Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  “What does it mean?” he thought; “has she fallen in love with some man whom her father has forbidden her to marry, and is the old man trying to atone for his severity? That’s scarcely likely. A woman with a head and throat like hers could scarcely fail to be ambitious — ambitious and revengeful, rather than over-susceptible of any tender passion. Did she lose half her fortune upon that race she talked to me about? I’ll ask her presently. Perhaps they have taken away her betting-book, or lamed her favorite horse, or shot some pet dog, to cure him of distemper. She is a spoiled child, of course, this heiress, and I dare say her father would try to get a copy of the moon made for her if she cried for that planet.”

  After luncheon, the banker took his guests into the gardens that stretched far away upon two sides of the house — the gardens which poor Eliza Floyd had helped to plan nineteen years before.

  Talbot Bulstrode walked rather stiffly from his Crimean wound, but Mrs. Alexander and her daughter suited their pace to his, while Aurora walked before them with her father and Mr. Maldon, and with the mastiff close at her side.

  “Your cousin is rather proud, is she not?” Talbot asked Lucy, after they had been talking of Aurora.

  “Aurora proud! oh no, indeed! perhaps, if she has any fault at all (for she is the dearest girl that ever lived), it is that she has not sufficient pride — I mean with regard to servants, and that sort of people. She would as soon talk to one of those gardeners as to you or me; and you would see no difference in her manner, except that perhaps it would be a little more cordial to them than to us. The poor people round Felden idolize her.”

  “Aurora takes after her mother,” said Mrs. Alexander; “she is the living image of poor Eliza Floyd.”

  “Was Mrs. Floyd a countrywoman of her husband’s?” Talbot asked. He was wondering how Aurora came to have those great, brilliant black eyes, and so much of the south in her beauty.

  “No; my uncle’s wife belonged to a Lancashire family.”

  A Lancashire family! If Talbot Raleigh Bulstrode could have known that the family name was Prodder; that one member of the haughty house had employed his youth in the pleasing occupations of a cabin-boy, making thick coffee and toasting greasy herrings for the matutinal meal of a surly captain, and receiving more corporal correction from the sturdy toe of his master’s boot than sterling copper coin of the realm — if he could have known that the great aunt of this disdainful creature, walking before him in all the majesty of her beauty, had once kept a chandler’s shop in an obscure street in Liverpool, and, for aught any one but the banker knew, kept it still! But this was a knowledge which had wisely been kept even from Aurora herself, who knew little, except that, despite of having been born with that allegorical silver spoon in her mouth, she was poorer than other girls, inasmuch as she was motherless.

  Mrs. Alexander, Lucy, and the captain overtook the others upon a rustic bridge, where Talbot stopped to rest. Aurora was leaning over the rough wooden balustrade, looking lazily at the water.

  “Did your favorite win the race, Miss Floyd?” he asked, as he watched the effect of her profile against the sunlight; not a very beautiful profile certainly, but for the long black eyelashes, and the radiance under them, which their darkest shadows could never hide.

  “Which favorite?” she said.

  “The horse you spoke to me about the other night — Thunderbolt; did he win?”

  “No.”

  “I am very sorry to hear it.”

  Aurora looked up at him, reddening angrily. “Why so?” she asked.

  “Because I thought you were interested in his success.”

  As Talbot said this, he observed, for the first time, that Archibald Floyd was near enough to hear their conversation, and, furthermore, that he was regarding his daughter with even more than his usual watchfulness.

  “Do not talk to me of racing; it annoys papa,” Aurora said to the captain, dropping her voice. Talbot bowed. “I was right, then,” he thought; “the turf is the skeleton. I dare say Miss Floyd has been doing her best to drag her father’s name into the Gazette, and yet he evidently loves her to distraction; while I—” There was something so very pharisaical in the speech that Captain Bulstrode would not even finish it mentally. He was thinking, “This girl, who, perhaps, has been the cause of nights of sleepless anxiety and days of devouring care, is tenderly beloved by her father, while I, who am a model to all the elder sons of England, have never been loved in my life.”

  At half-past six the great bell at Felden Woods rang a clamorous peal that went shivering above the trees, to tell the country-side that the family were going to dress for dinner; and another peal at seven to tell the villagers round Beckenham and West Wickham that Maister Floyd and his household were going to dine; but not altogether an empty or discordant peal, for it told the hungry poor of broken victuals and rich and delicate meats to be had almost for asking in the servants’ offices — shreds of fricandeaux and patches of dainty preparations, quarters of chickens and carcasses of pheasants, which would have gone to fatten the pigs for Christmas but for Archibald Floyd’s strict commands that all should be given to those who chose to come for it.

  Mr. Floyd and his visitors did not leave the gardens till after the ladies had retired to dress. The dinner-party was very animated, for Alexander Floyd drove down from the city to join his wife and daughter, bringing with him the noisy boy who was just going to Eton, and who was passionately attached to his cousin Aurora; and whether it was owing to the influence of this young gentleman, or to that fitfulness which seemed a part of her nature, Talbot Bulstrode could not discover, but certain it was that the dark cloud melted away from Miss Floyd’s face, and she abandoned herself to the joyousness of the hour with a radiant grace that reminded her father of the night when Eliza Percival played Lady Teazel for the last time, and took her farewell of the stage in the little Lancashire theatre.

  It needed but this change in his daughter to make Archibald Floyd thoroughly happy. Aurora’s smiles seemed to shed a revivifying influence upon the whole circle. The ice melted away, for the sun had broken out, and the winter was gone at last. Talbot Bulstrode bewildered his brain by trying to discover why it was that this woman was such a peerless and fascinating creature. Why it was that, argue as he would against the fact, he was nevertheless allowing himself to be bewitched by this black-eyed siren — freely drinking of that cup of bang which she presented to him, and rapidly becoming intoxicated.

  “I could almost fall in love with my fair-haired ideal,” he thought, “but I can not help admiring this extraordinary girl. She is like Mrs. Nisbett in her zenith of fame and beauty; she is like Cleopatra sailing down the Cydnus; she is like Nell Gwynne selling oranges; she is like Lola Montez giving battle to the Bavarian students; she is like Charlotte Corday with the knife in her hand, standing behind the friend of the people in his bath; she is like everything that is beautiful, and strange, and wicked, and unwomanly, and bewitching; and she is just the sort of creature that many a fool would fall in love with.”

  He put the length of the room between himself and the enchantress, and took his seat by the grand piano, at which Lucy Floyd was playing slow harmonious symphonies of Beethoven. The drawing-room at Felden Woods was so long that, seated by this piano, Captain Bulstrode seemed to look back at the merry group about the heiress as he might have looked at a scene on the stage from the back of the boxes. He almost wished for an opera-glass as he watched Aurora’s graceful gestures and the play of her sparkling eyes; and then, turning to the piano, he listened to the drowsy music, and contemplated Lucy’s face, marvellously fair in the light of that full moon of which Archibald Floyd had spoken, the glory of which, streaming in from an open window, put out the dim wax candles on the piano.

  All that Aurora’s beauty most lacked was richly possessed by Lucy. Delicacy of outline, perfection of feature, purity of tint, all were there; but, while one face dazzled you by its shining splendor, the other impressed you only with a feeble sense of its c
harms, slow to come, and quick to pass away. There are so many Lucys, but so few Auroras; and while you never could be critical with the one, you were merciless in your scrutiny of the other. Talbot Bulstrode was attracted to Lucy by a vague notion that she was just the good and timid creature who was destined to make him happy; but he looked at her as calmly as if she had been a statue, and was as fully aware of her defects as a sculptor who criticises the work of a rival.

  But she was exactly the sort of woman to make a good wife. She had been educated to that end by a careful mother. Purity and goodness had watched over her and hemmed her in from the cradle. She had never seen unseemly sights, or heard unseemly sounds. She was as ignorant as a baby of all the vices and horrors of this big world. She was ladylike, accomplished, well-informed; and if there were a great many others of precisely the same type of graceful womanhood, it was certainly the highest type, and the holiest, and the best.

  Later in the evening, when Captain Bulstrode’s phaeton was brought round to the flight of steps in front of the great doors, the little party assembled on the terrace to see the two officers depart, and the banker told his guests how he hoped this visit to Felden would be the beginning of a lasting acquaintance.

  “I am going to take Aurora and my niece to Brighton for a month or so,” he said, as he shook hands with the captain, “but on our return you must let us see you as often as possible.”

  Talbot bowed, and stammered his thanks for the banker’s cordiality. Aurora and her cousin, Percy Floyd, the young Etonian, had gone down the steps, and were admiring Captain Bulstrode’s thorough-bred bays, and the captain was not a little distracted by the picture the group made in the moonlight.

  He never forgot that picture. Aurora, with her coronet of plaits dead black against the purple air, and her silk dress shimmering in the uncertain light, the delicate head of the bay horse visible above her shoulder, and her ringed white hands caressing the animal’s slender ears, while the purblind old mastiff, vaguely jealous, whined complainingly at her side.

  How marvellous is the sympathy which exists between some people and the brute creation! I think that horses and dogs understood every word that Aurora said to them — that they worshipped her from the dim depths of their inarticulate souls, and would have willingly gone to death to do her service. Talbot observed all this with an uneasy sense of bewilderment.

  “I wonder whether these creatures are wiser than we?” he thought; “do they recognize some higher attributes in this girl than we can perceive, and worship their sublime presence? If this terrible woman, with her unfeminine tastes and mysterious propensities, were mean, or cowardly, or false, or impure, I do not think that mastiff would love her as he does; I do not think my thorough-breds would let her hands meddle with their bridles; the dog would snarl, and the horses would bite, as such animals used to do in those remote old days when they recognized witchcraft and evil spirits, and were convulsed by the presence of the uncanny. I dare say this Miss Floyd is a good, generous-hearted creature — the sort of person fast men would call a glorious girl — but as well-read in the Racing Calendar and Ruff’s Guide as other ladies in Miss Yonge’s novels. I’m really sorry for her.”

  CHAPTER 5

  John Mellish.

  The house which the banker hired at Brighton for the month of October was perched high up on the East Cliff, towering loftily above the wind-driven waves; the rugged coast of Dieppe was dimly visible from the upper windows in the clear autumn mornings, and the Chain Pier looked like a strip of ribbon below the cliff — a pleasanter situation, to my mind, than those level terraces toward the west, from the windows of which the sea appears of small extent, and the horizon within half a mile or so of the Parade.

  Before Mr. Floyd took his daughter and her cousin to Brighton, he entered into an arrangement which he thought, no doubt, a very great evidence of his wisdom; this was the engagement of a lady, who was to be a compound governess, companion, and chaperon to Aurora, who, as her aunt said, was sadly in need of some accomplished and watchful person, whose care it would be to train and prune those exuberant branches of her nature which had been suffered to grow as they would from her infancy. The beautiful shrub was no longer to trail its wild stems along the ground, or shoot upward to the blue skies at its own sweet will; it was to be trimmed, and clipped, and fastened primly to the stony wall of society with cruel nails and galling strips of cloth. In other words, an advertisement was inserted in the Times newspaper, setting forth that a lady by birth and education was required as finishing governess and companion in the household of a gentleman to whom salary was no object, provided the aforesaid lady was perfect mistress of all the accomplishments under the sun, and was altogether such an exceptional and extraordinary being as could only exist in the advertising columns of a popular journal.

  But if the world had been filled with exceptional beings, Mr. Floyd could scarcely have received more answers to his advertisement than came pelting in upon the unhappy little postmaster at Beckenham. The man had serious thoughts of hiring a cart in which to convey the letters to Felden. If the banker had advertised for a wife, and had stated the amount of his income, he could scarcely have had more answers. It seemed as if the female population of London, with one accord, was seized with the desire to improve the mind and form the manners of the daughter of the gentleman to whom terms were no object. Officers’ widows, clergymen’s widows, lawyers’ and merchants’ widows, daughters of gentlemen of high family but reduced means, orphan daughters of all sorts of noble and distinguished people, declared themselves each and every one to be the person who, out of all living creatures upon this earth, was best adapted for the post. Mrs. Alexander Floyd selected six letters, threw the rest into the waste-paper basket, ordered the banker’s carriage, and drove into town to see the six writers thereof. She was a practical and energetic woman, and she put the six applicants through their facings so severely that when she returned to Mr. Floyd it was to announce that only one of them was good for anything, and that she was coming down to Felden Woods the next day.

  The chosen lady was the widow of an ensign who had died within six months of his marriage, and about an hour and a half before he would have succeeded to some enormous property, the particulars of which were never rightly understood by the friends of his unfortunate relict. But, vague as the story night be, it was quite clear enough to establish Mrs. Walter Powell in life as a disappointed woman. She was a woman with straight light hair, and a lady-like droop of the head — a woman who had left school to marry, and after six months wedded life, had gone back to the same school as instructress of the junior pupils — a woman whose whole existence had been spent in teaching and being taught; who had exercised in her earlier years a species of hand-to-mouth tuition, teaching in the morning that which she learned over night; who had never lost an opportunity of improving herself; who had grown mechanically proficient as a musician and an artist, who had a certain parrot-like skill in foreign languages, who had read all the books incumbent upon her to read, and who knew all things imperative for her to know, and who, beyond all this, and outside the boundary of the school-room wall, was ignorant, and soulless, and low-minded, and vulgar. Aurora swallowed the bitter pill as best she might, and accepted Mrs. Powell as the person chartered for her improvement — a kind of ballast to be flung into the wandering bark, to steady its erratic course, and keep it off rocks and quicksands.

  “I must put up with her, Lucy, I suppose,” she said, “and I must consent to be improved and formed by the poor, faded creature. I wonder whether she will be like Miss Drummond, who used to let me off from my lesson and read novels while I ran wild in the gardens and stables. I can put up with her, Lucy, as long as I have you with me; but I think I should go mad if I were to be chained up alone with that grim, pale-faced watch-dog.”

  Mr. Floyd and his family drove from Felden to Brighton in the banker’s roomy travelling carriage, with Aurora’s maid in the rumble, a pile of imperials upon the roof, and Mrs. Po
well, with her young charges, in the interior of the vehicle. Mrs. Alexander had gone back to Fulham, having done her duty, as she considered, in securing a protectress for Aurora; but Lucy was to stay with her cousin at Brighton, and to ride with her on the downs. The saddle-horses had gone down the day before with Aurora’s groom, a gray-haired and rather surly old fellow who had served Archibald Floyd for thirty years; and the mastiff called Bow-wow travelled in the carriage with his mistress.

  About a week after the arrival at Brighton, Aurora and her cousin were walking together on the West Cliff, when a gentleman with a stiff leg rose from a bench upon which he had been seated listening to the band, and slowly advanced to them. Lucy dropped her eyelids with a faint blush, but Aurora held out her hand in answer to Captain Bulstrode’s salute.

  “I thought I should be sure to meet you down here, Miss Floyd,” he said. “I only came this morning, and I was going to call at Folthorpe’s for your papa’s address. Is he quite well?”

  “Quite — yes, that is — pretty well.” A shadow stole over her face as she spoke. It was a wonderful face for fitful lights and shades. “But we did not expect to see you at Brighton, Captain Bulstrode; we thought your regiment was still quartered at Windsor.”