 8. Poor John Mellish comes back again. John Mellish grew weary of the great city of Paris, better love and contentment and a crust and a men's sard than stalled oxen or other costly food in the loftiest saloons au premier and with the most obsequious waiters to do a somage and repress so much as a smile at our insular idiom. He grew heartily weary of the rue de Ruevalie, the gilded railings of the Tuileries gardens and the leafless trees behind them. He was weary of the Place de la Concorde and the Champs-Elysée and the rattle of the hoofs of the troop about his imperial highness's carriage when Napoleon III or the baby prince took his airing. The plot was yet a hatching which was to come so soon to a climax in the rue La Pelletier. He was tired of the broad boulevards and the theaters and the cafes and the glove shops, tired of staring at the jeweler's windows in the rue de La Paix, picturing to himself the face of Aurora Floyd under the diamond and emerald tiars displayed therein. He had serious thoughts at times of buying a stove and a basket of charcoal and asphyxiating himself quietly in the great gilded saloon at Murice's. What was the use of his money or his dogs or his horses or his broad acres? All these put together would not purchase Aurora Floyd. What was the good of life if it came to that since the banker's daughter refused to share it with him? Remember that this big blue-eyed, curly-haired John Melish had been from his cradle a spoiled child, spoiled by poor relations and parasites, servants and totes, from the first hour to the thirtieth year of his existence, and it seemed such a very hard thing that this beautiful woman should be denied to him. Had he been an eastern potentate he would have sent for his vizier and would have had that official bow strung before his eyes and so made an end of it. But, being merely a Yorkshire gentleman and landowner, he had no more to do but to bear his burden quietly, as if he had ever borne anything quietly. He flung half the weight of his grief upon his valet until that functionary dreaded the sound of Miss Floyd's name and told a fellow servant in confidence that his master made such a howling about that young woman as he offered marriage to at Brighton that there was no bearing him. The end of it all was that one night John Melish gave sudden orders for the striking of his tents, and early the next morning departed for the Great Northern Railway, leaving only the ashes of his fires behind him. It was only natural to suppose that Mr. Melish would have gone straight to his country residence where there was much business to be done by him, foals to be entered for coming races, trainers and stableboys to be settled with, the planning and laying down of a proposed tan gallop to be carried out, and a racing stud awaiting the eye of the master. Instead of going from the Dover Railway station to the Great Northern Hotel, eating his dinner, and starting for Doncaster by the Express, Mr. Melish drove to the Gloucester Coffee House and there took up his quarters, for the purpose, as he said, of seeing the cattle show. He made a melancholy pretense of driving to Baker Street in a handsome cab and roamed hither and thither for a quarter of an hour, staring dismally into the pens and then fled away precipitately from the Yorkshire gentlemen farmers, who gave him hearty greeting. He left the Gloucester the next morning in a dog cart and drove straight to Beckinham. Archibald Floyd, who knew nothing of this young Yorkshire men's declaration and rejection, had given him a hearty invitation to Felden Woods. Why shouldn't he go there? Only to make morning call upon the hospitable banker, not to see Aurora, only to take a few long respirations of the air she breathed before he went back to Yorkshire. Of course he knew nothing of Talbot Bolstrode's happiness, and it had been one of the chief consolations of his exile to remember that the gentleman had put forth in the same vessel and had been shipwrecked along with him. He was ushered into the billiard room where he found Aurora Floyd seated at a little table near the fire, making a pencil copy of a proof engraving of one of Rosa Bagnere's pictures, while Talbot Bolstrode sat by her side preparing her pencils. We feel instinctively that the man who cuts lead pencils or holds a skein of silk upon his outstretched hands, or carries lap dogs, opera cloaks, camp stools, or parasols, is engaged. Even John Mellish had learned enough to know this. He breathed the sigh so loud as to be heard by Lucy and her mother, seated by the other fireplace, a sigh that was on the verge of a groan, and then held out his hand to Miss Floyd, not to Talbot Bolstrode. He had vague memories of Roman legends floating in his brain, legends of superhuman generosity and classic self-abnegation, but he could not have shaken hands with that dark-haired young Cornishman, though the tenure of the Mellish estate had hung upon the sacrifice. He could not do it. He seated himself a few paces from Aurora and her lover, twisting his hat about in his hot, nervous hands until the brim was well-nigh limp, and was powerless to utter one sentence, even so much as some poor pitiful remark about the weather. He was a great spoiled baby of thirty years of age, and I am afraid that, if the stern truth must be told, he saw Aurora Floyd across a mist that blurred and distorted the bright face before his eyes. Lucy Floyd came to his relief by carrying him off to introduce him to her mother, and kind-hearted Mrs. Alexander was delighted with his frank, fair English face. He had the good fortune to stand with his back to the light so that neither of the ladies detected that foolish mist in his blue eyes. Archibald Floyd would not hear of his visitors returning to town either that night or the next day. You must spend Christmas with us, he said, and see the new year in before you go back to Yorkshire. I have all my children about me at this season, and it is the only time that Felden seems like an old man's home. Your friend, Bull Strode, stops with us. Mellish winced as he received this intelligence, and I shan't think it friendly if he refused to join our party. What a pitiful coward this John Mellish must have been to accept the banker's invitation, and send the Newton Pagnell back to the Gloucester, and suffer himself to be led away by Mr. Floyd's own man to a pleasant chamber a few doors from the chintz rooms occupied by Talbot. But I have said before that love is a cowardly passion. It is like the toothache, the bravest and strongest succumb to it, and howl aloud under the torture. I don't suppose the iron duke would have been ashamed to own that he objected to having his teeth out. I have heard of a great fighting man who could take punishment better than any other of the geniee of the ring, but who fainted away at the first grip of the dentist's forceps. John Mellish consented to stay at Felden, and he went between the lights into Talbot's dressing room to expostulate with the captain upon his treachery. Talbot did his best to console his doleful visitant. There are more women than one in the world, he said, after John had unbosomed himself of his grief. He didn't think this, the hypocrite, though he said it. There are more women than one, my dear Mellish, and many very charming and estimable girls who would be glad to win the affections of such a fellow as you. I hate estimable girls, said Mr. Mellish. Bother my affections, nobody will ever win my affections. But I love her. I love that beautiful black-eyed creature downstairs, who looks at you with two flashes of lightning, and rides so well. I love her, bullstrode, and you told me that she'd refused you, and that you were going to leave Brighton by the eight o'clock express, and you didn't, and you sneaked back and made her a second offer, and she accepted you, and damn, it wasn't fair play. Having said which, Mr. Mellish flung himself upon a chair, which creaked under his weight, and fell to poking the fire furiously. It was hard for poor Talbot to have to excuse himself for having one Aurora's hand. He could not very well remind John Mellish that if Miss Floyd had accepted him, it was perhaps because she preferred him to the honest Yorkshireman. To John the matter never presented itself in this light. The spoiled child had been cheated out of that toy above all other toys, upon the possession of which he had set his foolish heart. It was as if he had bitten for some crack horse at Tattersall's, in fair and open competition with a friend, who had gone back after the sale to outbid him in some underhand fashion. He could not understand that there had been no dishonesty in Talbot's conduct, and he was highly indignant when that gentleman ventured to hint to him that perhaps, on the whole, it would have been wiser to have kept away from Felden Woods. Talbot bull strode had avoided any further allusion to Mr. Matthew Harrison, the dog fancier, and this, the first dispute between the lovers, had ended in the triumph of Aurora. Miss Floyd was not a little embarrassed by the presence of John Mellish, who roamed disconsolably about the big rooms, seating himself ever and on at one of the tables to peer into the lenses of a stereoscope, or to take up some gorgeously bound volume and drop it on the carpet in gloomy absence of mind, and who sighed heavily when spoken to, and was altogether far from pleasant company. Aurora's warm heart was touched by the piteous spectacle of this rejected lover, and she sought him out once or twice and talked him about his racing stud, and asked him how he liked the hunting and surrey. But John changed from red to white, and from hot to cold when she spoke to him, and fled away from her with a scared and ghastly aspect, which would have been grotesque had it not been so painfully real. But by and by John found a more pitiful listener to his sorrows than ever Talbot bull strode had been, and this gentle and compassionate listener was no other than Lucy Floyd, to whom the big Yorkshireman turned in his trouble. Did he know, or did he guess, by some wondrous clairvoyance, that her griefs bore a common likeness to his own, and that she was just the one person of all others at Felden Woods to be pitiful to him, and patient with him? He was by no means proud, this transparent boyish, babyish good fellow. Two days after his arrival at Felden, he told all to poor Lucy. I suppose you know, Miss Floyd, he said, that your cousin rejected me? Yes, of course you do. I believe she rejected bull strode about the same time. But some men have an aporth of pride. I must say, I think the captain acted like a sneak. A sneak, her idol, her adored, her demigod, her dark haired and grey-eyed divinity, to be spoken of thus. She turned upon Mr. Mellish with her fair cheeks flushed into a pale glow of anger, and told them that Talbot had a right to do what he had done, and that whatever Talbot did was right. Like most men whose reflective faculties are entirely undeveloped, John Mellish was blessed with a sufficiently rapid perception, a perception sharpened just then by that peculiar sympathetic prescience, that marvelous clairvoyance of which I have spoken, and in those few indignant words and that angry flush, he read poor Lucy's secret. She loved Talbot bull strode as he loved Aurora, hopelessly. How he admired this fragile girl, who was frightened of horses and dogs, and who shivered if a breath of the winter air blew across the heated hall, and who yet bore her burden with this quiet, uncomplaining patience, while he, who weighed fourteen stone, and could ride forty miles across country with the bitterest blast of December blowing on his face, was powerless to endure his affliction. It comforted him to watch Lucy, and to read in these faint signs and tokens, which had escaped even the mother's eye the sad history of her unrequited affection. Poor John was too good-natured and unselfish to hold out forever in the dreary fortress of despair which he had built up for his habitation, and on Christmas Eve, when there were certain rejoicings at Felden, held in a special honor of the younger visitors, he gave way, and joined in their merriment, and was more boys than the youngest of them. Burning his fingers with blazing raisins, suffering his eyes to be bandaged at the will of noisy little players at Blyman's Bluff, undergoing ignominious penalties in their games of forfeits, performing alternately innkeepers, sheriff's officers, policemen, clergymen, and justices in the act of charades, lifting the little ones who wanted to see the top of the kit-metee in his sturdy arms, and making himself otherwise agreeable and useful to the young people from three to fifteen years of age, until at last under the influence of all this juvenile gaiety, and perhaps two or three glasses of moselle, he boldly kissed Aurora Floyd between the branch of mistletoe hanging for this night only in the great hall at Felden Woods. And having done this, Mr. Mellish fairly lost his wits, and was off his head for the rest of the evening, making speeches to the little ones at the supper table, and proposing Mr. Archibald Floyd and the commercial interests of Great Britain with three times three, leading the chorus of those tiny treble voices with his own sonorous bass, and weeping freely, he never quite knew why behind his table napkin. It was through an atmosphere of tears, and sparkling wines, and gas, and hothouse flowers, that he saw Aurora Floyd looking ah, how lovely, in those simple robes of white which so much became her, and with a garland of artificial holly round her head. The spiked leaves and the scarlet berries formed themselves into a crown. I think, indeed, that a cheese plate would have been transformed into a diadem if Miss Floyd has been pleased to put it on her head, and she looked like the genius of Christmas, something bright and beautiful, too beautiful to come more than once a year. When the clocks were striking two a.m., long after the little ones had been carried away muffled up in opera cloaks, terribly sleepy, and I'm afraid, in some instances, under the influence of strong drink, when the elder guests had all retired to rest, and the lights, with a few exceptions, were fled. The garlands dead, and all but Talbot and John Mellish departed, the two young men walked up and down the long billiard room, in the red glow of the two declining fires, and talked to each other confidentially. It was the morning of Christmas Day, and it would have been strange to be unfriendly at such a time. If you'd fallen in love with the other one, Bullstrode, said John, clasping his old school fellow by the hand, and staring at him pathetically, I could have looked upon you as a brother. She's better suited to you, twenty thousand times better adapted to you than her cousin, and you ought to have married her, in common courtesy, I mean to say as an honourable, having very much compromised yourself by your attentions. As what's her name, the companion, Mrs. Powell, said so, you ought to have married her. Married her? Married whom, cried Talbot, rather savagely, shaking off his friend's hot grasp, and allowing Mr. Mellish to sway backward upon the heels of his varnished boots, in rather an alarming manner. Who do you mean? The sweetest girl in Christendom, except one, exclaimed John, clasping his hot hands and elevating his dim blue eyes to the ceiling. The loveliest girl in Christendom, except one, Lucy Floyd. Lucy Floyd? Yes, Lucy, the sweetest girl in—Who says that I ought to marry Lucy Floyd? She says so. No, no, I don't mean that. I mean, said Mr. Mellish, sinking his voice to a solemn whisper. I mean that Lucy Floyd loves you. She didn't tell me so. Oh, no, bless your soul. She never uttered a word upon the subject, but she loves you. Yes, continued John, pushing his friend away for him with both hands, and staring at him as if mentally taking his pattern for a suit of clothes. That girl loves you, and has loved you all along. I am not a fool, and I give my word and honor that Lucy Floyd loves you. Not a fool, cried Talbot. You're worse than a fool, John Mellish. You're drunk. He turned upon his heel contemptuously, and, taking a candle from a table near the door, lighted it and strode it out of the room. John stood rubbing his hands through his curly hair and staring helplessly after the captain. This is the reward a fellow gets for doing a generous thing, he said, as he thrust his own candle into the burning coals, ignoring any easier mode of lighting it. It's hard, but I suppose it's human nature. Talbot bull strode went to bed in a very bad humor. Could it be true that Lucy loved him? Could this chattering Yorkshireman have discovered a secret which had escaped the captain's penetration? He remembered how, only a short time before, he had wished that this fair-haired girl might fall in love with him, and now all was trouble and confusion. Renevere was lady of his heart, and poor Elaine was sadly in the way. Mr. Tennyson's wondrous book had not been given to the world in the year fifty-seven, or no doubt poor Talbot would have compared himself to the night whose honor rooted in dishonor stood. Had he been dishonorable? Had he compromised himself by his attentions to Lucy? Had he deceived that fair and gentle creature? The downpills in the chint's chamber gave no rest to his weary head that night, and when he fell asleep in the late daybreak it was the dream of horrible dreams, and to see in a vision Aurora Floyd standing on the brink of a clear pool of water in a woody recess at Felden, and pointing down through its crystal surface to the corpse of Lucy, lying pale and still amid lilies and clustering aquatic plants, whose long tendrils entwined themselves with the fair golden hair. He heard the splash of the water in that terrible dream, and awoke to find his valet breaking the ice in his bath in the adjoining room. His perplexities about poor Lucy vanished in the broad daylight, and he laughed at a trouble which must have grown out of his own vanity. What was he that young lady should fall in love with him? What a weak fool he must have been to have believed for one moment in the drunken babble of John Mellish. So he dismissed the image of Aurora's cousin from his mind, and had eyes, ears, and thought, only for Aurora herself, who drove him to Beckenham Church in her basket carriage, and sat by his side in the banker's great square pew. Alas! I fear he heard very little of the sermon that was preached that day, but for all that I declare that he was a good and devout man, a man whom God had blessed with a gift of earnest belief, a man who took all blessings from the hand of God reverently, almost fearfully, and as he bowed his head at the end of that Christmas service of rejoicing and thanksgiving, he thanked heaven for his overflowing cup of gladness, and prayed that he might become worthy of so much happiness. He had a vague fear that he was too happy, too much bound up heart and soul in the dark-eyed woman by his side. If she were to die, if she were to be false to him, he turned sick and dizzy at the thought, and even in that sacred temple the devil whispered to him that there were still pools, loaded pistols, and other certain remedies for such calamities as those, so wicked as well as cowardly a passion in this terrible fever, love. The day was bright and clear, the light snow whitening the ground, every line of hedge-top and tree cut sharply out against the cold blue of the winter sky. The banker proposed that they should send home the carriages and walk down the hill to Felden, so Talbot Bullstrowed offered Aurora his arm, only too glad of the chance of a tete-a-tete with his betrothed. John Melish walked with Archibald Floyd, with whom the Yorkshireman was in a special favorite, and Lucy was lost amid a group of brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, and uncles. We were also busy yesterday with the little people, said Talbot, that I forgot to tell you, Aurora, that I had a letter from my mother. Miss Floyd looked up at him with her brightest glance. She was always pleased to hear anything about Lady Bullstrowed. Of course there is very little news in the letter, added Talbot, for there is rarely much to tell at Bullstrowed, and yet, yes, there is one piece of news which concerns yourself. Which concerns me? Yes. You remember my cousin, Constance Trevillian? Yes. She has returned from Paris, her education finished at last, and she, I believe, all accomplished, and has gone to spend Christmas at Bullstrowed. Good heavens, Aurora, what is the matter? Nothing very much, apparently. Her face had grown as white as a sheet of letter paper, but the hand upon his arm did not tremble. Perhaps he had taken a special notice of it, he would have found it preternaturally still. Aurora, what is the matter? Why do you ask? Your face is as pale as— It is the cold, I suppose, she said, shivering. Tell me about your cousin, this Miss Trevillian. When did she go to Bullstrowed Castle? She was to arrive the day before yesterday. My mother was expecting her when she wrote. Is she a favorite of Lady Bullstrowed? No very a special favorite. My mother likes her well enough, but Constance is rather a frivolous girl. The day before yesterday, said Aurora, Miss Trevillian was to arrive the day before yesterday. The letters from Cornwall are delivered at Felden early in the afternoon. Are they not? Yes, dear. You will have a letter from your mother today, Talbot? A letter today? Oh no, Aurora, she never writes two days running. Sell them more than once a week. Miss Floyd did not make any answer to this, nor did her face regain its natural hue during the whole of the homeward walk. She was very silent, only replying in the briefest manner to Talbot's inquiries. I am sure that you are ill, Aurora, he said, as they ascended the terrace steps. I am ill. But dearest, what is it? Let me tell Mrs. Alexander or Mrs. Powell. Let me go back to Beckenham for the doctor. She looked at him with a mournful earnestness in her eyes. My foolish Talbot, she said, do you remember what Macbeth said to his doctor? There are diseases that cannot be ministered to. Let me alone. You will know soon enough. You will know very soon, I dare say. But, Aurora, what do you mean by this? What can there be upon your mind? Ah, what indeed. Let me alone. Let me alone, Captain Bullstrode. He had caught her hand, but she broke from him, and ran up the staircase in the direction of her own apartments. Talbot hurried to Lucy with a pale, frightened face. Your cousin is ill, Lucy, he said. Go to her, for heaven's sake, and see what is wrong. Lucy obeyed immediately, but she found the door of Miss Floyd's room locked against her, and when she called to Aurora and implored to be admitted, that young lady cried out, Go away, Lucy Floyd, go away, and lead me to myself, unless you want to drive me mad. spent his Christmas. There was no more happiness for Talbot Bullstrode that day. He wandered from room to room till he was as wary of that exercise as a young lady in Monk Lewis's castle spectre. He roamed full-only hither and tither, hoping to find Aurora, now in the billiard room, now in the drawing-room. He loitered in the hall upon the shallow pretense of looking at barometers and thermometers in order to listen for the opening and shutting of Aurora's door. All the doors that felled on Woodbrook were perpetually opening and shutting that afternoon, as it seemed to Talbot Bullstrode. He had no excuse for passing the doors of Miss Floyd's apartments, for his own rooms lay at the opposite angle of the house, but he lingered on the broad staircase, looking at the furniture pictures upon the wall, and not seeing one line in these war-door street productions. He had hoped that Aurora would appear at luncheon, but that dismal meal had been eaten without her, and the merry laughter and pleasant talk of that family assembly had sounded far away to Talbot's ears, far away across some wide ocean of doubt and confusion. He passed the afternoon in this wretched manner, unobserved by any one but Lucy, who watched him furtively from her distant seat as he roamed in and out of the drawing-room. Ah! how many times a man is watched by loving eyes whose light he never sees! How many a man is cared for by a tender heart whose secret he never learns! A little after dusk, Talbot Bullstrode went to his room to dress. It was some time before the bell would ring, but he would dress early, he thought, so as to make sure of being in the drawing-room when Aurora came down. He took no light with him, for there were always wax candles upon the chimney-piece in his room. It was almost dark in that pleasant chinch chamber, for the fire had been lately replenished and there was no blaze. But he could just distinguish a white patch upon the green cloth cover of the writing-table. The white patch was a letter. He stirred the black mass of coal in the grate, and a bright flame went dancing up the chimney, making the room as light as day. He took the letter in one hand while he lighted one of the candles on the chimney-piece with the other. The letter was from his mother. Aurora Floyd had told him that he would receive such a letter. What did it all mean? The gay flowers and birds upon the papered wall spun round him as they tore open the envelope. I firmly believe that we have a semi-supernatural prescience of the coming of all misfortune. A prophetic instinct which tells us that such a letter or such a messenger carries evil tidings. Talbot Bullstrode had that prescience as he unfolded the paper in his hands. The terrible trouble was before him—a brooding shadow with a veiled face, ghastly and undefined, but it was there. My dear Talbot, I know the letter I am about to write will distress and perplex you, but my duty lies not the less plainly before me. I fear that your heart is much involved in your engagement to Miss Floyd. The evil tidings concerning Aurora then, the brooding shadow was slowly lifting its dark veil, and the face of her he loved best on earth appeared behind it. But I know, continued the pitiless letter, that the sense of honour is the strongest part of your nature, and that however you may have loved this girl—oh, God, she spoke of his love in the past!—you will not suffer yourself to be entrapped into a forced position through any weakness of affection. There is some mystery about the life of Aurora Floyd. This sentence was at the bottom of the first page, and before Talbot Balstrode's shaking hand could turn the leaf, every doubt, every fear, every resentment he had ever felt flashed back upon him with pre-to-natural distinctness. Constance Trevillian came here yesterday, and you may imagine that in the course of the evening you were spoken of and your engagement discussed. A curse upon their frivolous women's gossip, Talbot crushed the letter in his hand and was about to fling it from him. But no, it must be read. The shadow of doubt must be faced and wrestled with and vanquished, for there was no more peace upon this earth for him. He went on reading the letter. I told Constance that Miss Floyd had been educated in the Rusyn Dominique, and asked if she remembered her. What? she said. Is it the Miss Floyd whom there was such a fuss about? The Miss Floyd who ran away from school? And then she told me, Talbot, that the Miss Floyd was brought to the Demoiselle Lesparte by her father last June's twelve-month, and that less than a fortnight after arriving at the school she disappeared. Her disappearance, of course, causing a great sensation and an immense deal of talk among the other pupils, as it was said she had run away. The matter was hushed up as much as possible, but you know that girls will talk, and from what Constance tells me, I imagine that very unpleasant things were said about Miss Floyd. Now you say that the banker's daughter only returned to Feldon Woods in September last. Where was she in the interval? He read no more. One glance told him that the rest of the letter consisted of motherly cautions and admonitions as to how he was to act in this perplexing business. He thrust a crumpled paper into his bosom and dropped into a chair by the hearth. It was so then, there was a mystery in the life of this woman, the doubts and suspicions that undefined fears and perplexities which had held him back at the first and caused him to wrestle against his love had not been unfounded. There was good reason for them all, and poor reason for them, as there is for every instinct which Providence puts into our hearts. A black wall rose up around him and shut him for ever from the woman he had loved, this woman whom he loved so far from wisely, so fearfully well, this woman for whom he had thanked God in the church only a few hours before. And she was to have been his wife, the mother of his children, perhaps. He clasped his cold hands over his face and sobbed aloud. To not despise him for those drops of anguish, they were the virgin tears of his manhood. Never since infancy had his eyes been wet before. God forbid that such tears as those should be shed more than once in a lifetime. The agony of that moment was not to be lived through twice. The horse sobbed rent and tore his breast as if his flesh had been hacked away by a rusty sword. And when he took his wet hands from his face he wondered that they were not red, for it seemed to him as if he had been weeping blood. What should he do? Go to Aurora and ask her the meaning of that letter? Yes, the course was plain enough. A tumult of hope rushed back upon him and swept away his terror. Why was he so ready to doubt her? What a pitiful coward he was to suspect her! To suspect this girl whose transparent soul had been so freely unveiled to him, whose every accent was truth. For, in his intercourse with Aurora, the quality which he had learned most reverence in her nature was its sublime candle. He almost laughed at the recollection of his mother's solemn letter. It was so like these simple country people whose lives had been bounded by the narrow limits of a Cornish village. It was so like them to make mountains out of the various small hills. What was there so wonderful than what had occurred? The spoiled child, the wilful heiress, had grown tired of her foreign school and had run away. Her father, not wishing the garlish excapade to be known, had placed her somewhere else and had kept her folly a secret. What was there from first to last in the whole affair that was not perfectly natural and probable, the exceptional circumstances of the case duly considered? He could fancy Aurora with her cheeks in a flame and her eyes flashing lightning, flinging a page of blotted exercise into the face of her French master, and running out of the school-room amid a tumult of ejaculatory babble, the beautiful and petuous creature. There's nothing a man can not admire in the woman he loves, and Talbot was half inclined to admire Aurora for having run away from school. The first in the bell had rung during Captain Ball's show's agony, so the corridors on rooms were deserted when he went to look for Aurora with his mother's letter in his breast. She was not in the billiard-room nor in the drawing-room, but he found her at last in a little inner chamber at the end of the house, with a bay window looking out over the park. The room was dimly lighted by a shaded lamp, and Miss Floyd was seated in the uncartened window, with her elbow resting on a cushioned ledge, looking out at the still-cold wintery sky and the whiteened landscape. She was dressed in black, her face, neck, and arms gleaming marble white against the sombre hue of her dress, and her attitude was as still as that of a statue. She neither stirred nor looked round when Talbot entered the room. "'My dear Aurora,' he said, "'I've been looking for you everywhere.'" She shivered at the sound of his voice. "'You wanted to see me?' "'Yes, dearest. I want you to explain something to me. A foolish business enough, no doubt, my darling, and of course very easily explained. But as your future husband, I have a right to ask for an explanation, and I know—I know, Aurora, that you will give it all candour.'" She did not speak, although Talbot paused for some moments awaiting her answer. He could only see her profile dimly lighted by the wintery sky. He could not see the mute pane, the white anguish in that youthful face. "'I have had a letter from my mother, and there is something in that letter which I wish you to explain. Shall I read it to you, dearest?' His voice faltered upon the endearing expression, and he remembered afterward that it was the last time he had ever addressed her with a lover's tenderness. The day came when she had need of his compassion, and when he gave it freely. But that moment sounded the death knell of love. In that moment the gulf yawned, and the cliffs were rend to Shall I read you the letter, Aurora? If you please. He took the crumpled a-pizzle from his bosom, and bending over the lamp read it aloud to Aurora. He fully expected at every sentence that she would interrupt him with some eager explanation. But she was silent until he had finished, and even then she did not speak. Aurora! Aurora! Is this true? Perfectly true. But why did you run away from the Rus and Dominique? I cannot tell you. And where were you between a month of June in the year fifty-six and last September? I cannot tell you, Talbot Bostrode. This is my secret which I cannot tell you. You cannot tell me. There is upward a year missing from your life, and you cannot tell me. You are betrothed to husband what you did, but that year I cannot. Then, Aurora Floyd, you can never be my wife. He thought that she would turn upon him, sublime in her indignation and fury, and that the explanation he longed for would burst from her lips in a passionate torrent of angry words. But she rose from her chair, and tottering towards him fell upon her knees at his feet. No other action could have struck such terror to his heart. It seemed to him a confession of guilty. But what guilt? What guilt? What was the dark secret of this young creature's brief life? Talbot Bostrode, she said in a tremulous voice which cut into the soul. Talbot Bostrode, heaven knows how often I have foreseen and dreaded this hour. Had I not been a coward, I should have anticipated this explanation. But I thought, I thought the occasion might never come, or that when it did come you would be generous, and—trust me. If you can trust me, Talbot, if you can believe that the secret is not utterly shameful. Not utterly shameful, he cried. O God, Aurora, that I should ever hear you talk like this! Do you think that there are any degrees in these things? There must be no secret between my wife and me. And the day that is a secret, or the shadow of one arises between us must see us part forever. Rise from your knees, Aurora. You were killing me with this shame and humiliation. Rise from your knees. And if we are to part this moment, tell me, tell me for pity's sake, that I have no need to despise myself for having loved you with an intensity which has scarcely been manly. She did not obey him, but sank lower in her half-kneeling, half-crouching attitude, her face buried in her hands and only the coils of her black hair visible to Captain Balstrode. I was motherless from my cradle, Talbot, she said in a half-stifled voice. Have pity upon me. Pity! echoed the captain. Pity! Why do you not ask me for justice? One question, Aurora Floyd. One more question. Perhaps the last I may ever ask of you. Does your father know why you left that school, and why you wired during that twelve-month? He does. Thank God at least for that. Tell me, Aurora, then, only tell me this, and I will believe your simple words as I would the oath of another woman. Tell me if he approved of your motive in leaving that school. If he approved of the manner in which your life was spent during that twelve-month. If you can say yes, Aurora, there shall be no more questions between us, and I can make you, without fear, my loved and honoured wife. I cannot, she answered. I am only nineteen, but within the last two years of my life I have done enough to break my father's heart. To break the heart of the dearest father that ever breathed the breath of life. Then all is over between us. God forgive you, Aurora Floyd, but by your own confession you are no fit wife for an honourable man. I shut my mind against all foul suspicions, but the past life of my wife must be a white, unblemished page which all the world may be free to read. He walked toward the door, and then, returning, assisted the wretched girl to rise, and led her back to her seat by the window courteously, as if she had been his partner at all. The hands met with as I see a touch as the hands of two corpses. Ah, how much there was of death in that touch! How much there died between those two within the last few hours! Hope! Confidence! Security! Love! Happiness! All that makes life worth the holding! Talbot Borstrow paused upon the threshold of the little chamber, and spoke once more. I shall have left Felden in half an hour, Miss Floyd," he said. "'It will be better to allow your father to suppose that the disagreement between us has arisen from something of a trifling nature, and that my dismissal has come from you. I shall write to Mr. Floyd from London, and if you please, I will so word my letter as to lead him to think this." "'You are very gawd,' she answered. Yes, I would rather that he should think that. It may spare him pain. Heaven knows I have caused to be grateful for anything that will do that." Talbot bowed and left the room, closing the door behind him. The closing of that door had a dismal sound to his ear. He thought of some frail young creature abandoned by her sister nuns in a living tomb. He thought that he would rather have left Aurora lying rigidly beautiful in her coffin than as he was leaving her to-day. The jangling, jarring sound of the second dinner bell clanged out as he went from the semi-obscurity of the corridor into the glaring gas-light of the billiard-room. He met Lucy Floyd coming toward him in her rustling silk dinner-dress with fringes and laces and ribbons and jewels fluttering and sparkling about her, and he almost hated her for looking so bright and radiant, remembering as he did the ghastly face of the stricken creature he had just left. We are apt to be horribly unjust in the hour of supreme trouble, and I fear that if anyone had the temerity to ask Talbot Paul's droids opinion of Lucy Floyd just at that moment, the captain would have declared her to be a mass of revollity and effectation. If we discover the worthlessness of the only woman you love upon earth, you will perhaps be apt to feel maliciously disposed toward the many, esteemful people about you. You are savagely inclined when you remember that they for whom you care nothing are so good, while she on whom you set your soul is so wicked. The vessel which you freighted with every hope of your heart has gone down, and you are angry at the very sight of those other ships riding so gallantly before the breeze. Lucy recalled at the aspect of the young man's face. "'What is it?' she asked. "'What has happened, Captain Bolstrode?' "'Nothing. I have received a letter from Cornwall which obliges me to. His hollow voice died away into a horse whisper before he could finish the sentence. Lady Bolstrode also adjoin his ill, perhaps?' hazarded Lucy. Talbot pointed to his white lips and shook his head. The gesture might mean anything. Lucy could not speak. The hall was full of visitors and children going into dinner. The little people were to dine with their seniors that day, as in a special treat and privilege of the season. The door of the dining-room was open, and Talbot saw the gray head of archbord floyd dimly visible at the end of a long vista of lights, and silver and glass and evergreens. The old man had his nephews and nieces and their children grouped about him. But the place at his right hand, the place of royal, was meant to fill, was vacant. Captain Bolstrode turned away from that gaily-lighted scene and ran at the staircase to his room, where he found his servant waiting with his master's clothes laid out, wondering why he had not come to dress. The man fell back at the sight of Talbot's face, ghastly in the light of the wax candles on the dressing-table. "'I'm going away, Philman,' said the captain, speaking very fast and in a thick indistinct voice. "'I'm going down to Cornwall by the express tonight if I can get to town in time to catch your train. Pack my clothes and come after me. You can join me at the Paddington station. I shall walk up to Beckinham and take the first train for town. Here, give this to the servants for me, will you?' He took a confused heap of gold and silver from his pocket and dropped it into the man's hand. "'Nothing wrong at Bolstrode, I hope, sir,' said the servant. "'Is Sir John ill?' "'No, no. I've had a letter from my mother. I—' "'You'll find me at the Great Western.' He snatched up his hat and was hurrying from the room, but the man followed him with his great coat. "'You'll catch your death, sir, on a such an eye-to-ziss,' the servant said in a tone of respectful, remunsterance. The banker was standing at the door of the dining-room when Talbot crossed the hall. He was telling a servant to look for his daughter. "'We are all waiting for Miss Floyd,' the old man said. "'We cannot begin dinner without Miss Floyd.'" An observed in this confusion Talbot opened the great door softly and let himself out onto the cold winter's night. The long terrace was all ablaze with the lights in the high, narrow windows, as upon the night when he had first came to Felden, and before him lay the park, the trees bare and leafless, the ground white with a thin coating of snow, the sky above gray and starless, a cold and desolate expanse in dreary contrast with the warmth and brightness behind. Before this was typical of the crisis of his life, he was leaving warm love and hope for cold resignation or icy despair. He went down the terrace-steps, across the trimmed garden walks and out into that wide mysterious park. The long avenue was ghostly in the gray light, the tracery of the interlacing branches above his head making black shadows that flick to and fro upon the whiteened ground beneath his feet. He walked a quarter of a mile before he looked back at the lighted windows behind him. He did not turn until a wind in the avenue had brought him to a spot from which he could see the dimly lighted bay window of the room in which he had left Aurora. He stood for some time looking at this feeble glimmer and thinking, thinking of all he had lost, or all he had perhaps escaped, thinking of what his life was to be hence forth, without that woman, thinking that he would rather have been the porous ploughboy in Beckon than Parrish than the air of Balstrode if he could have taken the girl he loved to his heart and believed in her truth. CHAPTER X of Aurora Floyd This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. CHAPTER X FIGHTING THE BATTLE The new year began in sadness at Feldenwards for which found Archibald Floyd watching in the sick-room of his only daughter. Aurora had taken her place at the long dinner-table upon the night of Talbot's departure, and except for being perhaps a little more vivacious and brilliant than usual, her manner had in no way changed after that terrible interview in the bay windowed room. She had talked to John Melish, and had played and sung to her younger cousins. She had stood behind her father, looking over his cars through all the fluctuating fortunes of a rubber of long wist. And the next morning her maid had found her in a raging fever, with burning cheeks and bloodshot eyes, her long purple black hair all tumbled and tossed about the pillows, and her dry hands scorching to the touch. The telegraph brought two grave London physicians to Felden before noon, and the house was clear of visitors by nightfall. Only Mrs. Alexander and Lucy remaining to assist in nursing the invalid. The West End doctors said very little. The fever was as other fevers to them. The young lady had caught a cold, perhaps. She had been imprudent as these young people will be, and had received some sudden chill. She had very likely overheated herself with dancing, or had sat in a draught or eaten an ice. There was no immediate danger to be apprehended. The patient had a superb constitution. There was wonderful vitality in the system, and with careful treatment she would soon come round. Careful treatment meant a too guinea visit every day from each of these learned gentlemen, though perhaps had they given utterance to their inmost thoughts, they would have owned that, for all they could tell to the contrary. Aurora Freud wanted nothing to be let alone, and left in a darkened chamber to fight out the battle by herself. But the banker would have had all several rows summoned to the sick bed of his child, if he could by such a measure have saved her a moment's pain. And he implored the two physicians to come to Feld and twice a day if necessary, and calling other physicians if they had the least fear for their patient. Aurora was delirious, but she revealed very little in that delirium. I do not quite believe that people often make the pretty sentimental consecutive confessions under the influence of fever, which are so freely attributed to them by the writers of romances. We rave about foolish things in those cruel moments of feverish madness. We are wretched, because there is a man with a white hat in the room, or a black cat upon the counter-pane, or spiders crawling about the bed-curtains, or a coal-heaver who will put a sack of coals on our chest. Our delirious fantasies are like our dreams, and have very little connection with the sorrows or joys which make up the sum of our lives. So Aurora Floyd talked of horses and dogs and masters and governesses, of childish troubles that had afflicted her years before, and of girlish pleasures which, in her normal state of mind, had been utterly forgotten. She seldom recognized Lucy or Mrs. Alexander, mistaking them for all kinds of unlikely people. But she never entirely forgot her father, and indeed always seemed to be conscious of his presence, and was perpetually appealing to him, imploring him to forgive her for some act of childish disobedience committed in those departed years of which she talked so much. John Mellish had taken up his abode at the Greyhound Inn in Croydon High Street, and drove every day to Valdon Woods, leaving his fair-turn at the park-gates, and walking up to the house to make his inquiries. The servants took notice of the Yorkshireman's pale face, and set him down at once as sweet upon their young lady. They liked him a great deal better than Captain Bulstrode, who had been too eye-and-aughty for them. John flung his half-sufferance right and left when he came to the hushed mansion in which a roar allay with loving friends about her. He held the footman who answered the door by the button-hole, and would have gladly paid the man half a crown a minute for his time while he asked anxious questions about Miss Floyd's health. Mr. Mellish was warmly sympathized with, therefore, in a servant's hall at Felden. His man had informed the banker's household how he was the best master in England, and how Mellish Park was a species of terrestrial paradise, maintained for the benefit of trust-worthy retainers, and Mr. Floyd's servants expressed a wish that their young lady might get well, and marry the fair one, as they called John. They came to the conclusion that there had been what they called a split between Miss Floyd and the Captain, and that he had gone off in a huff, which was like his impudence seeing that their young lady would have hundreds of thousands of pounds by and by, and was good enough for a duke instead of a beggarly officer. Talbert's letter to Mr. Floyd reached Felden Woods on the twenty-seventh of December, but it lay for some time unopened upon the library table. Archbord had scarcely heeded his intended son-in-law's disappearance in his anxiety about Aurora. When he did open the letter, Captain Balstrode's words were almost meaningless to him, though he was just able to gather that the engagement had been broken by his daughter's wish, as Talbert seemed to infer. The bankers replied to this communication was very brief. He wrote, "'My dear sir, your letter arrived here some day since, but has only been opened by me this morning. I have laid it aside to be replied to DV at a future time. At present I am unable to attend to anything. My daughter is seriously ill. Yours obediently,' Archbord Floyd.' The ill? Talbert Balstrode sat for nearly an hour with the bankers' letter in his hand, looking at these two words. How much or how little might the sentence mean? At one moment, remembering Archbord Floyd's devotion to his daughter, he thought that this serious illness was doubtless some very trifling business, some feminine nervous attack, common to young ladies upon any hitch in their love affairs. But five minutes afterwards he fancied that those words had an awful meaning, that Aurora was dying, dying of the shame and anguish of that interview in the little chamber at Felden. Heaven above! What did he done? Had he murdered this beautiful creature whom he loved a million times better than himself? Had he killed her with those impalpable weapons, those sharp and cruel words which he had spoken on the 25th of December? He acted the scene over again and again, until a sense of outraged honour, then so strong upon him seemed to grow dim and confused, and he began almost to wonder why he had quarrelled with Aurora. What if, after all, this secret involved only some schoolgirl's folly? No, the crouching figure and ghastly face gave the lie to that hope. The secret, whatever it might be, was a matter of life and death to Aurora Floyd. He dared not try to guess what it was. He tried to close his mind against the submissives that would arise to him. In the first days that succeeded that tale of Christmas, he determined to leave England. He tried to get some government appointment that would take him away to the other end of the world, where he could never hear Aurora's name, never be enlightened as to the mystery that had separated them. But now, now that she was ill, in danger, perhaps, how could he leave the country? How could he go away to some place where he might one day open the English newspapers and see her name among the list of deaths? Talbot was a dreary guest at Balstrode Castle. His mother and his cousin Constance respected his pale face and held themselves aloof from him in fear and trembling. But his father asked what the juice was the matter with the boy, that he looked so chap-fallen, and why he didn't take his gun and go out on the moors and get an appetite for his dinner like a Christian, instead of moping in his own room all day long, biting his finger's ends. Once and once only did Lady Balstrode allude to Aurora Floyd. You asked Miss Floyd for an explanation, I suppose, Talbot, she said. Yes, mother. And the resort? Was a termination of our engagement. I'd rather you would not speak to me of this subject again, if you please, mother. Talbot took his gun and went out upon the moors as his father advised, but it was not to slaughter the last of the pheasants, but to think in peace of Aurora Floyd, that the young man went out. The low-lying clouds upon the moorland seemed to shut him in like prison-walls. How many miles a desolate country lay between the dark expanse, on which he stored a red-brick mansion at Felden? How many leafless hedgerows? How many frozen streams? It was only a day's journey, certainly, by the Great Western, but there was something crawling in the knowledge that half the length of England lay between the Kentish woods, and that far angle of the British isles upon which castle Balstrode reared its weather-beaten walls. The wail of mourning voices might be loud in Kent, and not a whisper of death reached listening ears in Cornwall. How he envied the lowest servant at Felden, who knew day by day and hour by hour of the progress of the battle between death and Aurora Floyd? And yet, after all, what was she to him? What did it matter to him if she were well or ill? The grave could never separate them more utterly than they had been separated from the very moment in which he discovered that she was not worthy to be his wife. He had done her no wrong, he had given her a full and fair opportunity of clearing herself from the doubtful shadow on her name, and she had been unable to do so. Nay, more had she given him every reason to suppose by her manner that the shadow was even darker one than he had feared. Was he to blame, then? Was it his fault if she were ill? Were his days to be misery and his nights a burden because of her? He struck the stock of his gun violently upon the ground at the thought, and thrust the ramrod down the barrel, and loaded his fouling-piece furiously with nothing, and then casting himself at full length upon the stunted taff, lay there till the early dust closed in about him, and the softer evening dew saturated his shooting-coat, and he was in a fair way to be stricken with rheumatic fever. I mightful chapters with the foolish sufferings of this young man, plie fear he must have become very wearisome to my afflicted readers, to those at least who have never suffered from this fever. The sharper the disease, the shorter its continuance, so Talbot will be better by and by, and will look back at his old self, and laugh at his old agonies. Surely this inconsistency of ours is the worst of all, this fickleness by reason of which we cast off our former selves, with no more compunction than we feel in flinging off a worn-out garment. Our poor threadbare selves, the shadow of what we were. With what sublime patronising pity, with what scornful compassion we look back upon the helpless dead and gone creatures, and wonder that anything so foolish could have been allowed to cumber the earth. Shall I feel the same contempt ten years hence for myself, as I am today as I feel today for myself as I was ten years ago? For the lovers and aspirations, the beliefs and desires of today, appear as pitiful then as the dead loves and dreams of the bygone decade. Shall I look back in pitying wonder, and think what a fool that young man was, although there was something candid, and innocent in his very stupidity after all. Who can wonder that the last visit to Paris killed Voltaire? Fancy the octogenarian looking round the National Theatre, and seeing himself through an endless vista of dim years, a young man again, paying his court to a goat-faced cardinal, and being beaten by the Rowan's lackeys in broad daylight. Have you ever visited some still country town after a lapse of years, and wondered, O fast-living reader, to find the people you knew in your last visit still alive and thriving, with hair unbleached as yet, although you have lived and suffered whole centuries since then? Surely Providence gives us this sublimely egotistical sense of time as a set-off against the brevity of our lives? I might make this book a companion in bulk to the catalogue of the British Museum, if I were to tell all that Talbot Balstrode felt and suffered, in the month of January 1858. If I were to anatomise the doubts and confessions, and self-contradictions, the mental resolutions made one moment to be broken the next. I refrain, therefore, and will set down nothing but the fact that on a certain Sunday, midway in the month, the captain sitting in the family-pure at Balstrode Church, directly facing the monument of Admiral Hartley Balstrode, who fought and died in the days of Queen Elizabeth, registered a silent oath that, as he was a gentleman and a Christian, he would henceforth abstain from holding any voluntary communication with the roar of Floyd. But for this vow he must have broken down, and yielded to his yearning fear and love, and gone to Feldenwoods to throw himself, blind and unquestioning, at the feet of the sick woman. The ten degrees of the earliest leaflets was breaking out in bright patches upon the hedgerows round Feldenwoods. The ash buds were no longer black upon the front of March, and pale violets and primroses made exquisite tracery in the shading nooks beneath the oaks and beaches. All nature was rejoicing in the mild April weather when a roar of Floyd lifted her dark eyes to her father's face with something of their old look and familiar light. The battle had been a long and severe one, but it was well nigh over now, the facetion said. Defeated death drew back for a while, to wait a better opportunity for making his fate or spring, and the feeble victor was to be carried downstairs to sit in the drawing-room for the first time since the night of December the twenty-fifth. John Mellish, happening to be at Felden that day, was allowed the supreme privilege of carrying the fragile burden in his strong arms, from the door of the sick chamber to the great sofa by the fire in the drawing-room, attended by a procession of happy people bearing shawls and pillows, vinaigrettes and scent-bottles and other invalid paraphernalia. Every creature at Felden was devoted to this adored convalescent. Archbord Floyd lived only to minister to her. Gentle Lucy waited on her night and day, fearful to trust the service to menial hands. Mrs. Powell, like some pale and quiet shadow, lurked amid the bed-curtains, soft of foot and watchful of eye, invaluable in the sick chamber, as the doctors said. Throughout her illness a roar had never mentioned the name of Talbot Balstrode. Not even when a fever was at its worst and the brain most distraught had that familiar name escaped her lips. Other names, strange to Lucy, had been repeated by her again and again. The names of places and horses and slimy technicalities of the turf had interlarded the poor girl's brain-sick babble, but whatever were her feelings with regard to Talbot, no word has revealed their depth or sadness. Yet I do not think that my poor, dark-eyed heroine was utterly feelingless upon this point. When they first spoke of carrying her downstairs, Mrs. Powell and Lucy proposed the little bay windowed chamber, which was small and snug, and had a southern aspect as the fittest place for the invalid, but a roar required out, shuddering, that she would never enter that hateful chamber again. As soon as ever she was strong enough to bear the fatigue of the journey, it was considered advisable to remove her from Felden, and Leamington was suggested by the doctors as the best place for the change. A mild climate and a pretty inland retreat, a hushed and quiet town, peculiarly adapted to invalids being almost deserted by other visitors after the hunting season. Shakespeare's birthday had come and gone, and the high festivals at Stratford were over when Archbord Floyd took his pale daughter to Leamington. A furnished cottage had been engaged for them a mile and a half out of town. A pretty place, half-filler, half-farm-house, with walls of white plaster checkered with beams of black wood, and well-nigh buried in a luxuriant and trimly-kept flower-garden. A pleasant place, forming one of a little cluster of rustic buildings, crowded about a gray old church in the nook of the roadway, where two or three green lanes met, and went branching off between overhanging hedges, a most retired spot, yet clamorous with that noise which is of all others cheerful and joyous, the hubbub of farm-yards, and the cackle of poultry, the cooing of pigeons. The monotonous lowing of lazy cattle and the squabbling grunt of quoll-sum pigs. Archbord could not have brought his daughter to a better place. The checkered farm-house seemed a haven of rest to this poor, wary girl of nineteen. It was so pleasant to lie wrapped in shawls on a chins-covered sofa in the open window, listening to the rustic noises of the straw-littered yard, upon the other side of the hedge, with her faithful bow-wow's big-forced paws resting on the cushions at her feet. The sounds in the farm-yard were pleasanter to a roarer than the monotonous inflections of Mrs. Powell's voice. But as that lady considered it a part of her duty to read aloud for this invalid's delectation, Miss Floyd was too good-natured to own how tired she was of Marmion and Child Harold, Evangeline and the Queen of the May, and how she would have preferred in her present state of mind to listen to a lively dispute between a brood of ducks round a pond in the farm-yard, or a trifling discussion in the pig-stie to the sublimest lines ever penned by poet, living or dead. The poor girl had suffered very much, and there was a certain sensuous lazy pleasure in this slow recovery, this gradual return to strength. Her own nature revived in unison with the bright revival of the genial summer weather. As the trees in the garden put forth new strength and beauty, so the glorious vitality of her constitution returned with much of its wanted power. The bitter blows had left their scars behind them, but they had not killed her after all. They had not utterly changed her even, for glimpses of the old aurora appeared day by day in the pale convalescent, and outward Floyd, whose life was at best but of reflected existence, felt his hope survive as he looked at his daughter. Lucy and her mother had gone back to the villa at Fulham and to their own family duties, so the Leamington party consisted only of aurora and her father, and that pale shadow of propriety, the ensign's light-haired widow. But they were not long without a visitor. John Melish, artfully taking the banker at a disadvantage in some moment of flurry and confusion at Valdor Woods, had extorted from him an invitation to Leamington, and a fortnight after their arrival he presented his stalwart form and fair face at the low wooden gates of the checkered cottage. Aurora laughed for the first time since her illness, and she saw that faithful adora come, carpet-bag in hand, through the labyrinth of grass and flower beds toward the open window, at which she and her father sat, and archibalds seeing that first gleam of gaiety in the beloved face, could have helped John Melish for being the cause of it. He would have embraced a street-tumbler, or the locomedian of a booth at a fair, or a troupe of performing dogs and monkeys, or anything upon earth that could win a smile from his sick child. Like the eastern potentate in the fairytale, who always offers half his kingdom and his daughter's hand to any one who can cure the princess of her billiest headache, or extract her carious tooth, archibalds would have opened a bank's account in Lombard Street, with a fabulous sum to start with for any one who could give pleasure to this black-eyed girl, now smiling for the first time in that year, at sight of the big fair-faced Yorkshireman, coming to pay his foolish worship at her shrine. It was not to be supposed that Mr. Floyd had felt no wonder as to the cause of the rupture of his daughter's engagement to Talbot Balstrode. The anguish and terror endured by him during her long illness had left no room for any other thought. But since the passing away of the danger, he had pondered not a little upon the abrupt rupture between the lovers. He wrenched once in the first week of their stay at Leamington to speak to her upon the subject, asking why it was she had dismissed the captain. Now if there was one thing more hateful than another to a roar of Floyd, it was a lie. I do not say that she had never told one in the course of her life. There are some acts of folly which carry falsehood and assimilation at their heels, as certainly as the shadows which follow us when we walk toward the evening sun. And we are very rarely swerved from the severe boundary line of right without being dragged ever so much further than we calculated upon across the border. Alas, my heroine is not faultless! She would take her shoes off to give them to the bare-footed poor. She would take the heart from her breast, if she could by so doing heal the wound she has inflicted upon the loving heart of her father. But a shadow of mad folly has blotted her motherless youth, and she has a terrible harvest to reap from that lightly sown seed, and a cruel expiation to make for that unforgotten wrong. Yet her natural disposition is all truth and candour, and there are many young ladies whose lives have been as primely ruled and ordered as a fair, prelaciate gardens of the Tiberny and Square, who could tell a falsehood with a great deal better grace than a roar of Floyd. So when her father asked her why she had dismissed Talbot Bulstrode, she made no answer to that question, but simply told him that the quarrel had been a very painful one, and that she hoped never to hear the captain's name again, although at the same time she assured Mr. Floyd that her lover's conduct had been in no wise unbecoming a gentleman and a man of honour. Archbord implicitly obeyed his daughter in this matter, and the name of Talbot Bulstrode never being spoken, it seemed as if the young man had dropped out of their lives, or as if he had never had any part in the destiny of Aurora Floyd. Heaven knows what Aurora herself felt and suffered in the quiet of her low-roofed white carton little chamber, with the soft-may moonlight stealing in at the casement windows and creeping in one radiance about the walls. Heaven only knows the bitterness of the silent battle, her vitality made her strong to suffer, her vivid imagination intensified every throb of pain. In a dull and torpid soul grief is a slow anguish, but with her it was a fierce and tempestuous emotion in which past and future seemed rolled together with the present to make a concentrated agony, but by an all-wise dispensation the stormy sorrow wears itself out by reason of its very violence, while the dull woe drags its slow length sometimes through weary years, becoming at last engrafted in the very nature of the patient's sufferer, as some diseases become part of our constitutions. Aurora was fortunate in being permitted to fight her battle in silence and to suffer unquestioned. If the dark hollow rings about her eyes told of sleepless nights, Archibald Floyd fought bored to torment her with anxious speeches and trite consolations. The clairvoyance of love told him that it was better to let her alone, so the trouble hanging over the little circle was neither seen nor spoken of. Aurora kept a skeleton in some quiet corner, and no one saw the grim skull or heard the rattle of the dry bones. Archibald Floyd read his newspapers and wrote his letters. Mrs. Walter Powell tended the convalescent, who reclined during the best part of the day on the sofa in the open window, and John Mellish loitered about the garden in the farmyard, leaned on the low white gate, smoking his cigar, and talking to the men about the place, and was in and out of the house twenty times in an hour. The banker pondered sometimes in the serial comic perplexity as to what was to be done with this big Yorkshireman, who hung upon him like a good-natured monster of six feet two, conjured into existence by the hospitality of a modern Frankenstein. He'd invited him to dinner, and lo! he appeared to be saddled with him for life. He could not tell the friendly, generous, loud-spoken creatures to go away. Besides, Mr. Mellish was, on the whole, very useful, and he did much toward keeping Aurora in apparently good spirits. Yet on the other hand was it right to tamper with this great loving-heart? Was it just to let the young man linger in the light of those black eyes, and then send him away when the invalid was equal to the effort of giving him his conchet? Lord Floyd did not know that John had been rejected by his daughter on a certain morning at Brighton, so he made up his mind to speak frankly and sound the depths of his visitor's feelings. Mrs. Powell was making tea at a little table near one of the windows. Aurora had fallen asleep with an open book in her hand, and the banker walked with John Mellish up and down an espaliered alley in the golden sunset. Archibald freely communicated his perplexity to the Yorkshireman. "'I need not tell you, my dear Mellish,' he said, "'how pleasant it is to me to have you here. I never had a son, but if it had pleased God to give me one, I could have wished him to be just such a frank, noble-hearted fellow as yourself. I am an old man, and have seen a great deal of trouble, sort of trouble which strikes deeper homes with a heart than any sorrow that begins in Lombard Street, or on change, but I feel younger in your society, and I find myself clinging to you and leaning on you as a father-mide upon his son. You may believe, then, that I don't wish to get rid of you." "'I do, Mr. Floyd, but do you think that anyone else wishes to get rid of me? Do you think I'm a nuisance to Miss Floyd?' "'No, Mellish,' answered the banker energetically, "'I am sure that Aurora takes pleasure in your society, and seems to treat you almost as if you were her brother, but—but I know your feelings, my dear boy, and what I fear is that you may perhaps never inspire a warmer feeling in her heart.' "'Let me stay and take my chance, Mr. Floyd,' cried John, throwing his cigar across the espaliers, and coming to a dead stop upon the gravel walk in the warmth of his enthusiasm. "'Let me stay and take my chance. If there's any disappointment to be borne, I'll bear it like a man. I'll go back to the park, and you shall never be bothered with me again. Miss Floyd has rejected me once already, but perhaps I was in too great to hurry. I've grown wiser since then, and I've learned to bide my time. I've won of the finest estates in Yorkshire. I'm not worse-looking than the generality of fellows, or worse-educated than the generality of fellows. I may not have straight hair and a pale face, and look as if I had walked out for three-volume-novel like Talbot Ballstrode. I may be a stone or two over the correct weight for winning a young lady's heart, but I'm sound, wind, and limp. I never told a lie or committed a mean action, and I love your daughter with as true and pure a love as ever man felt for woman. May I try my luck once more?' You may, John. And have I— Thank you, sir, for calling me John. Have I your good wishes for my success? The bank is shook, Mr. Melish, by the hand as he answered this question. You have, my dear John, my best and heartiest wishes. So there were three battles of the heart being fought in that springtide of fifty-eight, Aurora and Talbot, separated from each other by the length and breadth of half England, yet united by an impalpable chain, while struggling day by day to break its links, while poor John Melish quietly waited in the background, fighting the sturdy fight of the strong heart, which very rarely fails to win the prize it is set upon, however high or far away that prize may seem to be. CHAPTER 11 at the Chateau d'Arc John Melish made himself entirely at home in the little Lemmington circle after this interview with Mr. Floyd. No one could have been more tender in his manner, more respectful, untiring and devoted than was this rough Yorkshireman to the broken old man. Archibald must have been less than human had he not in some ways returned this devotion, and it is therefore scarcely to be wondered that he became very warmly attached to his daughter's adora. Had John Melish been the most designing disciple of Machiavelli, instead of the most transparent and candid of living creatures, I scarcely think he could have adopted a truer means of making for himself a claim upon the gratitude of Aurora Floyd than by the affection he evinced for her father. And this affection was as genuine as all else in that simple nature. How could he do otherwise than love Aurora's father? He was her father. He had a sublime claim upon the devotion of the man who loved her, who loved her as John loved, unreservedly, undoubtedly, childishly, with such blind, unquestioning love as an infant feels for its mother. There may be better women than that mother, perhaps, but who shall make the child believe so? John Melish could not argue with himself upon his passion, as Talbot Bolstrode had done. He could not separate himself from his love, and reason with the mild madness. How could he divide himself from that which was himself, more than himself, a diviner self? He asked no questions about the past life of the woman he loved. He never sought to know the secret of Talbot's departure from Felden. He saw her beautiful, fascinating, perfect, and he accepted her as a great and wonderful fact, like the moon and the stars shining down on the rustic flower beds and espaliered garden walks in the barmy June nights. So the tranquil days glided slowly and monotonously past that quiet circle. Aurora bore her silent burden, bore her trouble with a grand courage peculiar to such rich organizations as her own, and none knew whether the serpent had been rooted from her breast, or had made for himself a permanent home in her heart. The banker's most watchful care could not fathom the womanly mystery. But there were times when Archibald Floyd ventured to hope that his daughter was at peace, and Talbot Bolstrode well-kny forgotten. In any case, it was wise to keep her away from Felden Woods. So Mr. Floyd proposed a tour through Normandy to his daughter and Mrs. Powell. Aurora consented with a tender smile and gentle pressure of her father's hand. She divined the old man's motive and recognized the all-watchful love which sought to carry her from the scene of her trouble. John Melish, who was not invited to join the party, burst forth into such raptures at the proposal that it would have required considerable hardness of heart to have refused his escort. He knew every inch of Normandy, he said, and promised to be of infinite use to Mr. Floyd and his daughter, which, seeing that his knowledge of Normandy had been acquired in his attendance at the Dieppe Steeplechases, and that his acquaintance with the French language was very limited, seemed rather doubtful. But for all this he contrived to keep his word. He went up to town and hired an all-accomplished courier who conducted the little party from town to village, from church to ruin, and who could always find relays of Normandy horses for the banker's roomy travelling carriage. The little party travelled from place to place until pale gleams of colour returned in transient flushes to Aurora's cheeks. Grief is terribly selfish. I fear that Miss Floyd never took into consideration the havoc that might be going on in the great, honest heart of John Melish. I dare say that if she had ever considered the matter, she would have thought that a broad-shouldered Yorkshireman of six-feet-two could never suffer seriously from such a passion as love. She grew accustomed to his society, accustomed to have his strong arm handy for her to lean upon when she grew tired, accustomed to his carrying her sketchbook and shawls and camp-stools, accustomed to be weighted upon by him all day, and served faithfully by him at every turn, taking his homage as a thing of course, but making him superlatively and dangerously happy by her tacit acceptance of it. September was half gone when they bent their way homeward, lingering for a few days at depth where the bathers were splashing about in semi-theatrical costume, and the atavismande bain was all aflame with coloured lanterns and noisy with nightly concerts. The early autumnal days were glorious in their barmy beauty. The best part of a year had gone by since Talbot Bulstrode had bathed Aurora that adieu, which in one sense at least, was to be eternal. They too, Aurora and Talbot, might meet again. It is true. They might meet, aye, and even be cordial and friendly together, and do each other good service in some dim time to come. But the two lovers who had parted in a little bay windowed room at the Felden Woods could never meet again. Between them there was death and the grave. Perhaps some such thoughts as these had their place in the breast of Aurora Floyd, as she sat with John Mellish at her side, looking down upon the varied landscape from the height upon which the ruined walls of the shadow dark still reared their proud memorials of a day that is dead. I don't suppose that the banker's daughter troubled herself much about Henry IV, or any other dead and gone celebrity who may have left the impress of his name upon that spot. She felt a tranquil sense of the exquisite purity and softness of the air. The deep blue of the cloudless sky, the spreading woods and grassy plains, the orchards where the trees were rosy with their plenteous burden, the tiny streamlets, the white filler-like cottages and struggling gardens, outspread in a fair panorama beneath her. Carried out of her sorrow by the sensuous rapture we derive from nature, and for the first time discovering in herself a vague sense of happiness, she began to wonder how it was she had outlived her grief by so many months. She had never, during those weary months, heard of Talbot Bulls Road. Any change might have come to him without her knowledge. He might have married, might have chosen a prouder and worthy abride to share his lofty name. She might meet him on her return to England with that happier woman leaning up on his arm. Would some good-natured friend tell the bride how Talbot had loved and wooed the banker's daughter? Aurora found herself pitying this happier woman, who would, after all, win but the second love of that proud heart, the pale reflection of a son that has set, the feeble glow of expiring embers when the great blaze has died out. They had made her a couch with shawls and carriage-rugs, outspread upon rustic seat, for she was still far from strong, and she lay in the bright September sunshine, looking down at the fair landscape, and listening to the harm of beetles, and the chirps of grasshoppers upon the smooth turf. Her father had walked to some distance with Mrs. Powell, who explored every crevice and cranny of the ruins with the dutiful perseverance peculiar to commonplace people, but faithful John Melish never stared from her side. He was watching her musing face, trying to read its meaning, trying to gather a gleam of hope from some chance expression floating across it. Neither he nor she knew how long he had watched her thus. When, turning to speak to him about the landscape at her feet, she found him on his knees imploring her to have pity upon him and to love him, or to let him love her which was much the same. I don't expect you to love me or Aura. He said passionately, how should you? What is there in a big, clumsy fellow like me to win your love? I don't ask that. I only ask you to let me love you, to let me worship you as the people we see kneeling in the churches here worship their saints. You won't drive me away from you, will you, Aura? Because I presume to forget what you said to me that cruel day at Brighton. You would never have suffered me to stay with you so long, and to be so happy if you had meant to drive me away at the last. You never could have been so cruel. Miss Floyd looked at him with a sudden terror in her face. What was this? What had she done? More wrong? More mischief? Was her life to be one of perpetual wrongdoing? Was she to be forever bringing sorrow upon good people? Was this John Melish to be another sufferer by her folly? Oh, forgive me! She cried. Forgive me! I never thought! You never thought that every day spent by your side must make the anguish of parting from you more cruelly bitter. Oh, Aura, women should think of these things. Send me away from you, and what shall I be for the rest of my life? A broken man fit for nothing better than the race course and the betting shops. A reckless man ready to go to the bad by any road that can take me there. Just alike to myself and to others. You must have seen such men, Aura, men whose unblemished youth promised an honourable manhood, but who break up all of a sudden and go to ruin in a few years of mad dissipation. Nine times out of ten a woman is the cause of that sudden change. I lay my life at your feet, Aura. I offer you more than my heart. I offer you my destiny. You with it as you will. He rose in his agitation and walked a few paces away from her. The grass-grown battlements sloped away from his feet, out and in a moat laid below him at the bottom of a steep declivity. What a convenient place for suicide if Aura should refuse to take pity upon him. The reader must allow that he had availed himself of considerable artifice in addressing this floyd. His appeal had taken the form of an accusation rather than a prayer, and he had duly impressed upon this poor girl the responsibilities she would incur in refusing him. And this, I take it, is a meanness of which men are often guilty in their dealings with the weaker sex. Miss Floyd looked up at her lover with a quiet, half-mournful smile. "'Sit down there, Mr. Mellish,' she said, pointing to a camp-stall at her side. John took the indicated seat, very much with the air of a prisoner and a criminal dock, about to answer for his life. "'Shall I tell you a secret?' asked Aura, looking compassionately at his pale face. "'A secret?' "'Yes. The secret of my parting with Talbot Bulstrode. It was not I who dismissed him from Felden. It was he who refused to fulfil his engagement with me.' She spoke slowly in a low voice, as if it were painful to her to say the words which told of so much humiliation. "'He did?' cried John Mellish, rising red and furious from his seat, eager to run to look for Talbot Bulstrode then and there, in order to inflict chastisement upon him. "'He did, John Mellish, and he was justified in doing so,' answered Aura gravely. "'You would have done the same.' "'Oh, Aura, Aura, you would. You are as good a man as he. And why should your sense of honour be less strong than his?' A barrier arose between Talbot Bulstrode and me, and separated us, for ever. That barrier was a secret.' She told him of the missing year in her young life, how Talbot had called upon her for an explanation, and how she had refused to give it. John listened to her with a thoughtful face, which broke out into sunshine as she turned to him and said, How would you have acted in such a case, Mr. Mellish? How should I have acted, Aura? I should have trusted you. But I can give you a better answer to your question, Aura. I can answer it by a renewal of the prayer I made you five minutes ago. Be my wife. In spite of this secret, in spite of a hundred secrets, I could not love you as I do, Aura, if I did not believe you to be all that is best and purest in woman. I cannot believe this one moment and doubt you the next. I give my life and honour into your hands. I would not confide them to the woman whom I could insult by doubt. His handsome Saxon face was radiant with love and trustfulness when he spoke. All his patient devotion, so long unheeded, or accepted as a thing of course, recurred to Aura's mind. Did he not deserve some reward, some requital for all this? But there was one who was nearer and dearer to her, dearer than even Toppet Bolstered had ever been, and that one was the white-haired old man, pottering about among the ruins on the other side of the grassy platform. Does my father know of this, Mr. Mellish? she asked. He does, Aura. He has promised to accept me as his son, and heaven knows I will try to deserve that name. Do not let me distress you, Aura. The murder is out now. You know that I still love you, still hope. Let time do the rest. She held out both her hands to him with a tearful smile. He took those little hands in his own broad palms and, bending down, kissed them reverently. You are right, she said. Let time do the rest. You are worthy of the love of a better woman than me, John Mellish. But with the help of heaven, I will never give you cause to regret having trusted me. End of Chapter 11