 CHAPTER 12 early in October Aurora Floyd returned to Felden Woods, once more engaged. The county families opened their eyes when the report reached them that the banker's daughter was going to be married, not to Talbot Bullstrode, but to Mr John Melish of Melish Park near Doncaster. The unmarried ladies, rather hanging on hand about Beckenham and West Wickham, did not approve of all this chopping and changing. They recognised the taint of the prodder blood in this fickleness. The spangles and the saw-dust were breaking out, and Aurora was, as they had always said, her mother's own daughter. She was a very lucky young woman, they remarked, in being able, after jolting one rich man, to pick up another, but, of course, a young person whose father could give her fifty thousand pounds on her wedding day, might be permitted to play fast and loose with the male sex, while worthy of Marianas moped in their moted granges till grey hairs showed themselves in glistening bandeau, and cruel crow's feet gathered about the corners of bright eyes. It is well to be merry, and wise, and honest, and true, and to be off with the old love, etc. But it is better to be Miss Floyd of the senior branch of Floyd, Floyd, and Floyd, for then you need be none of these things. At least to such effect was the talk about Beckinham, when Archibald brought his daughter back to Felden Woods, and a crowd of dress-makers and milliners set to work at the marriage garments, as busily as if Miss Floyd had never had any clothes in her life before. Mrs. Alexander and Lucy came back to Felden to assist in the preparations for the wedding. Lucy had improved very much in appearance since the preceding winter. There was a happier light in her soft blue eyes, and a healthier hue in her cheeks, but she blushed crimson when she first met Aurora, and hung back a little from Miss Floyd's caresses. The wedding was to take place at the end of November. The bride and bridegroom were to spend the winter in Paris, where Archibald Floyd was to join them, and return to England in time for the Craven meeting, as John Nelich married, for I am sorry to say that, having been so happily successful in his love affair, this young man's thoughts returned into their accustomed channels, and the creature he held dearest on earth, next to Miss Floyd and those belonging to her, was a bayfilly called Aurora, and entered for the oaks and ledger of the future year. Auta to apologise for my heroin, because she has forgotten Talbot Poulstrode, and as she entertains a grateful affection for this adoring John Nelich. She ought, no doubt, to have died of shame and sorrow after Talbot's cruel exertion, and Heaven knows that only her youth and vitality carried her through a very severe battle with the grim rider of the pale horse, but having once passed through that dreadful encounter she was, however feeble, in a fair way to recover. His passionate griefs to kill at all must kill suddenly. The lovers who die for love in our tragedies die in such a vast hurry that there is generally some mistake or misapprehension about the business, and the tragedy might have been a comedy if the hero or heroine had only waited for a quarter of an hour. If Othello had lingered a little before smothering his wife, Mr. Similia might have come in and sworn and protested, and Casio, with the hankerchief about his leg, might have been in time to set the mind of the valiant moor at rest, and put the Phoenician dog to confusion. How happily Mr. and Mrs. Romeo Montague might have lived and died, thanks to the dear good friar, if the foolish bridegroom had not been in such a hurry to swallow the vile stuff from the apothecaries, and as people are, I hope, and believe, a little wiser in real life than they appear to be upon the stage, the worms very rarely get an honest meal of men and women who have died for love. So Aurora walked through the rooms at Felden, in which Talbot Bulstrode had so often walked by her side, and if there was any regret at her heart, it was a quiet sorrow, such as we feel for the dead, a sorrow not unmingled with pity, for she thought that the proud son of Sir John Rally Bulstrode might have been a happier man if he had been as generous and trusting as John Melish. Perhaps the healthiest sign of the state of her health was that she could speak of Talbot freely, cheerfully, and without a blush. She asked Lucy if she had met Captain Bulstrode that year, and the little hypocrite told her cousin, yes, that he had spoken to them one day in the park, and that she believed he had gone into Parliament. She believed why she knew his maiden speech by heart, though it was on some hopelessly uninteresting bill in which the Cornish minds were in some vague manner involved with the national survey, and she could have repeated it as correctly as her youngest brother could declaim his Romans, countrymen, and lovers. Aurora might forget him and basely marry a fair-haired Yorkshireman, but for Lucy, Floyd, earth only held this dark knight with the severe great eyes and the stiff leg. Poor Lucy, therefore, loved and was grateful to her brilliant cousin for that fickleness, which had brought about such a change in the programme of the gay wedding at Felden Woods. The fair young confidante and bridesmaid could assist in the ceremonial now with a good grace. She no longer walked about like a corpse alive, but took a hearty womanly interest in the whole affair, and was very much concerned in a discussion as to the merits of pink versus blue for the bonnets of the bridesmaids. The boisterous happiness of John Mellish seemed contagious and laid a genial atmosphere about the great mansion at Felden. Stalwart Andrew Floyd was delighted with his young cousin's choice. No more refusals to join him in the hunting field, but half the county breakfasting at Felden and the long terrace and garden luminous with pink. Not a ripple disturbed the smooth current of that brief courtship. The Yorkshaman contrived to make himself agreeable to everybody belonging to his dark-eyed divinity. He flattered their weaknesses. He gratified their caprices. He studied their wishes, and paid them all such insidious court, that I'm afraid invidious comparisons were drawn between John and Talbot to the disadvantage of the proud young officer. It was impossible for any quarrel to arise between the lovers, for John followed his mistress about like some big slave who only lived to do her bidding, and Aurora accepted his devotion with a sultana-like grace which became her amazingly. Once more she visited the stables and inspected her father's stud for the first time since she had left Felden for the Parisian finishing school. Once more she rode across country, wearing a hat which provoked considerable criticism—a hat which was none other than the now universal turban, or pork pie, but which was new to the world in the autumn of fifty-eight. Her early girlhood appeared to return to her once more. It seemed almost as if the two years and a half in which she had left and returned to her home, and had met and parted with Talbot Bulstrode, had been blotted from her life, leaving her spirits fresh and bright as they were before that stormy interview in her father's study in the June of fifty-six. The county families came to the wedding at Beckinham Church, and were fain to confess that Miss Floyd looked wonderfully handsome in her virginal crown of orange buds and flowers, and her voluminous mechland veil. She had pleaded hard to be married in a bonnet, but had been overruled by a posse of female cousins. Mr. Richard Gunter provided the marriage-feast, and sent a man down to Felden to superintend the arrangements, who was more dashing and splendid to look upon than any of the Kentish guests. John Melish alternately laughed and cried throughout that eventful morning. Heaven knows how many times he shook hands with Archibald Floyd, carrying the banker off into solitary corners, and swearing with the tears running down his broad cheeks to be a good husband to the old man's daughter, so that it must have been a relief to the white-haired old Scotchman, when Aurora descended the staircase rustling in Volet-Marché-Antique, and surrounded by her bridesmaids to take leave of this dear father before the prancing steeds carried Mr. and Mrs. Melish to that most prosaic of high-menial stages, the London Bridge station. Mrs. Melish—yes, she was Mrs. Melish now—Torbert Bulstrode read of her marriage in that very column of the newspaper in which he had thought, perhaps, to see her death. How flatly the romance ended! With what a dull cadence the storm died out, and what a common place grey, everyday skies succeeded the terrors of the lightning. Less than a year since, the globe had seemed to him to collapse, and creation to come to a standstill because of his trouble, and he was now in Parliament, legislating for the Cornish minors, and getting stout, his ill-matured friends said, and she—she—who ought, in accordance with all dramatic propriety, to have died out of hand long before this—she had married a Yorkshire landowner, and would, no doubt, take her place in the county, and play my lady bountiful in the village, and be chief patroness at the race-balls, and live happily ever after. He crumpled the timed newspaper, and flung it from him in his rage and mortification. And I once thought that she loved me, he cried. And she did love you, Talbot Bulstrode. Loved you as she can never love this honest, generous devoted John Melish, though she may, by and by, bestow upon him an affection which is a great deal better worth having. She loved you with the girl's romantic fancy, and reverent admiration, and tried humbly to fashion her very nature anew, that she might be worthy of your sublime excellence. She loved you as women only love in their first use, and as they rarely love the men they ultimately marry. The tree is perhaps all the stronger when these first frail branches are locked away to give place to strong and spreading arms, beneath which a husband and children may shelter. But Talbot could not see all this. He saw nothing but that brief announcement in the times. Aurora, only daughter of Archibald Floyd, banker of Feldenwood's Kent, to John Melishiff's squire of Melish Park near Doncaster. He was angry with his sometime love, and more angry with himself for feeling that anger, and he plunged furiously into blue books to prepare himself for the coming session. And again he took his gun and went out upon the barren, barren moorland as he had done in the first violence of his grief, and wandered down to the dreary seashore, where he raved about his amy, shallow-hearted, and tried the pitch of his voice against the ides of February should come round, and the bill for the Cornish Miners be laid before the speaker. Towards the close of January the servants at Melish Park prepared for the advent of Master John and his bride. It was a work of love in that disorderly household, for it pleased them that Master would have someone to keep him at home, and that the county would be entertained and festivals held in the roomy, rambling mansion. Architects, upholsterers, and decorators had been busy through the short winter days, preparing a suite of apartments for Mrs. Melish, and the western, or as it was called, the gothic wing of the house, had been restored and remodeled for Aurora, until the oak-roofed chambers blazed with rose, colour, and gold, like a medieval chapel. If John could have expended half his fortune in the purchase of a rock-seg to hang in these apartments, he would have gladly done so. He was so very proud of his clear patre-like bride, his jewel beyond all parallel amid all gems, that he fancied he could not build a shrine rich enough for his treasure. So the house in which honest country squires and their sensible motherly wives had lived contentedly for nearly three centuries was almost pulled to pieces before John thought it worthy of the banker's daughter. The trainers and grooms and stable-boys shrugged their shoulders superciliously, and spat fragments of straw disdainfully upon the paved stable-yard, as they heard the clatter of the tools of the stone-masons and glazy as busy about the façade of the restored apartments. The stable would be nought now, they supposed, and Mr. Mellish would be always tied to his wife's apron string. It was a relief to them to hear that Mrs. Mellish was fond of riding and hunting, and would, no doubt, take to horse-racing in due time, as the legitimate taste of a lady of position and fortune. The bells of the village-church rang loudly and joyously in the clear winter air, as the carriage and four, which had met John and his bride at Doncaster, dashed into the gates of Mellish Park, and upped the long avenue to the semi-gothic, semi-barbaric portico of the great door. Hearty Yorkshire voices rang out in loud cheers of welcome as Aurora stepped from the carriage, and passed under the shadow of the porch and into the old oak-hole, which had been hung with evergreens and adorned with floral devices, among which figured the legend, Welcome to Mellish, and other such friendly inscriptions more conspicuous for their kindly meaning than their strict orthography. The servants were enraptured with their master's choice. She was so brightly handsome that the simple-hearted creatures accepted her beauty as we accept the sunlight, and felt a genial warmth in that radiant loveliness which the most classical perfection could never have inspired. Indeed, a Grecian outline might have been thrown away upon the Yorkshire servants, whose uncultivated tastes were a great deal more disposed to recognize splendor of colour than purity of form. They could not choose but admire Aurora's eyes, which they unanimously declared to be regular shiners, and the flash of her white teeth glancing between the full crimson lips, and the bright flush which lighted up her pale olive skin, and the purple luster of her massive coronel of plaited hair. Her beauty was of that luxuriant and splendid order, which has always most effect upon the masses, and the fascination of her manner was almost akin to sorcery and its power over simple people. I lose myself when I try to describe the feminine intoxications, the wonderful fascination exercised by this dark-eyed siren. Surely the secret of her power to charm must have been the wonderful vitality of her nature, by virtue of which she carried life and animal spirits about with her as an atmosphere, till dull people grew merry by reason of her contagious presence. Or perhaps the true charm of her manner was that childlike and exquisite unconsciousness of self which made her for ever a new creature, for ever impulsive and sympathetic, acutely sensible of all sorrow in others, though of a nature originally joyous in the extreme. Mrs. Walter Powell had been transferred from Felden Woods to Mellish Park, and was comfortably installed in her prim apartments when the bride and bridegroom arrived. The Yorkshire housekeeper was to abandon the executive power to the Ensign's widow, who was to take all trouble of administration off Aurora's hands. Heaven help your friends if they ever had to eat a dinner of my ordering, John, Mrs. Mellish said, making a free confession of her ignorance. I am glad, too, that we have no occasion to turn the poor soul out upon the world once more. Those long columns of advertisements in the Times give me a sick pain at my heart, when I think of what a governess must have to encounter. I cannot lull back in my carriage and be grateful for my advantages, as Mrs. Alexander says, when I remember the sufferings of others. I am rather inclined to be discontented with my lot, and to think it a poor thing, after all, to be rich and happy in a world where so many must suffer, so I am glad we can give Mrs. Powell something to do at Mellish Park. The Ensign's widow rejoiced very much in that she was to be retained in such comfortable quarters. But she did not thank Aurora for the benefits received from the open hands of the banker's daughter. She did not thank her because she hated her. Why did she hate her? She hated her for the very benefits she received, or rather because she, Aurora, had power to bestow such benefits. She hated her as such slow, sluggish, narrow-minded creatures always hate the frank and generous. Hated her as Envy will forever hate prosperity, as Hammond hated Mordecai from the height of his throne, and as the man of Hammond Nature would hate were he supreme in the universe. If Mrs. Walter Powell had been a duchess and Aurora a crossing-sweeper, she would still have envied her. She would have envied her glorious eyes and flashing teeth, her imperial carriage and generous soul. This pale, whitey-brown-haired woman felt herself contemptible in the presence of Aurora, and she resented the bounteous vitality of this nature which made her conscious of the sluggishness of her own. She detested Mrs. Mellish for the possession of attributes, which she felt for richer gifts than all the wealth of the house of Floyd, Floyd, and Floyd, melted into one mountain of ore. But it is not for the dependent to hate, except in a decorous and gentle womanly manner, secretly in the dim recesses of her soul, while she dresses her face with an unvarying smile, a smile which she puts on every morning with her clean collar, and takes off at night when she goes to bed. Now, as by an all-wise dispensation of providence, it is not possible for one person so to hate another without that other having a vague consciousness of the deadly sentiment. Aurora felt that Mrs. Powell's attachment to her was of no very profound a nature. But the reckless girl did not seek to fathom the depth of any inimical feeling which might lurk in her dependent's breast. She's not very fond of me, poor soul, she said, and I dare say I torment and annoy her with my careless follies. If I were like that dear, considerate little Lucy now, and with a shrug of her shoulders and an unfinished sentence such as this, Mrs. Mellish dismissed the insignificant subject from her mind. You cannot expect these grand, courageous creatures to be frightened of quiet people. And yet, in the great dramas of life, it is the quiet people who do the mischief. Iago was not a noisy person, though thank heaven it is no longer the fashion to represent him an oily sneak whom even the most foolish of moors could not have trusted. Aurora was at peace. The storms that had so nearly shipwrecked her young life had passed away, leaving her upon a fair and fertile shore. Whatever grief she had inflicted upon her father's devoted heart had not been mortal, and the old banker seemed a very happy man when he came, in the bright spring April weather, to see the young couple at Mellish Park. Among all the hangers on of that large establishment there was only one person who did not join in the general voice when Mrs. Mellish was spoken of, and that one person was so very insignificant that his fellow-servants scarcely cared to ascertain his opinion. He was a man of about forty, who had been born at Mellish Park, and had potted about the staples from his boyhood, doing odd jobs for the grooms, and being reckoned, although a little fund, upon common matters, a very acute judge of horse-flesh. This man was called Stephen, or more commonly, Steve Hargraves. He was a squat, broad-shouldered fellow, with a big head, a pale-haggered face, a face whose ghastly pallor seemed unnatural, reddish-brown eyes and bushy, sandy eyebrows, which formed a species of penthouse over those sinister-looking eyes. He was the sort of man who is generally called repulsive, a man from whom you recoil with a feeling of instinctive dislike, which is, no doubt, both wicked and unjust. For we have no right to take objection to a man, because he has an ugly glitter in his eyes, and shaggy tufts of red hair meeting on the bridge of his nose, and big sleigh-feet, which seem made to crush and destroy whatever comes their way. And this was what Aurora Mellish thought when, a few days after her arrival at the park, she saw Steve Hargraves for the first time, coming out of the harness room with a bridle across his arm. She was angry with herself for the involuntary shudder with which she drew back at the sight of this man, who stood at a little distance, polishing the brass ornaments upon a set of harness, and, firstly, regarding Mrs. Mellish as she leaned on her husband's arm, talking to the trainer about the foals at grass in the meadows outside the park. Aurora asked who the man was. Why, his name is Hargraves, ma'am, answered the trainer, but we call him Steve. He's a little bit touched in the upper story, a little bit fund, as we call it here, but he's useful about the stables when he pleases, for he's rather a queer temper, and there's none of us has ever been able to get the upper hand of him, as Master knows. John Mellish laughed. No, he said, Steve has pretty much his own way in the stables, I fancy. He was a favourite boom of my father's twenty years ago, but he got a fall in the hunting field, which did him some injury about the head, and he's never been quite right since. Of course this, with my poor father's regard for him, gives him a claim upon us, and we put up with his queer ways, don't we, Langley? Well, we do, sir, said the trainer, though upon my honour, I'm sometimes half afraid of him, and think he'll get up in the middle of the night and murder some of us. Not till some of you have won a hat full of money, Langley. Steve's the little too fond of the brass to murder any of you for nothing. You shall see his face light up presently, Aurora, said John, beckoning to the stableman. Come here, Steve. Mrs. Mellish wishes you to drink her health. He dropped a sovereign into the man's broad, muscular palm, the hand of a gladiator with horny flesh and sinews of iron. Steve's red eyes glistened as his fingers closed upon the money. Thank you kindly, my lady, he said, touching his cap. He spoke in a low, subdued voice, which contrasted so strangely with the physical power manifest in his appearance that Aurora drew back with a start. Unhappily for this poor, fond creature whose person was in itself repulsive, there was something in this inward, semi-whispering voice which gave rise to an instinctive dislike in those who heard him speak for the first time. He touched his greasy willing cap once more and went slowly back to his work. How white his face is, said Aurora. Has he been ill? No, he has had that pale face ever since his fall. I was too young when it happened to remember much about it. But I have heard my father say that when they brought the poor creature home, his face, which had been florid before, was as white as a sheet of writing paper, and his voice until that period strong and gruff was reduced to the half whisper in which he now speaks. The doctors did all they could for him and carried him through an awful attack of brain fever, but they could never bring back his voice nor the colour to his face. Poor fellow, said Mrs. Melish gently, he is very much to be pitied. She was reproaching herself as she said this for that feeling of repugnance which she could not overcome. It was a repugnance closely allies to terror. She felt as if she could scarcely be happy at Melish Park while that man was on the premises. She was half inclined to beg her indulgent husband to pension him off and send him to the other end of the county. But the next moment she was ashamed of her childish folly, and a few hours afterwards had forgotten Steve Hargraves, the softie, as he was politely called in the sabers. Reader, when any creature inspires you with this instinctive un-reasoning of whorents, avoid that creature. He is dangerous. Take warning as you take warning by the clouds in the sky and the ominous stillness of the atmosphere when there is a storm coming. Nature cannot lie. It is nature which has planted that shuddering terror in your breast. An instinct of self-preservation rather than of cowardly fear, which at the first sight of some fellow creature tells you more plainly than words can speak, that man is my enemy. Had Aurora suffered herself to be guided by this instinct? Had she given way to the impulse which she had despised as childish and caused Steve and Hargraves to be dismissed from Melish Park? What bitter misery, what cruel anguish might have been spared to herself and others? The massive bow-wow had accompanied his mistress to her new home, but bow-wow's best days were done. A month before Aurora's marriage he had been run over by a pony carriage in one of the roads about Felden, and had been conveyed, bleeding and disabled, to the veterinary surgeons to have one of his hind legs put into splints, and to be carried through his sufferings by the highest available skill in the science of dog-doctoring. Aurora drove every day to Croydon to see her sick favourite, and at the worst bow-wow was always well enough to recognise his beloved mistress and roll his listless feverish tongue over her white hands, in token of that unchanging brute affection which can only perish with life. So the Mastiff was quite lame as well as half-blind, when he arrived at Melish Park with the rest of Aurora's goods and chattels. He was a privileged creature in the roomy mansion, a tiger-skin was spread for him upon the hearth in the drawing-room, and he spent his declining days in a luxurious repose, basking in the fire-light or sunning himself in the windows, as it pleased his royal fancy. But feeblest he was, always able to limp after Mrs. Melish when she walked on the lawn or in the woody shrubberies which skirted the gardens. One day, when she had returned from her morning's ride with John and her father, who accompanied them sometimes upon a quiet grey cob, and seemed a younger man for the exercise, she lingered on the lawn in her riding-habit, after the horses had been taken back to the stables, and Mr. Melish and his father-in-law had re-entered the house. The Mastiff saw her from the drawing-room window, and crawled out to welcome her. Tempted by the exquisite softness of the atmosphere, she strolled with her riding-habit gathered under her arm and her whip in her hand, looking for prim-roses under the clumps of trees upon the lawn. She gathered a cluster of wild flowers, and was returning to the house when she remembered some direction respecting a favourite pony that was ill, which she had admitted to give to her groom. She crossed the stable-yard, followed by Bowell, found the groom, gave him her orders, and went back to the gardens. While talking to the man, she had recognised the white face of Steve Hargraves at one of the windows of the harness-room. He came out while she was giving her directions, and carried a set of harness across to a coach-house on the opposite side of the quadrangle. Aurora was on the threshold of the gates opening from the stable into the gardens, when she was arrested by a howl of pain from the Mastiff Bowell. Refford is lightning in every movement. She turned round in time to see the cause of this cry. Steve Hargraves had sent the animal reeling away from him with a kick from his iron-bound clog. Cruelty to animals was one of the failings of the softie. He was not cruel to the mellish horses, but he had sense enough to know that his daily bread depended upon his attention to them, that heaven help any outsider that came in his way. Aurora sprang upon him like a beautiful tigeress, and catching the collar as his fustian jacket in her slight hands routed him to the spot upon which he stood. The grasp of those slender hands convulsed by passion was not to be easily shaken off, and Steve Hargraves, taken completely off his guard, stared aghast at his assailant. Taller than the stableman by a foot and a half, she towered above him, her cheeks white with rage, her eyes flashing fury, her hat fallen off, and her black hair tumbling about her shoulders sublime in her passion. The man crouched beneath the grasp of the imperious creature. Let me go! he gasped in his inward whisper, which had a hissing sound in his agitation. Let me go! Oh, you'll be sorry! Let me go! How dared you! cried Aurora. How dared you hurt him! My poor dog! My poor lame people dog! How dared you do it! You cowardly dastard! You! She disengaged her right hand from his collar, and rained a shower of blows upon his clumsy shoulders with her slender whip, a mere toy with emerald set in its golden head, but stinging like a rod of flexible steel in that little hand. How dared you! she repeated again and again, her cheeks changing from white to scarlet in the effort to hold the man with one hand. Her tangled hair had fallen to her waist by this time, and the whip was broken in half a dozen places. John Melish, entering the stable yard by chance at this very moment, turned white with horror at beholding the beautiful fury. Aurora! Aurora! he cried, snatching the man's collar from her grasp, and hurling him half a dozen paces off. Aurora, what is it? She told him in broken gasps the cause of her indignation. He took the splintered whip from her hand, picked up her hat which she had trodden upon in her rage, and led her across the yard towards the back entrance to the house. It was such a bitter shame to him to think that this peerless, this adored creature should do anything to bring disgrace or even ridicule to herself. He would have stripped off his coat and fought with half a dozen coal heavers and thought nothing of it, but that she go in, go in, my darling girl, he said, with a sorrowful tenderness, the servants of peeping and prying about, I dare say. You should not have done this. You should have told me. I should have told you! she cried impetuously. How could I stop to tell you when I saw him strike my poor dog, my poor named dog? Go in, darling, go in, there, there, calm yourself and go in. He spoke as if he had been trying to soothe an agitated child, for he saw by the convulsive heaving of her breast that the violent emotion would terminate in hysteria as all womanly fury must soon or later. He half led, half carried her up a back staircase to her own room, and left her lying on a sofa in her riding-habbit. He thrust the broken whip into his pocket, and then, setting his strong white teeth and clenching his fist, went to look for Stephen Hargraves. As he crossed the hall in his way out, he selected a stout, leather-thonged hunting whip from a stand of formidable implements. Steve, the softie, was sitting on a horse-lock when John re-entered the stable-yard. He was rubbing his shoulders with a very dull face, while a couple of grinning stable-boys, who had perhaps witnessed his chastisement, watched him from a respectful distance. They had no inclination to go too near him just then, for the softie had a playful habit of brandishing a big clasp-knife when he felt himself agreed, and the bravest lad in the stable had no wish to die from a stab in the abdomen, with the pleasant conviction that his murderous heaviest punishment might be a fortnight's imprisonment, or an easy fine. Now, Mr. Hargraves, said John Melish, lifting the softie off the horse-lock, and planting him at a convenient distance for giving full play to the hunting whip. It wasn't Mrs. Melish's business to horse-whip you, but it was her duty to let me do it for her, so take that, you coward! The leather-thong whistled in the air, and curled about Steve's shoulders. But John felt there was something despicable in the unequal contest. He threw his whip away, and, still holding him by the collar, conducted the softie to the gates of the stable-yard. You see that avenue, he said, pointing down a fair glade that stretched before them. It leads pretty straight out of the park, and I strongly recommend you, Mr. Stephen Hargraves, to get to the end of it as quick as ever you can, and never to show your ugly white face upon an inch of ground belonging to me again. Do you hear? Yes, sir. Stay. I suppose there's wages or something due to you. If you took a hand from love-money from his waistcoat pocket and threw it on the ground, sovereigns and half-crowns rolling hither and thither on the gravel path, then, turning on his heel, he left the softie to pick up the scattered treasure. Steve Hargraves dropped on his knees, and groped about till he had found the last coin, then, as he slowly counted the money from one hand into the other, his white face relaxed into a grin. John Melish had given him gold and silver, amounting to upward of two years of his ordinary wages. He walked a few paces down the avenue, and then, looking back, shook his fist at the house he was leaving behind him. You're a fine-spirited madame, Mrs. John Melish. Sure enough, he muttered. But never you give me a chance of doing you any, Miss Chief. Or, by the Lord, fun as I am. I'll do it. They think the softies up to naught, perhaps. Wait a bit. He took his money from his pocket again, and counted it once more as he walked slowly towards the gates of the park. It will be seen, therefore, that Aurora had two enemies, one without, and one within her pleasant home, one for ever brooding discontent and hatred within the holy circle of the domestic hearth, the other plotting ruin and vengeance without the walls of the citadel. Chapter 13 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. Reading done by Jules Harlech of Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. Aurora Floyd by Mary Elizabeth Braden. Chapter 13, The Spring Meeting The early spring brought Lucy Floyd on a visit to her cousin, a wandering witness of happiness that reigned at Melish Park. Poor Lucy had expected to find Aurora held as something better than the dogs and a little higher than the horses in that Yorkshire household and was considerably surprised to find her dark-eyed cousin a despotic and capricious sovereign reigning with undisputed sway over every creature, biped or quadruped upon the estate. She was surprised to see the bright glow in her cheeks, the merry sparkle in her eyes, surprised to hear the light tread of her footsteps, the gushing music of her laugh, surprised in fact to discover that instead of weeping over the dry bones of her dead love for Talbot Bulstrode, Aurora had learned to love her husband. Have I any need to be ashamed of my heroine in that she had forgotten her straight-nosed, grey-eyed, cornish lover who had set his pride and his pedigree between himself and his affection and had loved her at best with a reservation, although heaven only knows how dearly he had loved her? Have I any cause to blush for this poor, impetuous girl if turning in the sickness of her sorrowful heart with a sense of relief and gratitude to the honest shelter of John's love? She had quickly learned to feel for him an affection which repaid him a thousand fold for his long-suffering devotion. Surely it would have been impossible for any true-hearted woman to withhold some such repayment for such love as that which in every word and look and thought and deed John Melish bestowed upon his wife. How could she be forever his creditor for such a boundless debt, our hearts like his common among our clay? Is it a small thing to be beloved with this loyal and pure affection? Is it laid so often at the feet of any mortal woman that she could spurn and trample upon the holy offering? He had loved and more he had trusted her. He had trusted her when the man who passionately loved her had left her in an agony of doubt and despair. The cause of this lay in the difference between the two men. John Melish had as high and as stern a sense of honor as Talbot bull strode. But while the Cornish man's strength of brain lay in the reflective faculties, the Yorkshire man's acute intellect was strongest in its power of perception. Talbot drove himself half mad with imagining what might be. John saw what was and he saw or fancied he saw that the woman he loved was worthy of all love and he gave his peace and honor freely into her keeping. He had his reward, he had his reward in her frank womanly affection and in the delight of seeing that she was happy. No cloud upon her face, no shadow on her life, but ever beaming joy in her eyes, ever changing smiles upon her lips. She was happy in the calm security of her home, happy in that pleasant stronghold in which she was so fenced about and guarded by love and devotion. I do not know that she ever felt any romantic or enthusiastic love for this big Yorkshire man, but I do know that from the first hour in which she laid her head upon his broad breast she was true to him. True as a wife should be, true in every thought, true in the nearest shadow of thought. A wide gulf yonder around the altar of her home separating her from every other man in the universe and leaving her alone with that one man whom she had accepted as her husband. She had accepted him in the truest and purest sense of the word. She had accepted him from the hand of God as the protector and shelterer of her life. And morning and night upon her knees she thanked the gracious creator who had made this man for her help meet. But after duly setting down all this I have to confess that poor John Melish was cruelly hand-picked. Such big blustering fellows are created to be much enduring subjects of Petticoat government and they carry the rosy garlands until their dying hour with a sublime consciousness that those floral chains are not very easy to be broken. Your little man is self-assertive and forever on his guard against womanly domination. All tyrannical husbands on record have been little men from Mr. Daniel Kwell Popwood. But who could ever convince a fellow of six feet two in his stockings that he was afraid of his wife? He submits to the petty tyrant with a quiet smile of resignation. What does it matter? She is so little, so fragile. He could break that tiny wrist with one twist of his big thumb and finger. And in the meantime, till affairs get desperate and such measures become necessary, it's as well to let her have her own way. John Melish did not even debate the point. He loved her and he laid himself down to be trampled upon by her gracious feet. Whatever she did or said was charming, bewitching and wonderful to him. If she ridiculed or laughed at him, her laughter was the sweetest harmony in creation and it pleased him to think that his absurdities could give birth to such music. If she lectured him, she arose to the sublimity of a priestess and he listened to her and worshipped her as the most noble of living creatures. And with all this, his innate manliness of character preserved him from any taint of that quality of our our gut has christened Spoonieism. It was only those who knew him well and watched him closely who could fathom the full depths of his tender weakness. The noblest sentiments approached most nearly to the universal and this love of John's was in a manner universal. It was the love of a husband, father, mother, brother, melted into one comprehensive affection. He had a mother's weak pride and aurora, a mother's foolish vanity in the wonderful creature, the rarer avis he had won from her nest to be his wife. If Mrs. Melish was a complimented while John stood by, he simpered like a school girl who blushes at a handsome man's first flatteries. I'm afraid he bored his male acquaintance about my wife, her marvelous leap over the bullfinch, the plan she drew for the new stables, which the architect said was a better plan than he could have drawn himself, Sir Bygad, a clever man that donkastor architect. The surprising manner she had discovered the fault of the chestnut colts off foreleg, the pencil sketch she had made a verb dog bowow. Sir Edwin Lancier might have been proud of such spirit in dash, sir. All these things did the country gentlemen hear, until perhaps they grew a shade weary of John's talk of my wife. But they were never weary of aurora herself, she took her place at once among them, and they bowed down to her and worshiped her, envying John Melish the ownership of such a high-bred filly, as I fear they were but likely unconsciously to designate my black-eyed heroine. The domain over which aurora found herself Empress was no inconsiderable one. John Melish had inherited an estate which brought him an income of something between 16,000 and 17,000 pounds a year. Faraway farms upon wide Yorkshire, Wolves, and Fenney, Lincolnshire flats owned him master, and the intricate secrets of his possessions were scarcely known to himself, known perhaps to none but his land steward and solicitor, a grave gentleman who lived in Donkastor, and drove about once a fortnight down to Melish Park, much to the horror of his light-hearted master, to whom business was a terrible bugbearer. Not that I would have, the reader, for a moment imagine John Melish an empty-headed blockhead, with no comprehension save for his own daily pleasures. He was not a reading man, nor a businessman, nor a politician, nor a student of the natural sciences. There was an observatory in the park, but John had fitted it up as a smoking room, the revolving openings in the roof being very convenient for letting out the effluvia of his guests, charoots, and Havana's. Mr. Melish caring for the stars very much after the fashion of that Assyrian monarch who was content to see them shine and thank their maker for their beauty. He was not a spiritualist, and unless one of the tables at Melish could have given him a tip for the Salinger, or the Great Ebor, he would have cared very little if every inch of walnut and rosewood in his house had grown oracular. But for all this he was no fool. He had that brightly cleared intellect which very often accompanies perfect honesty of purpose, and which is the very intellect of all others most successful in the discomfiture of all neighbouring. He was not a creature to despise for his very weaknesses were manly. Perhaps Aurora felt this and that it was something to rule over such a man. Sometimes in an outburst of loving gratitude she would nestle her handsome head upon his breast. Tall as she was she was only tall enough to take shelter under his wing and tell him that he was the dearest and the best of men and that although she might love him to her dying day she could never never never love him half as much as he deserved. After which half ashamed of herself for the sentimental declaration she would alternatively ridicule, lecture and tyrannize over him for the rest of the day. Lucy beheld this state of things with silent bewilderment. Could the woman who had once been loved by Talbot bullstrobe sink to this the happy wife of a fair haired Yorkshire man with her fondest wishes concentrated in her namesake? The Bayfilly which was to run in a wait for age race at the York Spring and was entered for the ensuing derby interested in the Tangallop a new stable talking of mysterious but evidently all important creatures called by such names as Scott and Fulbert and Chetlander and to all appearance utterly forgetful of the fact that there existed upon the earth a divinity with fathomless gray eyes known as the air of bullstrobe. Poor Lucy was like to have been driven well night demented by the talk about this Bayfilly Aurora as the spring meeting drew near. She was taken to see it every morning by Aurora and John who in their anxiety for the improvement of their favorite looked at the animal upon each visit as if they expected some wonderful physical transformation to have occurred in the stillness of the night. The loose box in which the filly was lodged was watched night and day by the amateur detective force of stable boys and hangers on and John Mellis once went so far as to dip a tumbler into the pail of water provided for the Bayfilly Aurora to ascertain of his own experience that the crystal fluid was innocuous for he grew nervous as the eventful day drew nigh and was afraid of lurking danger to the filly from dark minded touts who might have heard of her in London. I fear the touts troubled their heads very little about this graceful two year old though she had the blood of old Melbourne and West Australian in her veins to say nothing of other aristocracy upon the maternal side. The suspicious gentlemen hanging about York and Doncaster in those early April days were a great deal too much occupied with Lord Glasgow's lot and John Scott's lot and Lord Zetland's and Mr. Mary's lot and other lots of equal distinction to have much time to prowl about Mellish Park or peer into that meadow which the young man had caused to be surrounded by an eight foot fence for the privacy of the Derby winner in future all. Lucy declared the filly to be the loveliest of creatures and safe to win any number of cups and plates that might be offered for a quine competition but she was always glad when the daily visit was over to find herself safely out of reach of those hybrid hind legs which seemed to possess a faculty for being in all four corners of the loose box at one and the same moment. The first day of the meeting came and found half the Mellish household established at York, John and his family at the hotel near the bedding rooms and the trainer his satellites and the filly at a little in close to Navesmire. Archibald Floyd did his best to be interested in the event which was so interesting to his children but he freely confessed to his grandniece Lucy that he heartily wished the meeting over and the merits of the Bay filly decided. She had stood her trial nobly John said not winning with a rush it is true in point of fact being in a manner beaten but eventing a power to stay which promised better for the future than any two-year-old velocity. When the saddling bell rang Aurora her father and Lucy were stationed in the balcony a crowd of friends about them Mrs. Mellish with a pencil in her hand putting down all manner of impossible bets in her excitement and making such a book as might have been preserved as a curiosity in sporting annals. John was pushing in and out of the ring below tumbling over small bookmen in his agitation dashing from the ring to the weighing house and hanging about the small pale faced boy who was to ride the filly as anxiously as if the jockey had been a prime minister and John a family man with half a dozen sons in need of government appointments. I tremble to think how many bonuses in the way of five pound notes John promised the pale faced lad on condition that the stakes some small matter amounting to about 60 pounds were pulled off pulled off where I wonder by the bay filly Aurora if the youth had not been of that preternatural order of being who seemed born of an emotionless character to wear silk for the good of their fellow men his brain must certainly have been dazed by the variety of conflicting directions which John Mellish gave him within the critical last quarter of an hour but having received his orders early that morning from the trainer accompanied with a warning not to suffer himself to be cued Yorkshire pat wafer worried by anything Mr. Mellish might say the saddle complexion lad walked about in the calm serenity of innocence there are honest jockeys in the world thank heaven and took his seat in the saddle with as even a pulse as if he had been about to ride in an omnibus there were some people upon the stand that morning who taught the face of Aurora Mellish as pleasant a sight as the smooth green sword of the knave's mire or the best horse flesh in the county of York all forgetful of herself and her excitement with her natural velocity multiplied by the animation of the scene before her she was more than usually lovely an archibald Floyd looked at her with a fond emotion so intermingled with gratitude to heaven for the happiness of his daughter's destiny as to be almost akin to pain she was happy she was thoroughly happy at last the child of his dead Eliza this sacred charge left to him by the woman he had loved she was happy and she was safe he could go to his grave resignedly tomorrow if it pleased god knowing this strange thoughts perhaps for a crowded race course but our most solemn fancies do not come always in solemn places nay it is often in the midst of crowds and confusion that our souls wing their loftiest flights and the saddest memories return to us you see a man sitting at some theatrical entertainment with a grave abstracted face over which no change of those around him has any influence he may be thinking of his dead wife dead 10 years ago he may be acting over well-remembered scenes of joy and sorrow he may be recalling cruel words never to be atoned for upon earth angry looks gone to be registered against him in the skies while his children are laughing at the clown on the stages below him he may be moodily meditating inevitable bankruptcy or coming ruin holding imaginary meetings with his creditors and contemplating prusik acid upon the refusal of his certificate while his eldest daughter is crying with pauline de champels so archibald floyd while the numbers were going up and the jockeys being weighed and the bookman clamoring below him leaned over the broad ledge of the stone balcony and looking far away across the grassy amphitheater thought of his dead wife who had bequeathed to him this precious daughter the bay filly aurora was beaten ignominiously mrs. melis turned white with despair as she saw the amber jacket black belt and the blue cap crawling it in at the heels of the ruck the jockey looking pale defiance at the bystanders as who should say that the filly had never been meant to win and that the defeat of today was but an artfully concocted ruse whereby fortunes were to be made in the future john melis something used to such disappointments crept away to hide his discomfort here outside the ring but aurora dropped her card and pencil and stamping her foot upon the stone flooring of the balcony told lucy and the banker that it was a shame and that the boy must have sold the race as it was impossible that the filly could have been fairly beaten as she turned to say this her cheeks flushed with fashion and her eyes flashing bright agonization on anyone who might stand in the way to receive the angry electric light she became aware of a pale face and a pair of gray eyes earnestly regarding her from the threshold of an open window two or three paces off and in another moment both she and her father had recognized talbot bolstero the young man saw that he was recognized and approached them had in hand very very pale as lucy always remembered and with a voice that trembled as he spoke wished the banker and the two ladies good day and it was thus that they met these two who had parted in silence and tears more than half brokenhearted to sever as they thought for eternity it was thus upon this commonplace prosaic half guinea grandstand that destiny brought them once more face to face a year ago and how often in the spring twilight aurora floyd had pictured her possible meeting with talbot bolstero he would come upon her suddenly perhaps in the still moonlight and she would swoon away and die at his feet of the unungurable emotion or they would meet in some crowded assembly she dancing laughing with hallowed simulated mirth and the shock of one glance of those eyes would slay her in her painted glory of jewels and grandeur how often off how often she had acted the scene and felt the anguish only a year ago less than a year ago i even so lately as on the balmy september day when she had laid on the rustic couch at chateau darks looking down at the fair normandy landscape with faithful john at watch by her side the tame goats browsing upon the grassy platform behind her and preternaturally ancient french children teasing the mild long suffering animals and today she met him with her thoughts so full of the horse that had just been beaten that she scarcely knew what she said to her sometime lover aurora floyd was dead and buried and aurora melish looking critically at talbot bolstero wondered how anyone could have ever gone near to the gates of death for the love of him it was talbot who grew pale at this unlooked for encounter it was talbot whose voice was shaken in the utterance of those few everyday syllables which common courtesy demanded of him the captain had not so easily learned to forget he was older than aurora and he had reached the age of two and thirty without ever loved woman only to be more desperately attacked by the fatal disease when his time came he suffered acutely at that sudden meeting wounded in his pride by her serene indifference dazzled afresh by her beauty mad with jealous fury at the thought that he had lost her captain bolstero's feelings were of no very enviable nature and if aurora had ever wished to avenge that cruel scene at felden woods her hour of vengeance had most certainly come but she was too generous a creature to have harbored such a thought she had submitted in all humility to talbot's decree she had accepted his decision and had believed in its justice and seeing his agitation today she was sorry for him she pitied him with a tender matronly compassion such as she and the safe harbor of a happy home might be privileged to feel for this poor wanderer still at sea on life's troubled ocean love and the memory of love must indeed have died before we can feel like this the terrible passion must have died that slow and certain death from the grave of which no haunting ghost ever returns to torment the survivors it was and it is not aurora might have been shipwrecked and cast on a desert island with talbot bolstero and might have lived 10 years in his company without ever feeling for 10 seconds as she had felt for him once with these impetuous and impressionable people who lived quickly a year is sometimes as 20 years so aurora looked back at talbot bolstero across a gulf which stretched for weary miles between them and wondered if they had really ever stood side by side allied by hope and love in the days that were gone while aurora was thinking of these things as well as a little of the bay filly and while talbot half choked by a thousand confused emotions tried to appear peter naturally at his ease john melish having refreshed his spirits with bottled water came suddenly upon the party and slapped the captain on the back he was not jealous this happy john secure in his wife's love and truth he was ready to face a regiment of her old admirers indeed he rather delighted in the idea of avenging aurora upon this cowardly lover talbot glanced involuntarily at the members of the york constabulary on the course below wondering how they would act if he were to fling john melish over the stone balcony and do a murder then and there he was thinking of this while john was nearly ringing off his hand in cordial salutation and asking what the deuce had brought him to the york springs talbot explained rather lamely that being knocked up by his parliamentary work he had come down to spend a few days with an old brother officer captain hunter who had a place between york and leeds mr melish declared that nothing could be more lucky than this he knew hunter well the two men must join them at dinner that day and talbot must give them a week at the park after he left the captain's place talbot murmured some vague protestations of impossibility of this to which john paid no attention whatever hustling his sometime rival away from the ladies in his eagerness to get back to the ring where he had to complete his book for the next race so captain bolsteroed was gone once more and throughout the brief interview no one had cared to notice lucy floyd who had been pale and read by turns half a dozen times within the last 10 minutes john and talbot returned after the start with captain hunter who was brought on to the stand to be presented to aurora and who immediately entered into a very animated discussion about the day's racing how captain bolsteroed abhorred this idle babble of horse flesh this perpetual jargon alike in every mouth from aurora's rosy cupid's bow to the tobacco tainted lips of the bookman in the ring thank heaven this was not his wife who knew all the slang of the course and with lornette in hand was craning her swan-like throat to catch sight of the wind in the knave's mire and the horse that had a lead of a half a mile why had he ever consented to come into this accursed horse racing county why had he deserted the cornish miners even for a week better to be wearing out his brains overdry a dust pamphlets and parliamentary minutes than to be here desolate among these shallow-minded clamorous multitude who have nothing to do but to throw up caps and cry who's up for any winner of any race talbot as a bystander could not but remark this and draw from this something of a philosophical lesson on life he saw that there was always the same clamor and the same rejoicing in the crowd whether the winning jockey wore blue and black belt yellow and black cap white with scarlet spots or any other variety of color even dismal sable and he could but wonder how this was did the unlucky speculators run away and hide themselves while the uplifted voices were rejoicing when the welkin was rent with the name of kettle drum where were the men who had back done d unflinchingly up to the dropping of the flag and the ringing of the bell when four men came in with a rush where were the wretched creatures whose fortunes hung on umpire and wizard they were voiceless these poor unlucky ones crawling away with sick white faces to gathering groups and explain to each other with stable jargon intermingled with oaths how it ought not to have been and never could have been but for some unlooked for and preposterous combination of events never before witnessed upon any mortal course how little is ever seen of the losers in any of the great races run upon this earth for years and years the name of louis napoleon is a empty sound signifying nothing when lull a few master strokes of policy and finesse a little juggling with those pieces of pay sport out of which are built the shaky card palaces men call empires and creation rings with the same name the outsider emerges from the ruck and the purple jacket spotted with golden bees is foremost in the mighty race talbot bolsteroed leaned with folded arms upon the stone balustrade looking down at the busy life below him and thinking of these things pardon him for his indulgence in dreary platitudes and worn out sentimentalities he was a desolate purposeless man entered for no race himself scratched for the matrimonial stakes embittered by disappointment soured by doubt and suspicion he had spent the dull winter months upon the continent having no mind to go down to bolsteroed to encounter his mother's sympathy and his cousin constant travillian's chatter he was unjust enough to nourish a secret dislike to that young lady for the good service she had done him by revealing aurora's flight are we really grateful to the people who tell us of the inequity of those we love are we ever really just to the kindly creatures who give us friendly warning of our danger no never we hate them always involuntarily reverting to them as the first cause of our anguish always repeating to ourselves that had they been silent that anguish need never have been always ready to burst forth in one wild rage with the mad cry that it is better to be much abused than but to know that little when the friendly ancient drops his poison hints into poor othello's ear it is not mrs. desamanda but ayago himself whom the noble more first had a mind to strangle if poor innocent constants travillian had been born the various kerr in the county of cornwall she would have had a better chance of winning talbot's regard than she had now why had he come into yorkshire i left that question unanswered just now for i am ashamed to tell the reasons which actuated this unhappy man he came in a perioxiism of curiosity to learn what kind of life aurora led with her husband john millish he had suffered horrible distractions of mine upon this subject one moment imagining her the most despicable of coquettes ready to marry any man who had a fair estate and a good position to offer her and by and by depicting her as some white-robed iphigenia led a passive victim to the sacrificial shrine so when happening to meet this good-natured brother officer at the united service club he had consented to run down to captain hunter's country place for a brief respite from parliamentary minutes and red tape the artful hypocrite had never owned to himself that he was burning to hear tidings of his false and fickled love and that it was some lingering fumes of the old intoxication that carried him down to yorkshire but now now that he had met her met her the heartless abominable creature radiant and happy mere simulated happiness and feverish mock radiance no doubt but too well put on to be quite pleasing to him now he knew her he knew her at last the wicked enchantress the soulless siren he knew that she had never loved him that she was of course powerless to love good for nothing but to wreath her white arms and flash the dark splendor of her eyes for the weak men's destruction fit for nothing but to float in her beauty above the waves that concealed the bleached bones of her victims poor john melish talbot reproached himself for his hardness of heart in nourishing one spiteful feeling toward a man who was so deeply to be pitied when the race was done captain bolsteroid turned and beheld the black eyed sorceress in the midst of a group gathered about a grave patriarch with gray hair and the look of one accustomed to command this great patriarch was john pasturn i write his name with respect even as it was reverentially whispered there till traveling from lip to lip everyone present knew that a great man was among them a very quiet unassuming veteran sitting with his woman kind about him his wife and daughter as i think self possessed and grave while men were busy with his name in the crowd below and while tens of thousands were staked in trusting dependence on his acumen what golden syllables might have fallen from those oracular lips had the veteran been so pleased what hundreds would have been freely bitten for a word a look a nod a wink a mere significant piercing of the lips from the great man what is the fable of the young lady who disgorced pearls and diamonds to a truth such as this pearls and diamonds must be of a large size which would be worth the secrets of those richman stables the secrets which mr. pastor might tell if he chose perhaps it is the knowledge of this which gives him a calm almost clerical gravity of manner people come to him and fawn upon him and tell him that such and such a horse from his stable has won or looks safe to win and he nods pleasantly thanking them for the kind information while perhaps his thoughts are far away on epsom downs or new market flats winning future derbies and two thousands with colts that are yet unfold john melis is on intimate terms with the great man to whom he presents aurora and of whom he asks advice upon a matter that has been troubling him for some time his trainer's health is failing him and he wants assistance in the stables a younger man honest and clever does mr. pastor know such a one the veteran tells him after due consideration that he does know of a young man honest he believes as times go who was once employed in the richman stables and who has written to him only a few days before asking for his influence in getting him a situation but the lads name has slipped my memory added mr. pastor and he was but a lad when he was with me but bless my soul that's 10 years ago i'll look up his letter when i go home and write to you about him i know he's clever and i believe he's honest and i shall be only too happy concluded the old gentleman gallantly to do anything to oblige mrs. melis end of chapter 13 the spring meeting chapter 14 of aurora floyd this is a libra vox recording all libra vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libra vox org recording by elizabeth clett aurora floyd by mary elizabeth bradden chapter 14 love took up the glass of time and turned it in his glowing hands talbot bolstrode yielded at last to john's repeated invitations and consented to pass a couple of days at melis park he despised and hated himself for the absurd concession in what a pitiful farce had the tragedy ended a visitor in the house of his rival a calm spectator of aurora's every day commonplace happiness for the space of two days he had consented to occupy this most preposterous position two days only then back to the cornish miners and the desolate bachelors lodgings in queen square westminster back to his tent in life's great sahara he could not for the very soul of him resist the temptation of beholding the inner life of that yorkshire mansion he wanted to know for certain what was it to him i wonder whether she was really happy and had utterly forgotten him they all returned to the park together aurora john archibald floyd lucy talbot bolstrode and captain hunter the last named officer was a jovial gentleman with a hook nose and auburn whiskers a gentleman whose intellectual attainments were of no very oppressive order but a hearty pleasant guest in an honest country mansion where there is cheer and welcome for all talbot could but inwardly confess that aurora became her new position how everybody loved her what an atmosphere of happiness she created about her wherever she went how joyously the dog sparked and leaped at sight of her straining their chains in the desperate effort to approach her how fearlessly the thoroughbred mares and foals ran to the paddock gates to bid her welcome bending down their velvet nostrils to nestle upon her shoulder or respond to the touch of her caressing hand seeing all this how could talbot refrain from remembering that the same sunlight might have shown upon that dreary castle far away by the surging western sea she might have been his this beautiful creature but at what price at the price of honor at the price of every principle of his mind which had set up for himself a holy and perfect standard a pure and spotless ideal for the wife of his choice forbid it manhood he might have weekly yielded he might have been happy with the blind happiness of a lotus-eater but not the reasonable bliss of a Christian thank heaven for the strength which had been given him to escape from the silken net thank heaven for the power which had been granted to him to fight the battle standing by aurora's side in one of the wide windows at mallish park looking far out over the belted lawn to the glades in which the deer lay basking drowsily in the april sunlight he could not repress the thought uppermost in his mind i am very glad to see you so happy mrs. melish she looked at him with frank truthful eyes in whose brightness there was not one latent shadow yes she said i am very very happy my husband is very good to me he loves and trusts me she could not resist that one little stab the only vengeance she ever took upon him but a stroke that pierced him to the heart aurora aurora aurora he cried that half stifled cry revealed the secret of wounds that were not yet healed mrs. melish turned pale at the traitorous sound this man must be cured the happy wife secure in her own stronghold of love and confidence could not bear to see this poor fellow still adrift she by no means despaired of his cure for experience had taught her that although love's passionate fever takes several forms there are very few of them incurable had she not passed safely through the ordeal herself without one scar to bear witness of the old wounds she left captain balstrode staring moodily out of the window and went away to plan the saving of this poor shipwrecked soul she ran in the first place to tell mr. john melish of her discovery as it was her custom to carry to him every scrap of intelligence great and small my dearest old jack she said it was another of her customs to address him by every species of exaggeratedly endearing appellation it may be that she did this for the quieting of her own conscience being well aware that she tyrannized over him my darling boy i have made a discovery about the filly about tool bit balstrode john's blue eyes twinkled maliciously he was half prepared for what was coming what is it lolly lolly was a corruption of aurora devised by john melish why i'm really afraid my precious darling that he hasn't quite got over my taking you away from him roared john i thought as much poor devil poor tool bit i could see that he would have liked to fight me on the stand at york upon my word i pity him and in token of his compassion mr. melish burst into that old joyous boisterous but musical laugh which toll bit might almost have heard at the other end of the house this was a favorite delusion of john's he firmly believed that he had won aurora's affection and fair competition with captain balstrode pleasantly ignoring that the captain had resigned all pretensions to miss floyd's hand nine or ten months before his own offer had been accepted the genial sanguine creature had a habit of deceiving himself in this manner he saw all things in the universe just as he wished to see them all men and women good and honest life one long pleasant voyage in a well-fitted ship with only first-class passengers on board he was one of those men who are likely to cut their throats or take prusik acid upon the day they first encounter the black visage of care and what are we to do with this poor fellow lolly marry him exclaimed mrs. melish both of us said john simply my dearest pet what an obtuse old darling you are no marry him to lucy floyd my first cousin once removed and keep the balstrode estate in the family marry him to lucy yes why not she has studied enough and learned history and geography and astronomy and botany and geology and conchology and entomology enough and she has covered i don't know how many china jars with impossible birds and flowers and she has illuminated missiles and red high church novels and so the next best thing she can do is to marry tulbert balstrode john had his own reasons for agreeing with aurora in this matter he remembered that secret of poor lucy's which he had discovered more than a year before it felled in woods the secret which had been revealed to him by some mysterious sympathetic power belonging to hopeless love so mr. melish declared his hearty concurrence in aurora's scheme and the two amateur matchmakers set to work to devise a complicated mantra in the which tall bit was to be entangled never for a moment imagining that while they were racking their brains in the endeavor to bring this piece of machinery to perfection the intended victim was quietly strolling across the sunlit lawn toward the very fate they desired for him yes tall bit balstrode lounged with languid step to meet his destiny in a wood upon the borders of the park a part of the park indeed in as much as it was within the boundary fence of john's domain the wood anemones trembled in the spring breezes deep in those shadowy arcades pale prim roses showed their mild faces amid their sheltering leaves and in shady nooks beneath low spreading boughs of elm and beach oak and ash the violets hid their purple beauty from the vulgar eye a lovely spot soothing by its harmonious influence a very forest sanctuary without whose dim arcades man cast his burden down to enter in a child captain balstrode had felt in no very pleasant humor as he walked across the lawn but some softening influence stole upon him on the threshold of that sylvan shelter which made him feel a better man he began to question himself as to how he was playing his part in the great drama of life good heavens he thought what a shameful coward what a negative wretch i have become by this one grief of my manhood an indifferent son a careless brother a useless purposeless creature content to dawdle away my life in feeble pottering with political economy shall i ever be in earnest again is this dreary doubt of every living creature to go with me to my grave less than two years ago my heart sickened at the thought that i had lived to two and thirty years of age and had never been loved since then since then since then i have lived through life's brief fever i have fought manhood's worst and sharpest battle and find myself where exactly where i was before still companionless upon the dreary journey only a little nearer to the end he walked slowly onward into the woodland isle other aisles branching away from him right and left into deep glades and darkening shadow a month or so later and the mossy ground beneath his feet would be one purple carpet of hyacinths the very air thick with a fatal scented vapor from the perfumed bulbs i asked too much said Talbot in that voiceless argument we are perpetually carrying on with ourselves i asked too much i yielded to the spell of the siren and was angry because i missed the white wings of the angel i was bewitched by the fascinations of a beautiful woman when i should have sought for a noble-minded wife he went deeper and deeper into the wood going to his fate as another man was to do before the coming summer was over but to what a different fate the long arcades of beach and elm had reminded him from the first of the solemn aisles of a cathedral the saint was only needed and coming suddenly to a spot where a new arcade branched off abruptly on his right hand he saw in one of the sylvan niches as fair as saint as had ever been modelled by the hand of artist and believer the same golden-haired angel he had seen in the long drawing-room at Feldenwoods Lucy Floyd with the pale aureola about her head her large straw hat in her lap filled with anemones and violets and the third volume of a novel in her hand how much in life often hangs or seems to us to hang upon what is called by playwrights a situation but for this sudden encounter but for coming thus upon this pretty picture Talbot Bulstrode might have dropped into his grave ignorant to the last of Lucy's love for him but given a sunshiny April morning April's fairest bloom remember when the capricious nymph is mending her manners aware that her lovelier sister may is at hand and anxious to make a good impression before she drops her farewell courtesy and weeps her last brief shower of farewell tears given a balmy spring morning solitude a wood wildflowers golden hair and blue eyes and is the problem difficult to solve Talbot Bulstrode leaning against the broad trunk of a beach looked down at the fair face which crimson under his eyes and the first glimmering hint of Lucy's secret began to dawn upon him at that moment he had no thought of profiting by the discovery no thought of what he was afterward led on to say his mind was filled with the storm of emotion that had burst from him in that wild cry to Aurora rage and jealousy regret despair envy love and hate all the conflicting feelings that had struggled like so many demons in his soul at sight of Aurora's happiness were still striving for mastery in his breast and the first words he spoke revealed the thoughts that were uppermost your cousin is very happy in her new life Miss Floyd he said Lucy looked up at him with surprise it was the first time he had spoken to her of Aurora yes she answered quietly I think she is happy Captain Balstrode whisked the end of his cane across a group of anemones and decapitated the tremulous blossoms he was thinking rather savagely what a shame it was that this glorious Aurora could be happy with big broad-shouldered jovial tempered John Mellish he could not understand the strange anomaly he could not discover the clue to the secret he could not comprehend that the devoted love of this sturdy Yorkshireman was in itself strong enough to conquer all difficulties to outweigh all differences little by little he and Lucy began to talk of Aurora until Miss Floyd told her companion all about that dreary time it filled in woods during which the life of the heiress was well nigh despaired of so she had loved him truly then after all she had loved and had suffered and had lived down her trouble and had forgotten him and was happy the story was all told in that one sentence he looked blankly back at the irrecoverable past and was angry with the pride of the Balstrode's which had stood between himself and his happiness he told sympathizing Lucy something of his sorrow told her that miss apprehension mistaken pride had parted him from Aurora she tried in her gentle innocent fashion to comfort the strong man in his weakness and in trying revealed ah how simply and transparently the old secret which had so long been hidden from him heaven help the man whose heart is caught at the rebound by a fair haired divinity with dove-like eyes and a low tremulous voice softly attuned to his grief Talbot Balstrode saw that he was beloved and in very gratitude made a dismal offer of the ashes of that fire which had burnt so fiercely at Aurora's shrine do not despise this poor Lucy if she accepted her cousin's forgotten lover with humble thankfulness nay with a tumult of wild delight and with joyful fear and trembling she loved him so well and had loved him so long forgive and pity her for she was one of those pure and innocent creatures whose whole being resolves itself unto affection to whom passion anger and pride are unknown who live only to love and who love unto death Talbot Balstrode told Lucy Floyd that he had loved Aurora with the whole strength of his soul but that now the battle was over he the stricken warrior needed a consoler for his declining days would she could she give her hand to one who would strive to the uttermost to fulfill a husband's duty and to make her happy happy she would have been happy if he'd asked her to be his slave happy if she could have been a scullery maid at Balstrode castle so that she might have seen the dark face she loved once or twice a day through the obscure pains of some kitchen window but she was the most undemonstrative of women and except by her blushes and her drooping eyelids and the teardrop trembling upon the soft auburn lashes she made no reply to the captain's appeal until at last taking her hand in his he won from her a low consenting murmur which meant yes good heavens how hard it is upon such women as these that they feel so much and yet display so little feeling the dark eyed impetuous creatures who speak out fearlessly and tell you that they love or hate you flinging their arms around your neck or throwing the carving knife at you as the case may be get full value for all their emotion but these gentle creatures love and make no sign they sit like patients on a monument smiling at grief and no one reads the mournful meaning of that sad smile concealment like the worm in the bud feeds on their damask cheeks and compassionate relatives tell them that they are bilious and recommend cockles pills or some other homely remedy for their palate complexions they are always at a disadvantage their inner life may be a tragedy all blood and tears while their outward existence is some dull domestic drama of everyday life the only outward sign Lucy Floyd gave of the condition of her heart was that one tremulous half-whispered affirmative and yet what a tempest of emotion was going forward within the muslin folds of her dress rose and fell with the surging billows but for the very life of her she could have uttered no better response to Talbot's pleading it was only by and by after she and captain Balstrode had wandered slowly back to the house that her emotion betrayed itself Aurora met her cousin in the corridor out of which their rooms opened and drawing Lucy into her own dressing room asked the true end where she had been where have you been you runaway girl John and I have wanted you half a dozen times Miss Lucy Floyd explained that she'd been in the wood with the last new novel a high church novel in which the heroine rejected the clerical hero because he did not perform the service according to the rubric now Miss Lucy Floyd made this confession with so much confusion and so many blushes that it would have appeared as if there were some lurking criminality in the fact of spending an April morning in a wood and being father examined as to why she had stayed so long and whether she had been alone all the time poor Lucy fell into a pitiful state of embarrassment saying that she had been alone that is to say part of the time or at least most of the time but that captain Balstrode but in trying to pronounce his name this beloved this sacred name Lucy Floyd's utterance failed her she fairly broke down and burst into tears Aurora laid her cousin's face upon her breast and looked down with a womanly maternly glance into those tearful blue eyes Lucy my darling she said is it really and truly as I think as I wish Talbot loves you he has asked me to marry him Lucy whispered and you you have consented you love him Lucy Floyd only answered by a new burst of tears why my darling how this surprises me how long has it been so Lucy how long have you loved him from the first hour I saw him murmured Lucy from the first day he came to Felden oh Aurora I know how foolish and weak it was I hate myself for the folly but he is so good so noble so my silly darling and because he is good and noble and asked you to be his wife you shed as many tears as if you had been asked to go to his funeral my loving tender Lucy you loved him all the time then and you were so gentle and good to me to me who was so selfish enough never to guess my dearest you are a hundred times better suited to him than ever I was and you will be as happy as happy as I am with that ridiculous old John Aurora's eyes filled with tears as she spoke she was truly and sincerely glad that Talbot was in a fair way to find consolation still more glad that her sentimental cousin was to be made happy Talbot Bulstrode lingered on a few days at Melish Park happy ah two happy days for Lucy Floyd and then departed after receiving the congratulations of John and Aurora he was to go straight to Alexander Floyd's villa at Fulham and plead his cars with Lucy's father there was little fear of his meeting other than a favorable reception for Talbot Bulstrode of Bulstrode Castle was a very great match for a daughter of the junior branch of Floyd Floyd and Floyd a young lady whose expectations were considerably qualified by half a dozen brothers and sisters so Captain Bulstrode went back to London as the betrothed lover of Lucy Floyd went back with a subdued gladness in his heart all unlike the stormy joys of the past he was happy in the choice he had made calmly and dispassionately he had loved Aurora for her beauty and her fascination he was going to marry Lucy because he had seen much of her had observed her closely and believed her to be all that a woman should be perhaps if stern truth must be told Lucy's chief charm in the captain's eyes lay in that reverence for himself which she so naively betrayed he accepted her worship with a quiet unconscious serenity and thought her the most sensible of women mrs. Alexander was utterly bewildered when Aurora's sometime lover pleaded for her daughter's hand she was too busy a mother among her little flock to be the most penetrating of observers and she had never suspected the state of Lucy's heart she was glad therefore to find that her daughter did justice to her excellent education and had too much good sense to refuse so advantageous an offer as that of captain Bolstrode and she joined with her husband in perfect approval of Talbot's suit so there being no let or hindrance and as the lovers had long known and esteemed each other it was decided at the captain's request that the wedding should take place early in June and that the honeymoon should be spent at Bolstrode Castle at the end of May Mr. and Mrs. Mellish went to Felden on purpose to attend Lucy's wedding which took place with great style at Fulham Archibald Floyd presenting his grandniece with a check for five thousand pounds after the return from church once during that marriage ceremony Talbot Bolstrode was nigh rubbing his eyes thinking that the pageant must be a dream a dream surely for here was a pale fair-haired girl by his side while the woman he had chosen two years before stood amid a group behind him and looked on at the ceremony a pleased spectator but when he felt the little gloved hand trembling upon his arm as the bride and bridegroom left the altar he remembered that it was no dream and that life held new and solemn duties for him from that hour. Now my two heroines being married the reader versed in the physiology of novel writing may conclude that my story is done that the green curtain is ready to fall upon the last act of the play and that I have nothing more to do than to entreat indulgence for the shortcomings of the performance and the performers yet after all does the business of the real life drama always end upon the altar steps must the play needs be over when the hero and heroine have signed their names in the register does man cease to be to do and to suffer when he gets married and is it necessary that the novelist after devoting three volumes to the description of a courtship of six weeks duration should reserve for himself only half a page in which to tell us the events of two-thirds of a lifetime Aurora is married and settled and happy sheltered as one would imagine from all dangers safe under the wing of her stalwart adorer but it does not therefore follow that the story of her life is done she has escaped shipwreck for a while and has landed safely on a pleasant shore but the storm may still lower darkly upon the horizon while the horse thunder grumbles threateningly in the distance end of chapter 14