beside the sofa upon which his sleeping wife lay, and resting his head upon his arm, watched her, thought of her, perhaps prayed for her; and after a little while fell asleep himself, snoring in bass harmony
