“They weren’t lies,” gasped the “Softy,” doggedly; “I said I’ve got the letter, and I have got it. Let me go, and I’ll show it to you.”
The sailor released the dirty wisp of cotton neckerchief by which he had held Stephen Hargraves; but he still retained a grasp upon his coat-collar.
“Shall I show you the letter?” asked the “Softy.”
“Yes.”
Mr. Hargraves fumbled in his pockets for some minutes, and ultimately produced a dirty scrap of crumpled paper.
It was the brief scrawl which Aurora had written to James Conyers, telling him to meet her in the wood. The murdered man had thrown it carelessly aside after reading it, and it had been picked up by Stephen Hargraves.
He would not trust the precious document out of his own clumsy hands, but held it before Captain Prodder for inspection.
The sailor stared at it, anxious, bewildered, fearful; he scarcely knew how to estimate the importance of the wretched scrap of circumstantial evidence. There were the words, certainly, written in a bold, scarcely feminine, hand. But these words in themselves proved nothing until it could be proved that his niece had written them.
“How do I know as my sister Eliza’s child wrote that?” he asked.
“Ay, sure; but she did though,” answered the “Softy.” “But, coom, let me go now, will you?” he added, with cringing civility; “I didn’t know you was her uncle. How was I to know owght about it? I don’t want to make any mischief agen Mrs. Mellish, though she’s been no friend to me. I didn’t say anything at the inquest, did I? though I might have said as much as I’ve said tonight, if it comes to that, and have told no lies. But when folks bother me about him that’s dead, and ask this and that and t’oother, and go on as if I had a right to know all about it, I’m free to tell my thoughts, I suppose? surely I’m free to tell my thoughts?”
“I’ll go straight to Mr. Mellish, and tell him what you’ve said, you scoundrel!” cried the captain.
“Ay, do,” whispered Stephen Hargraves maliciously; “there’s some of it that’ll be stale news to him, anyhow.”
XXXIV
The Discovery of the Weapon with Which James Conyers Had Been Slain
Mr. and Mrs. Mellish returned to the house in which they had been so happy; but it is not to be supposed that the pleasant country mansion could be again, all in a moment, the home that it had been before the advent of James Conyers the trainer, and the acting of the tragedy that had so abruptly concluded his brief service.
No; every pang that Aurora had felt, every agony that John had endured, had left a certain impress upon the scene in which it had been suffered. The subtle influences of association hung heavily about the familiar place. We are the slaves of such associations, and we are powerless to stand against their silent force. Scraps of colour and patches of gilding upon the walls will bear upon them, as plainly as if they were covered with hieroglyphical inscriptions, the shadows of the thoughts of those who have looked upon them. Transient and chance effects of light or shade will recall the same effects, seen and observed—as Fagin observed the broken spike upon the guarded dock—in some horrible crisis of misery and despair. The commonest household goods and chattels will bear mute witness of your agonies: an easy-chair will say to you, “It was upon me you cast yourself in that paroxysm of rage and grief”; the pattern of a dinner-service may recall to you that fatal day on which you pushed your food untasted from you, and turned your face, like grief-stricken King David, to the wall. The bed you lay upon, the curtains that sheltered you, the pattern of the paper on the walls, the common everyday sounds of the household, coming muffled and faraway to that lonely room in which you hid yourself—all these bear record of your sorrow, and of that hideous double action of the mind which impresses these things most vividly upon you at the very time when it would seem they should be most indifferent.
But every sorrow, every pang of wounded love, or doubt, or jealousy, or despair, is a fact—a fact once, and a fact forever; to be outlived, but very rarely to be forgotten; leaving such an impress upon our lives as no future joys can quite wear out. The murder has been done, and the hands are red. The sorrow has been suffered; and however beautiful Happiness may be to us, she can never be the bright virginal creature she once was; for she has passed through the valley of the shadow of death, and we have discovered that she is not immortal.
It is not to be expected, then, that John Mellish and his wife Aurora could feel quite the same in the pretty chambers of the Yorkshire mansion as they had felt before the first shipwreck of their happiness. They had been saved from peril and destruction, and landed, by the mercy of Providence, high and dry upon the shore that seemed to promise them pleasure and security henceforth. But the memory of the tempest was yet new to them; and upon the sands that were so smooth today they had
