I hope my poor John Mellish will be forgiven if he talked a great deal of nonsense to the wife he loved. He had been her lover from the first moment in which he had seen her, darkly beautiful, upon the gusty Brighton Parade; and he was her lover still. No shadow of contempt had ever grown out of his familiarity with her. And indeed I am disposed to take objection to that old proverb; or at least to believe that contempt is only engendered of familiarity with things which are in themselves base and spurious. The priest, who is familiar with the altar, learns no contempt for its sacred images; but it is rather the ignorant neophyte who sneers and sniggers at things which he cannot understand. The artist becomes only more reverent as toil and study make him more familiar with his art; its eternal sublimity grows upon him, and he worships the faraway Goddess of Perfection as humbly when he drops his brush or his chisel after a life of patient labour, as he did when first he ground colour or pointed rough blocks of marble for his master. And I cannot believe that a good man’s respect for the woman he loves can be lessened by that sweet and everyday familiarity in which a hundred household virtues and gentle beauties—never dreamed of in the ballrooms where he first danced with an unknown idol in gauzy robes and glimmering jewels—grow upon him, until he confesses that the wife of ten years’ standing is even ten times dearer than the bride of a week’s honeymoon.
Archibald Floyd came back from church, and found his two children sitting side by side in one of the broad windows, watching for his arrival, and whispering together like lovers, as I have said they were.
They dined pleasantly together later in the evening; and a little after dark the phaeton was brought round to the terrace-steps, and Aurora kissed her father as she wished him good night.
“You will come up to town, and be present at the marriage, sir, I know,” John whispered, as he took his father-in-law’s hand. “Talbot Bulstrode will arrange all about it. It is to take place at some out-of-the-way little church in the City. Nobody will be any the wiser, and Aurora and I will go back to Mellish as quietly as possible. There’s only Lofthouse and Hayward know the secret of the certificate, and they—”
John Mellish stopped suddenly. He remembered Mrs. Powell’s parting sting. She knew the secret. But how could she have come by that knowledge? It was impossible that either Lofthouse or Hayward could have told her. They were both honourable men, and they had pledged themselves to be silent.
Archibald Floyd did not observe his son-in-law’s embarrassment; and the phaeton drove away, leaving the old man standing on the terrace-steps looking after his daughter.
“I must shut up this place,” he thought, “and go to Mellish to finish my days. I cannot endure these separations; I cannot bear this suspense. It is a pitiful sham, my keeping house, and living in all this dreary grandeur. I’ll shut up the place, and ask my daughter to give me a quiet corner in her Yorkshire home, and a grave in the parish churchyard.”
The lodge-keeper turned out of his comfortable Gothic habitation to open the clanking iron gates for the phaeton; but John drew up his horses before they dashed into the road, for he saw that the man wanted to speak to him.
“What is it, Forbes?” he asked.
“Oh, it’s nothing particular, sir,” the man said, “and perhaps I oughtn’t to trouble you about it; but did you expect anyone down today, sir?”
“Expect anyone here?—no!” exclaimed John.
“There’s been a person inquirin’, sir, this afternoon—two persons, I may say, in a shay-cart, but one of ’em asked particular if you was here, sir, and if Mrs. Mellish was here; and when I said yes, you was, the gent says it wasn’t worth troublin’ you about—the business as he’d come upon—and as he’d call another time. And he asked me what time you’d be likely to be leavin’ the Woods; and I said I made no doubt you’d stay to dinner up at the house. So he says, ‘All right,’ and drives off.”
“He left no message, then?”
“No, sir. He said nothin’ more than what I’ve told you.”
“Then his business could have been of no great importance, Forbes,” answered John, laughing. “So we needn’t worry our heads about him. Good night.”
Mr. Mellish dropped a five-shilling piece into the lodge-keeper’s hand, gave Talbot’s horses their heads, and the phaeton rolled off London-wards over the crisp gravel of the well-kept Beckenham roads.
“Who could the man have been?” Aurora asked, as they left the gates.
“Goodness knows, my dear,” John answered carelessly. “Somebody on racing business, perhaps.”
Racing business seems to be in itself such a mysterious business that it is no strange thing for mysterious people to be always turning up in relation to it. Aurora, therefore, was content to accept this explanation; but not without some degree of wonderment.
“I can’t understand the man coming to Felden after you, John,” she said. “How could he know that you were to be there today?”
“Ah, how indeed, Lolly!” returned Mr. Mellish. “He chanced it, I suppose. A sharp customer, no doubt; wants to sell a horse, I dare say, and heard I didn’t mind giving a good price for a good thing.”
Mr. Mellish might have gone even further than this, for there were many horsey gentlemen in his neighbourhood, past masters in the art they practised, who were wont to say that the young squire, judiciously manipulated, might be induced to give a remarkably good price for a very bad thing;
