most of my petitioners want,” she answered; “whether it’s the curate of a new chapel with mediæval decorations, who wants to rival our Lady of Bons-Secours upon one of the hills about Norwood; or a laundress who has burnt a week’s washing, and wants the means to make it good; or a lady of fashion, who is about to inaugurate a home for the children of indigent lucifer-match sellers; or a lecturer upon political economy, or Shelley and Byron, or Charles Dickens and the modern humorists, who is going to hold forth at Croydon; they all want the same thing — money! If I tell the curate that my principles are evangelical, and that I can’t pray sincerely if there are candlesticks on the altar, he is not the less glad of my hundred pounds. If I inform the lady of fashion that I have peculiar opinions about the orphans of lucifer-match sellers, and cherish a theory of my own against the education of the masses, she will shrug her shoulders deprecatingly, but will take care to let me know that any donation Miss Floyd may be pleased to afford will be equally acceptable. If I told them that I had committed half a dozen murders, or that I had a silver statue of the winner of last year’s Derby erected on an altar in my dressing-room, and did daily and nightly homage to it, they would take my money and thank me kindly for it, as that man did just now.”
“But one word, Aurora — does the man belong to this neighborhood?”
“No.”
“How, then, did you come to know him?”
She looked at him for a moment steadily, unflinchingly, with a thoughtful expression in that ever-changing countenance — looked as if she were mentally debating some point. Then, rising suddenly, she gathered her shawl about her and walked toward the door. She paused upon the threshold and said,
“This cross-questioning is scarcely pleasant, Captain Bulstrode. If I choose to give a five pound note to any person who may ask me for it, I expect full license to do so, and I will not submit to be called to account for my actions — even by you.”
“Aurora!”
The tenderly reproachful tone struck her to the heart.
“You may believe, Talbot,” she said, “you must surely believe that I know too well the value of your love to imperil it by word or deed — you must believe this.”
Chapter 8
Poor John Mellish Comes Back Again.
John Mellish grew weary of the great City of Paris. Better love, and contentment, and a crust in a mansarde, than stalled oxen or other costly food in the loftiest saloons au premier, and with the most obsequious waiters to do us homage, and repress so much as a smile at our insular idiom. He grew heartily weary of the Rue de Rivoli, 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 Elysées, and the rattle of the hoofs of the troop about his imperial highness’s carriage when Napoleon the Third 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 Lepelletier. He was tired of the broad boulevards, and the theatres, and the cafés, and the glove-shops — tired of staring at the jewellers’ windows in the Rue de la Paix, picturing to himself the face of Aurora Floyd under the diamond and emerald tiaras 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 Meurice’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 Mellish had been from his cradle a spoiled child — spoiled by poor relations and parasites, servants and toadies, 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 bowstrung before his eyes, and so made an end of it; but, being merely a Yorkshire gentleman and land-owner, 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 Mellish 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. Mellish 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 stable-boys 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. But, instead of going from the Dover Railway Station to the Great Northern Hotel, eating his dinner, and starting for Doncaster by the express, Mr. Mellish 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 pretence of driving to Baker street in a Hansom 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 Beckenham. Archibald Floyd, who knew nothing of this young Yorkshireman’s declaration and rejection, had given him a hearty invitation to Felden Woods. Why should n’t he go there? Only to make a 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 Bulstrode’s happiness, and it had been one of the chief consolations of his exile to remember that that 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 Bonheur’s pictures, while Talbot Bulstrode 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 a 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 Bulstrode. 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 wellnigh 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 visitor’s returning to town either that night or the next day.
“You must spend Christmas with us,” he said, “and see the
