Aurora Floyd

by M. E. Braddon

  He paused once more, and a softening change came over the brightness of his black eyes. This time he did not apply himself to the pocket-pistol. This time he brushed the back of his brown hand across his eye-lashes, and brought it away with a drop or two of moisture glittering upon the bronzed skin. Even his voice was changed when he continued, and had mellowed to a richer and more mournful depth, until it very much resembled the melodious utterance which twenty-one years before had assisted to render Miss Eliza Percival the popular tragedian of the Preston and Bradford circuit.

  "God forgive me," continued the sailor, in that altered voice; "but throughout my voyages I'd never thought of my sister Eliza but in two ways—sometimes one, sometimes t'other. One way of thinking of her, and expecting to see her, was as the little sister that I'd left, not altered by so much as one lock of her hair being changed from the identical curl into which it was twisted the morning she cried and clung about me on board the Ventur'some, having come aboard to wish father and me good-by. Perhaps I oftenest thought of her in this way. Anyhow, it was in this way, and no other, that I always saw her in my dreams. The other way of thinking of her, and expectin' to see her, was as a handsome, full-grown, buxom married woman, with a troop of saucy children hanging on to her apron-string, and every one of 'em askin' what Uncle Samuel had brought 'em from foreign parts. Of course this fancy was the most rational of the two; but the other fancy, of the little child with the long, black, curly hair, would come to me very often, especially at night, when all was quiet aboard, and when I took the wheel in a spell while the helmsman turned in. Lord bless you, ladies and gentlemen, many a time of a starlight night, when we've been in them latitudes where the stars are brighter than common. I've seen the floating mists upon the water take the very shape of that light figure of a little girl in a white pinafore, and come skipping toward me across the waves. I don't mean that I've seen a ghost, you know, but I mean that I could have seen one if I'd had the mind, and that I've seen as much of a one as folks ever do see upon this earth—the ghosts of their own memories and their own sorrows, mixed up with the mists of the sea or the shadows of the trees wavin' back'ard and for'ard in the moonlight, or a white curtain agen a window, or something of that sort. Well, I was such a precious old fool with these fancies and fantigs"—Mr. Samuel Prodder seemed rather to pride himself upon the latter word, as something out of the common—"that when I went ashore at Liverpool last Saturday was a week, I could n't keep my eyes off the little girls in white pinafores as passed me by in the streets, thinkin' to see my Eliza skippin' along, with her black curls flyin' in the wind, and a bit of chalk, to play hop-scotch with, in her hand; so I was obliged to say to myself, quite serious, 'Now, Samuel Prodder, the little girl you're a lookin' for must be fifty years of age, if she's a day, and it's more than likely that she's left off playin' hop-scotch and wearin' white pinafores by this time.' If I had n't kept repeatin' this, internally like, all the way I went, I should have stopped half the little girls in Liverpool to ask 'em if their name was Eliza, and if they'd ever had a brother as ran away and was lost. I had only one thought of how to set about findin' her, and that was to walk straight to the back street in which I remembered leavin' her forty years before. I'd no thought that those forty years could make any more change than to change her from a girl to a woman, and it seemed almost strange to me that they could make as much change as that. There was one thing I never thought of; and if my heart beat loud and quick when I knocked at the little front door of the very identical house in which we'd lodged, it was with nothing but hope and joy. The forty years that had sent railways spinning all over England had n't made much difference in the old house; it was forty years dirtier, perhaps, and forty years shabbier, and it stood in the very heart of the town instead of on the edge of the open country; but, exceptin' that, it was pretty much the same; and I expected to see the same landlady come to open the door, with the same dirty artificial flowers in her cap, and the same old slippers down at heel scrapin' after her along the bit of oil-cloth. It gave me a kind of a turn when I did n't see this identical landlady, though she'd have been turned a hundred years old if she'd been alive; and I might have prepared myself for the disappointment if I'd thought of that, but I had n't; and when the door was opened by a young woman with sandy hair, brushed backward as if she'd been a Chinese, and no eyebrows to speak of, I did feel disappointed. The young woman had a baby in her arms—a black-eyed baby, with its eyes opened so wide that it seemed as if it had been very much surprised with the look of things on first comin' into the world, and had n't quite recovered itself yet; so I thought to myself, as soon as I clapped eyes on the little one, why, as sure as a gun, that's my sister Eliza's baby, and my sister Eliza's married, and lives here still. But the young woman had never heard the name of Prodder, and did n't think there was anybody in the neighborhood as ever had. I felt my heart, which had been beatin' louder and quicker every minute, stop all of a sudden when she said this, and seem to drop down like a dead weight; but I thanked her for her civil answers to my questions, and went on to the next house to inquire there. I might have saved myself the trouble, for I made the same inquiries at every house on each side of the street, going straight from door to door, till the people thought I was a sea-farin' tax-gatherer; but nobody had ever heard the name of Prodder, and the oldest inhabitant in the street had n't lived there ten years. I was quite disheartened when I left the neighborhood, which had once been so familiar, and which seemed so strange, and small, and mean, and shabby now. I'd had so little thought of failing to find Eliza in the very house in which I'd left her, that I'd made no plans beyond. So I was brought to a dead stop; and I went back to the tavern where I'd left my carpet-bag, and I had a chop brought me for my dinner, and I sat with my knife and fork before me thinkin' what I was to do next. When Eliza and I had parted, forty years before, I remembered father leaving her in charge of a sister of my mother's (my poor mother had been dead a year), and I thought to myself, the only chance there is left for me now is to find Aunt Sarah."

  By the time Mr. Prodder arrived at this stage of his narrative his listeners had dropped off gradually, the gentlemen returning to their newspapers, and the young lady to her book, until the merchant-captain found himself reduced to communicate his adventures to one good-natured looking young fellow, who seemed interested in the brown-faced sailor, and encouraged him every now and then with an assenting nod or a friendly "Ay, ay, to be sure."

  "The only chance I can see, ses I," continued Mr. Prodder, "is to find Aunt Sarah. I found Aunt Sarah. She'd been keepin' a shop in the general line when I went away forty years ago, and she was keepin' the same shop in the general line when I came back last Saturday week; and there was the same fly-blown handbills of ships that was to sail immediate, and that had sailed two years ago, accordin' to the date upon the bills; and the same wooden sugar-loaves wrapped up in white paper; and the same lattice-work gate, with a bell that rang as loud as if it was meant to give the alarm to all Liverpool as well as to my Aunt Sarah in the parlor behind the shop. The poor old soul was standing behind the counter, serving two ounces of tea to a customer when I went in. Forty years had made so much change in her that I should n't have known her if I had n't known the shop. She wore black curls upon her forehead, and a brooch like a brass butterfly in the middle of the curls, where the parting ought to have been; and she wore a beard; and the curls were false, but the beard was n't; and her voice was very deep, and rather manly, and she seemed to me to have grown manly altogether in the forty years that I'd been away. She tied up the two ounces of tea, and then asked me what I pleased to want. I told her that I was little Sam, and that I wanted my sister Eliza."

  The merchant-captain paused and looked out of the window for upward of five minutes before he resumed his story. When he did resume it, he spoke in a very low voice, and in short, detached sentences, as if he could n't trust himself with long ones, for fear he should break down in the middle of them.

  "Eliza had been
dead one-and-twenty years. Aunt Sarah told me all about it. She'd tried the artificial flower-makin', and she had n't liked it. And she turned play-actress. And when she was nine-and-twenty she'd married—she'd married a gentleman that had no end of money, and she'd gone to live at a fine place somewhere in Kent. I've got the name of it wrote down in my memorandum-book. But she'd been a good and generous friend to Aunt Sarah; and Aunt Sarah was to have gone to Kent to see her, and to stop all the summer with her. But while aunt was getting ready to go for that very visit, my sister Eliza died, leaving a daughter behind her, which is the niece that I'm going to see. I sat down upon the three-legged wooden stool against the counter, and hid my face in my hands; and I thought of the little girl that I'd seen playin' at hopscotch forty years before, until I thought my heart would burst; but I did n't shed a tear. Aunt Sarah took a big brooch out of her collar, and showed me a ring of black hair behind a bit of glass, with a gold frame round it. 'Mr. Floyd had this brooch made a purpose for me,' she said; 'he has always been a liberal gentleman to me, and he comes down to Liverpool once in two or three years, and takes tea with me in yon back parlor; and I've no call to keep a shop, for he allows me a handsome income; but I should die of the mopes if it was n't for the business.' There was Eliza's name and the date of her death engraved upon the back of the brooch. I tried to remember where I'd been, and what I'd been doing that year. But I could n't, sir. All the life that I looked back upon seemed muddled and mixed up, like a dream; and I could only think of the little sister I'd said good-by to aboard the Ventur'some forty years before. I got round by little and little, and I was able half an hour afterward to listen to Aunt Sarah's talk. She was nigh upon seventy, poor old soul, and she'd always been a good one to talk. She asked me if it was n't a great thing for the family that Eliza had made such a match; and if I was n't proud to think that my niece was a young heiress, that spoke all manner of languages, and rode in her own carriage; and if that ought n't to be a consolation to me? But I told her that I'd rather have found my sister married to the poorest man iu Liverpool, and alive and well, to bid me welcome back to my native town. Aunt Sarah said if those were my religious opinions, she did n't know what to say to me. And she showed me a picture of Eliza's tomb in Beckenham church-yard, that had been painted expressly for her by Mr. Floyd's orders. Floyd was the name of Eliza's husband. And then she showed me a picture of Miss Floyd, the heiress, at the age of ten, which was the image of Eliza, all but the pinafore; and it's that very Miss Floyd that I'm going to see."

  "And I dare say," said the kind listener, "that Miss Floyd will be very much pleased to see her sailor uncle."

  "Well, sir, I think she will," answered the captain. "I don't say it from any pride I take in myself, Lord knows; for I know I'm a rough and ready sort of a chap, that 'ud be no great ornament in a young lady's drawing-room; but if Eliza's daughter's anything like Eliza, I know what she'll say and what she'll do as well as if I see her saying it and doing it. She'll clap her pretty little hands together, and she'll clasp her arms round my neck, and she'll say, 'Lor, uncle, I am so glad to see you.' And when I tell her that I was her mother's only brother, and that me and her mother was very fond of one another, she'll burst out a cryin', and she'll hide her pretty face upon my shoulder, and she'll sob as if her dear little heart was going to break for love of the mother that she never saw. That's what she'll do," said Captain Prodder, "and I don't think the truest born lady that ever was could do any better."

  The good-natured traveller heard a good deal more from the captain of his plans for going to Beckenham to claim his niece's affections, in spite of all the fathers in the world.

  "Mr. Floyd's a good man, I dare say, sir," he said; "but he's kept his daughter apart from her aunt Sarah, and it's but likely he'll try to keep her from me. But if he does, he'll find he's got a toughish customer to deal with in Captain Samuel Prodder."

  The merchant-captain reached Beckenham as the evening shadows were deepening among the Felden oaks and beeches, and the long rays of red sunshine fading slowly out in the low sky. He drove up to the old red-brick mansion in a hired fly, and presented himself at the hall-door just as Mr. Floyd was leaving the dining-room to finish the evening in his lonely study.

  The banker paused to glance with some slight surprise at the loosely-clad, weather-beaten looking figure of the sailor, and mechanically put his hand among the gold and silver in his pocket. He thought the seafaring man had come to present some petition for himself and his comrades. A life-boat was wanted somewhere on the Kentish coast, perhaps, and this good-tempered looking, bronze-colored man had come to collect funds for the charitable work.

  He was thinking this, when, in reply to the town-bred footman's question, the sailor uttered the name of Prodder; and in the one moment of its utterance his thoughts flew back over one-and-twenty years, and he was madly in love with a beautiful actress, who owned blushingly to that plebeian cognomen. The banker's voice was faint and husky as he turned to the captain and bade him welcome to Felden Woods.

  "Step this way, Mr. Prodder," he said, pointing to the open door of the study. "I am very glad to see you. I—I—have often heard of you. You are my dead wife's runaway brother."

  Even amid his sorrowful recollection of that brief happiness of the past, some natural alloy of pride had its part, and he closed the study-door carefully before he said this.

  "God bless you, sir," he said, holding out his hand to the sailor. "I see I am right. Your eyes are like Eliza's. You and yours will always be welcome beneath my roof. Yes, Samuel Prodder—you see I know your Christian name—and when I die you will find that you have not been forgotten."

  The captain thanked his brother-in-law heartily, and told him that he neither asked nor wished for anything except permission to see his niece, Aurora Floyd.

  As he made this request, he looked toward the door of the little room, evidently expecting that the heiress might enter at any moment. He looked terribly disappointed when the banker told him that Aurora was married, and lived near Doncaster; but that, if he had happened to come ten hours earlier, he would have found her at Felden Woods.

  Ah! who has not heard those common words? Who has not been told that, if they had come sooner, or gone earlier, or hurried their pace, or slackened it, or done something that they have not done, the whole course of life would have been otherwise? Who has not looked back regretfully at the past, which, differently fashioned, would have made the present other than it is? We think it hard that we can not take the fabric of our life to pieces, as a mantua-maker unpicks her work, and make up the stuff another way. How much waste we might save in the cloth, how much better a shape we might make the garment, if we only had the right to use our scissors and needle again, and refashion the past by the experience of the present.

  "To think, now, that I should have been comin' yesterday!" exclaimed the captain, "but put off my journey because it was a Friday! If I'd only knowed!"

  Of course, Captain Prodder, if you had only known what it was not given you to know, you would, no doubt, have acted more prudently; and so would many other people. If Mr. William Palmer had known that detection was to dog the footsteps of crime, and the gallows to follow at the heels of detection, he would most likely have hesitated long before he mixed the strychnine pills for the friend whom, with cordial voice, he was entreating to be of good cheer. If the speculators upon this year's Derby had known that Caractacus was to be the winner, they would scarcely have hazarded their money upon Buckstone and the Marquis. We spend the best part of our lives in making mistakes, and the poor remainder in reflecting how very easily we might have avoided them.

  Mr. Floyd explained, rather lamely perhaps, how it was that the Liverpool spinster had never been informed of her grand-niece's marriage with Mr. John Mellish; and the merchant-captain announced his intention of starting for Doncaster early the next morning.

  "Don't think that I want to intrude upon your daughter, sir," he said, as if perfectly acquainted with the bank
er's nervous dread of such a visit. "I know her station's high above me, though she's my own sister's only child; and I make no doubt that those about her would be ready enough to turn up their noses at a poor old salt that has been tossed and tumbled about in every variety of weather for this forty year. I only want to see her once in a way, and to hear her say, perhaps, 'Lor, uncle, what a rum old chap you are!' There!" exclaimed Samuel Prodder, suddenly, "I think, if I could only once hear her call me uncle, I could go back to sea and die happy, though I never came ashore again."

  CHAPTER XXI.

  "HE ONLY SAID I AM A-WEARY."

  Mr. James Conyers found the long summer's day hang rather heavily upon his hands at Mellish Park, in the society of the rheumatic ex-trainer, the stable-boys, and Steeve Hargraves, the softy, and with no literary resources except the last Saturday's Bell's Life, and sundry flimsy sheets of shiny, slippery tissue-paper, forwarded him by post from King Charles' Croft, in the busy town of Leeds.

  He might have found plenty of work to do in the stables, perhaps, if he had had a mind to do it; but after the night of the storm there was a perceptible change in his manner, and the showy pretence of being very busy, which he had made on his first arrival at the Park, was now exchanged for a listless and undisguised dawdling and an unconcerned indifference, which caused the old trainer to shake his gray head, and mutter to his hangers-on that the new chap warn't up to mooch, and was evidently too grand for his business.