Aurora Floyd by Mary Elizabeth Braddon — Read

Mr. Samuel Prodder, returning to London after having played his insignificant part in the tragedy at Mellish Park, found that city singularly dull and gloomy. He put up at some dismal boardinghouse, situated amid a mazy labyrinth of brick and mortar between the Tower and Wapping, and having relations with another boardinghouse in Liverpool. He took up his abode at this place, in which he was known and respected. He drank rum-and-water, and played cribbage with other seamen, made after the same pattern as himself. He even went to an East-End theatre upon the Saturday night after the murder, and sat out the representation of a nautical drama, which he would have been glad to have believed in, had it not promulgated such wild theories in the science of navigation, and exhibited such extraordinary experiments in the manoeuvring of the man-of-war, upon which the action of the play took place, as to cause the captain's hair to stand on end in the intensity of his wonder. The things people did upon that ship curdled Samuel Prodder's blood, as he sat in the lonely grandeur of the eighteenpenny boxes. It was quite a common thing for them to walk unhesitatingly through the bulwarks and disappear in what ought to have been the sea. The extent of browbeating and humiliation borne by the captain of that noble vessel; the amount of authority exercised by a sailor with loose legs; the agonies of seasickness, represented by a comic countryman, who had no particular business on board the gallant bark; the proportion of hornpipe-dancing and nautical ballad-singing gone through, as compared to the work that was done -- all combined to impress poor Samuel with such a novel view of her Majesty's naval service, that he was very glad when the captain who had been browbeaten suddenly repented of all his sins -- not without a sharp reminder from the prompter, who informed the dramatis personae, in a confidential voice that it was parst twelve, and they'd better cut it short -- joined the hands of the contumacious sailor and a young lady in white muslin, and begged them to be 'appy.

It was in vain that the captain sought distraction from the one idea upon which he had perpetually brooded since the night of his visit to Mellish Park. He would be wanted in Yorkshire to tell what he knew of the dark history of that fatal night. He would be called upon to declare at what hour he had entered the wood, whom he had met there, what he had seen and heard there. They would extort from him that which he would have died rather than tell. They would cross-examine, and bewilder, and torment him, until he told them everything -- until he repeated, syllable by syllable, the passionate words that had been said -- until he told them how, within a quarter of an hour of the firing of the pistol, he had been the witness of a desperate scene between his niece and the murdered man -- a scene in which concentrated hate, vengeful fury, illimitable disdain and detestation had been expressed by her -- by her alone: -- the man had been calm and moderate enough. It was she who had been angry; it was she who had given loud utterance to her hate.