WHAT BECAME OF THE DIAMOND BRACELET.
Aurora's relatives were not slow to exclaim upon the change for the
worse which a twelvemonth in Paris had made in their young kinswoman. I
fear that the Demoiselles Lespard suffered considerably in reputation
amongst the circle round Felden Woods from Miss Floyd's impaired good
looks. She was out of spirits too, had no appetite, slept badly, was
nervous and hysterical, no longer took any interest in her dogs and
horses, and was altogether an altered creature. Mrs. Alexander Floyd
declared it was perfectly clear that these cruel Frenchwomen had worked
poor Aurora to a shadow: the girl was not used to study, she said; she
had been accustomed to exercise and open air, and no doubt had pined
sadly in the close atmosphere of a schoolroom.
But Aurora's was one of those impressionable natures which quickly
recover from any depressing influence. Early in September Lucy Floyd
came to Felden Woods, and found her handsome cousin almost entirely
recovered from the drudgery of the Parisian _pension_, but still
very loth to talk much of that seminary. She answered Lucy's eager
questions very curtly; said that she hated the Demoiselles Lespard
and the Rue Saint-Dominique, and that the very memory of Paris was
disagreeable to her. Like most young ladies with black eyes and
blue-black hair, Miss Floyd was a good hater; so Lucy forbore to ask
for more information upon what was so evidently an unpleasant subject
to her cousin. Poor Lucy had been mercilessly well educated; she spoke
half a dozen languages, knew all about the natural sciences, had read
Gibbon, Niebuhr, and Arnold, from the title-page to the printer's name,
and looked upon the heiress as a big brilliant dunce; so she quietly
set down Aurora's dislike to Paris to that young lady's distaste for
tuition, and thought little more about it. Any other reasons for Miss
Floyd's almost shuddering horror of her Parisian associations lay far
beyond Lucy's simple power of penetration.
The fifteenth of September was Aurora's birthday, and Archibald Floyd
determined upon this, the nineteenth anniversary of his daughter's
first appearance on this mortal scene, to give an entertainment,
whereat his county neighbours and town acquaintance might alike behold
and admire the beautiful heiress.
Mrs. Alexander came to Felden Woods to superintend the preparations for
this birthday ball. She drove Aurora and Lucy into town to order the
supper and the band, and to choose dresses and wreaths for the young
ladies. The banker's heiress was sadly out of place in a milliner's
showroom; but she had that rapid judgment as to colour, and that
perfect taste in form, which bespeak the soul of an artist; and while
poor mild Lucy was giving endless trouble, and tumbling innumerable
boxes of flowers, before she could find any head-dress in harmony with
her rosy cheeks and golden hair, Aurora, after one brief glance at the
bright _parterres_ of painted cambric, pounced upon a crown-shaped
garland of vivid scarlet berries, with drooping and tangled leaves
of dark shining green, that looked as if they had been just plucked
from a running streamlet. She watched Lucy's perplexities with a
half-compassionate, half-contemptuous smile.
"Look at that poor bewildered child," she said; "I know that she would
like to put pink and yellow against her golden hair. Why, you silly
Lucy, don't you know that yours is the beauty which really does _not_
want adornment? A few pearls or forget-me-not blossoms, or a crown
of water-lilies and a cloud of white areophane, would make you look
a sylphide; but I dare say you would like to wear amber satin and
cabbage-roses."
From the milliner's they drove to Mr. Gunter's in Berkeley Square,
at which world-renowned establishment Mrs. Alexander commanded those
preparations of turkeys preserved in jelly, hams cunningly embalmed
in rich wines and broths, and other specimens of that sublime art of
confectionery which hovers midway between sleight-of-hand and cookery,
and in which the Berkeley Square professor is without a rival. When
poor Thomas Babington Macaulay's New-Zealander shall come to ponder
over the ruins of St. Paul's, perhaps he will visit the remains of this
humbler temple in Berkeley Square, and wonder at the ice-pails and
jelly-moulds, the refrigerators and stewpans, the hot plates long cold
and unheeded, and all the mysterious paraphernalia of the dead art.
From the West End Mrs. Alexander drove to Charing Cross; she had a
commission to execute at Dent's,--the purchase of a watch for one of
her boys, who was just off to Eton.
Aurora threw herself wearily back in the carriage while Mrs. Alexander
and Lucy stopped at the watchmaker's. It was to be observed that,
although Miss Floyd had recovered much of her old brilliancy and
gaiety of temper, a certain gloomy shade would sometimes steal over
her countenance when she was left to herself for a few minutes; a
darkly reflective expression quite foreign to her face. This shadow
fell upon her beauty now as she looked out of the open window, moodily
watching the passers-by. Mrs. Alexander was a long time making her
purchase; and Aurora had sat nearly a quarter of an hour blankly
staring at the shifting figures in the crowd, when a man hurrying by
was attracted by her face at the carriage window, and started, as if
at some great surprise. He passed on, however, and walked rapidly
towards the Horse Guards; but before he turned the corner, came to a
dead stop, stood still for two or three minutes scratching the back
of his head reflectively with his big, bare hand, and then walked
slowly back towards Mr. Dent's emporium. He was a broad-shouldered,
bull-necked, sandy-whiskered fellow, wearing a cut-away coat and a
gaudy neckerchief, and smoking a huge cigar, the rank fumes of which
struggled with a very powerful odour of rum-and-water recently imbibed.
This gentleman's standing in society was betrayed by the smooth head
of a bull-terrier, whose round eyes peeped out of the pocket of his
cut-away coat, and by a Blenheim spaniel carried under his arm. He was
the very last person, amongst all the souls between Cockspur Street and
the statue of King Charles, who seemed likely to have anything to say
to Miss Aurora Floyd; nevertheless he walked deliberately up to the
carriage, and, planting his elbows upon the door, nodded to her with
friendly familiarity.
"Well," he said, without inconveniencing himself by the removal of the
rank cigar, "how do?"
After which brief salutation he relapsed into silence, and rolled his
great brown eyes slowly here and there, in contemplative examination of
Miss Floyd and the vehicle in which she sat; even carrying his powers
of observation so far as to take particular notice of a plethoric
morocco-bag lying on the back seat, and to inquire casually whether
there was "anythink wallable in the old party's redicule?"
But Aurora did not allow him long for this leisurely employment; for
looking at him with her eyes flashing forked lightnings of womanly
fury, and her face crimson with indignation, she asked him in a sharp
spasmodic tone whether he had anything to say to her.
He had a great deal to say to her; but as he put his head in at the
carriage window and made his communication, whatever it might be,
in a rum-and-watery whisper, it reached no ears but those of Aurora
herself. When he had done whispering, he took a greasy leather-covered
account-book, and a short stump of lead-pencil, considerably the worse
for chewing, from his breast pocket, and wrote two or three lines upon
a leaf, which he tore out and handed to Aurora. "This is the address,"
he said; "you won't forget to send?"
She shook her head, and looked away from him--looked away with an
irrepressible gesture of disgust and loathing.
"You wouldn't like to buy a spannel dawg," said the man, holding the
sleek, curly, black-and-tan animal up to the carriage window; "or a
French poodle what'll balance a bit of bread on his nose while you
count ten? Hay? You should have 'em a bargain--say fifteen pound the
two."
"No!"
At this moment Mrs. Alexander emerged from the watchmaker's, just
in time to catch a glimpse of the man's broad shoulders as he moved
sulkily away from the carriage.
"Has that person been begging of you, Aurora?" she asked, as they drove
off.
"No. I once bought a dog of him, and he recognized me."
"And wanted you to buy one to-day?"
"Yes."
Miss Floyd sat gloomily silent during the whole of the homeward drive,
looking out of the carriage window, and not deigning to take any
notice whatever of her aunt and cousin. I do not know whether it was
in submission to that palpable superiority of force and vitality in
Aurora's nature which seemed to set her above her fellows, or simply
in that inherent spirit of toadyism common to the best of us; but Mrs.
Alexander and her fair-haired daughter always paid mute reverence
to the banker's heiress, and were silent when it pleased her, or
conversed at her royal will. I verily believe that it was Aurora's eyes
rather than Archibald Martin Floyd's thousands which over-awed all her
kinsfolk; and that if she had been a street-sweeper dressed in rags,
and begging for halfpence, people would have feared her and made way
for her, and bated their breath when she was angry.
The trees in the long avenue of Felden Woods were hung with sparkling
coloured lamps, to light the guests who came to Aurora's birthday
festival. The long range of windows on the ground-floor was ablaze
with light; the crash of the band burst every now and then above
the perpetual roll of carriage wheels and the shouted repetition of
visitors' names, and pealed across the silent woods: through the long
vista of half a dozen rooms opening one into another, the waters of a
fountain, sparkling with a hundred hues in the light, glittered amid
the dark floral wealth of a conservatory filled with exotics. Great
clusters of tropical plants were grouped in the spacious hall; festoons
of flowers hung about the vapoury curtains in the arched doorways.
Light and splendour were everywhere around; and amid all, and more
splendid than all, in the dark grandeur of her beauty, Aurora Floyd,
crowned with scarlet, and robed in white, stood by her father's side.
Amongst the guests who arrive latest at Mr. Floyd's ball are
two officers from Windsor, who have driven across country in a
mail-phaeton. The elder of these two, and the driver of the vehicle,
has been very discontented and disagreeable throughout the journey.
"If I'd had the remotest idea of the distance, Maldon," he said, "I'd
have seen you and your Kentish banker very considerably inconvenienced
before I would have consented to victimize my horses for the sake of
this snobbish party."
"But it won't be a snobbish party," answered the young man impetuously.
"Archibald Floyd is the best fellow in Christendom, and as for his
daughter----"
"Oh, of course, a divinity, with fifty thousand pounds for her fortune;
all of which will no doubt be very tightly settled upon herself if
she is ever allowed to marry a penniless scapegrace like Francis
Lewis Maldon, of Her Majesty's 11th Hussars. However, I don't want to
stand in your way, my boy. Go in and win, and my blessing be upon your
virtuous endeavours. I can imagine the young Scotchwoman--red hair (of
course you'll call it auburn), large feet, and freckles!"
"Aurora Floyd--red hair and freckles!" The young officer laughed aloud
at the stupendous joke. "You'll see her in a quarter of an hour,
Bulstrode," he said.
Talbot Bulstrode, Captain of her Majesty's 11th Hussars, had consented
to drive his brother-officer from Windsor to Beckenham, and to array
himself in his uniform, in order to adorn therewith the festival at
Felden Woods, chiefly because, having at two-and-thirty years of age
run through all the wealth of life's excitements and amusements, and
finding himself a penniless spendthrift in this species of coin, though
well enough off for mere sordid riches, he was too tired of himself
and the world to care much whither his friends and comrades led him.
He was the eldest son of a wealthy Cornish baronet, whose ancestor had
received his title straight from the hands of Scottish King James,
when baronetcies first came into fashion; the same fortunate ancestor
being near akin to a certain noble, erratic, unfortunate, and injured
gentleman called Walter Raleigh, and by no means too well used by
the same Scottish James. Now of all the pride which ever swelled the
breasts of mankind, the pride of Cornishmen is perhaps the strongest;
and the Bulstrode family was one of the proudest in Cornwall. Talbot
was no alien son of this haughty house; from his very babyhood he had
been the proudest of mankind. This pride had been the saving power
that had presided over his prosperous career. Other men might have
made a downhill road of that smooth pathway which wealth and grandeur
made so pleasant; but not Talbot Bulstrode. The vices and follies
of the common herd were perhaps retrievable, but vice or folly in a
Bulstrode would have left a blot upon a hitherto unblemished escutcheon
never to be erased by time or tears. That pride of birth, which was
utterly unallied to pride of wealth or station, had a certain noble and
chivalrous side, and Talbot Bulstrode was beloved by many a parvenu
whom meaner men would have insulted. In the ordinary affairs of life
he was as humble as a woman or a child; it was only when Honour was
in question that the sleeping dragon of pride which had guarded the
golden apples of his youth, purity, probity, and truth, awoke and bade
defiance to the enemy. At two-and-thirty he was still a bachelor, not
because he had never loved, but because he had never met with a woman
whose stainless purity of soul fitted her in his eyes to become the
mother of a noble race, and to rear sons who should do honour to the
name of Bulstrode. He looked for more than ordinary every-day virtue in
the woman of his choice; he demanded those grand and queenly qualities
which are rarest in womankind. Fearless truth, a sense of honour keen
as his own, loyalty of purpose, unselfishness, a soul untainted by the
petty basenesses of daily life,--all these he sought in the being he
loved; and at the first warning thrill of emotion caused by a pair of
beautiful eyes, he grew critical and captious about their owner, and
began to look for infinitesimal stains upon the shining robe of her
virginity. He would have married a beggar's daughter if she had reached
his almost impossible standard; he would have rejected the descendant
of a race of kings if she had fallen one decimal part of an inch
below it. Women feared Talbot Bulstrode; manoeuvring mothers shrank
abashed from the cold light of those watchful gray eyes; daughters
to marry blushed and trembled, and felt their pretty affectations,
their ball-room properties, drop away from them under the quiet gaze
of the young officer; till from fearing him, the lovely flutterers
grew to shun and dislike him, and to leave Bulstrode Castle and the
Bulstrode fortune unangled for in the great matrimonial fisheries.
So at two-and-thirty Talbot walked serenely safe amid the meshes and
pit-falls of Belgravia, secure in the popular belief, that Captain
Bulstrode of the 11th Hussars was not a marrying man. This belief was
perhaps strengthened by the fact that the Cornishman was by no means
the elegant ignoramus whose sole accomplishments consist in parting his
hair, waxing his moustaches, and smoking a meerschaum that has been
coloured by his valet, and who has become the accepted type of the
military man in time of peace.
Talbot Bulstrode was fond of scientific pursuits; he neither smoked,
drank, nor gambled. He had only been to the Derby once in his life, and
on that one occasion had walked quietly away from the Stand while the
great race was being run, and the white faces were turned towards the
fatal Corner, and men were sick with terror and anxiety, and frenzied
with the madness of suspense. He never hunted, though he rode as well
as Mr. Assheton Smith. He was a perfect swordsman, and one of Mr.
Angelo's pet pupils; but he had never handled a billiard-cue in his
life, nor had he touched a card since the days of his boyhood, when he
took a hand at long whist with his father and mother and the parson of
the parish, in the south drawing-room at Bulstrode Castle. He had a
peculiar aversion to all games of chance and skill, contending that it
was beneath a gentleman to employ, even for amusement, the implements
of the sharper's pitiful trade. His rooms were as neatly kept as
those of a woman. Cases of mathematical instruments took the place of
cigar-boxes; proof impressions of Raphael adorned the walls ordinarily
covered with French prints and water-coloured sporting-sketches from
Ackermann's emporium. He was familiar with every turn of expression
in Descartes and Condillac, but would have been sorely puzzled to
translate the argotic locutions of Monsieur de Kock, _père_. Those
who spoke of him summed him up by saying that he wasn't a bit like
an officer; but there was a certain cavalry regiment, which he had
commanded when a memorable and most desperate charge was made against
a bristling wall of Russian cannon, whose ranks told another story of
Captain Bulstrode. He had made an exchange into the 11th Hussars on
his return from the Crimea, whence, among other distinctions, he had
brought a stiff leg, which for a time disqualified him from dancing.
It was from pure benevolence, therefore, or from that indifference to
all things which is easily mistaken for unselfishness, that Talbot
Bulstrode had consented to accept an invitation to the ball at Felden
Woods.
The banker's guests were not of that charmed circle familiar to the
captain of Hussars; so Talbot, after a brief introduction to his
host, fell back among the crowd assembled in one of the doorways,
and quietly watched the dancers; not unobserved himself, however,
for he was just one of those people who will not pass in a crowd.
Tall and broad-chested, with a pale whiskerless face, aquiline nose,
clear, cold, gray eyes, thick moustache, and black hair, worn as
closely cropped as if he had lately emerged from Coldbath Fields or
Millbank prison, he formed a striking contrast to the yellow-whiskered
young cornet who had accompanied him. Even that stiff leg, which in
others might have seemed a blemish, added to the distinction of his
appearance, and, coupled with the glittering orders on the breast of
his uniform, told of deeds of prowess lately done. He took very little
delight in the gay assembly revolving before him to one of Charles
d'Albert's waltzes. He had heard the same music before, executed by
the same band; the faces, though unfamiliar to him, were not new: dark
beauties in pink, fair beauties in blue; tall dashing beauties in
silks, and laces, and jewels, and splendour; modestly downcast beauties
in white crape and rose-buds. They had all been spread for him, those
familiar nets of gauze and areophane, and he had escaped them all;
and the name of Bulstrode might drop out of the history of Cornish
gentry to find no record save upon gravestones, but it would never be
tarnished by an unworthy race, or dragged through the mire of a divorce
court by a guilty woman. While he lounged against the pillar of a
doorway, leaning on his cane, and resting his lame leg, and wondering
lazily whether there was anything upon earth that repaid a man for
the trouble of living, Cornet Maldon approached him with a woman's
gloved hand lying lightly on his arm, and a divinity walking by his
side. A divinity! imperiously beautiful in white and scarlet, painfully
dazzling to look upon, intoxicatingly brilliant to behold. Captain
Bulstrode had served in India, and had once tasted a horrible spirit
called _bang_, which made the men who drank it half mad; and he could
not help fancying that the beauty of this woman was like the strength
of that alcoholic preparation; barbarous, intoxicating, dangerous, and
maddening.
His brother-officer presented him to this wonderful creature, and he
found that her earthly name was Aurora Floyd, and that she was the
heiress of Felden Woods.
Talbot Bulstrode recovered himself in a moment. This imperious
creature, this Cleopatra in crinoline, had a low forehead, a nose that
deviated from the line of beauty, and a wide mouth. What was she but
another trap set in white muslin, and baited with artificial flowers,
like the rest? She was to have fifty thousand pounds for her portion,
so she didn't want a rich husband; but she was a nobody, so of course
she wanted position, and had no doubt read up the Raleigh Bulstrodes
in the sublime pages of Burke. The clear gray eyes grew cold as ever,
therefore, as Talbot bowed to the heiress. Mr. Maldon found his partner
a chair close to the pillar against which Captain Bulstrode had taken
his stand, and Mrs. Alexander Floyd swooping down upon the cornet at
this very moment, with the dire intent of carrying him off to dance
with a lady who executed more of her steps upon the toes of her partner
than on the floor of the ball-room, Aurora and Talbot were left to
themselves.
Captain Bulstrode glanced downward at the banker's daughter. His gaze
lingered upon the graceful head, with its coronal of shining scarlet
berries, encircling smooth masses of blue-black hair. He expected to
see the modest drooping of the eyelids peculiar to young ladies with
long lashes, but he was disappointed; for Aurora Floyd was looking
straight before her, neither at him, nor at the lights, nor the
flowers, nor the dancers, but far away into vacancy. She was so young,
prosperous, admired, and beloved, that it was difficult to account for
the dim shadow of trouble that clouded her glorious eyes.
While he was wondering what he should say to her, she lifted her eyes
to his face, and asked him the strangest question he had ever heard
from girlish lips.
"Do you know if Thunderbolt won the Leger?" she asked.
He was too much confounded to answer for a moment, and she continued
rather impatiently, "They must have heard by six o'clock this evening
in London; but I have asked half a dozen people here to-night, and no
one seems to know anything about it."
Talbot's close-cropped hair seemed lifted from his head as he listened
to this terrible address. Good heavens! what a horrible woman! The
hussar's vivid imagination pictured the heir of all the Raleigh
Bulstrodes receiving his infantine impressions from such a mother.
She would teach him to read out of the 'Racing Calendar;' she would
invent a royal alphabet of the turf, and tell him that "D stands for
Derby, old England's great race," and "E stands for Epsom, a crack
meeting-place," &c. He told Miss Floyd that he had never been to
Doncaster in his life, that he had never read a sporting-paper, and
that he knew no more of Thunderbolt than of King Cheops.
She looked at him rather contemptuously. "Cheops wasn't much," she
said: "he won the Liverpool Autumn Cup in Blink Bonny's year; but most
people said it was a fluke."
Talbot Bulstrode shuddered afresh; but a feeling of pity mingled with
his horror. "If I had a sister," he thought, "I would get her to talk
to this miserable girl, and bring her to a sense of her iniquity."
Aurora said no more to the captain of Hussars, but relapsed into the
old far-away gaze into vacancy, and sat twisting a bracelet round and
round upon her finely modelled wrist. It was a diamond bracelet, worth
a couple of hundred pounds, which had been given her that day by her
father. He would have invested all his fortune in Messrs. Hunt and
Roskell's cunning handiwork, if Aurora had sighed for gems and gewgaws.
Miss Floyd's glance fell upon the glittering ornament, and she looked
at it long and earnestly, rather as if she were calculating the value
of the stones than admiring the taste of the workmanship.
While Talbot was watching her, full of wondering pity and horror, a
young man hurried up to the spot where she was seated, and reminded her
of an engagement for the quadrille that was forming. She looked at her
tablets of ivory, gold, and turquoise, and with a certain disdainful
weariness rose and took his arm. Talbot followed her receding form.
Taller than most among the throng, her queenly head was not soon lost
sight of.
"A Cleopatra with a snub nose two sizes too small for her face, and
a taste for horseflesh!" said Talbot Bulstrode, ruminating upon the
departed divinity. "She ought to carry a betting-book instead of those
ivory tablets. How _distrait_ she was all the time she sat here! I dare
say she has made a book for the Leger, and was calculating how much she
stands to lose. What will this poor old banker do with her? put her
into a madhouse, or get her elected a member of the Jockey Club? With
her black eyes and fifty thousand pounds, she might lead the sporting
world. There has been a female Pope, why should there not be a female
'Napoleon of the Turf'?"
Later, when the rustling leaves of the trees in Beckenham Woods were
shivering in that cold gray hour which precedes the advent of the
dawn, Talbot Bulstrode drove his friend away from the banker's lighted
mansion. He talked of Aurora Floyd during the whole of that long
cross-country drive. He was merciless to her follies; he ridiculed, he
abused, he sneered at and condemned her questionable tastes. He bade
Francis Lewis Maldon marry her at his peril, and wished him joy of
_such_ a wife. He declared that if he had such a woman for his sister
he would shoot her, unless she reformed and burnt her betting-book.
He worked himself up into a savage humour about the young lady's
delinquencies, and talked of her as if she had done him an unpardonable
injury by entertaining a taste for the Turf; till at last the poor meek
young cornet plucked up a spirit, and told his superior officer that
Aurora Floyd was a very jolly girl, and a good girl, and a perfect
lady, and that, if she did want to know who won the Leger, it was no
business of Captain Bulstrode's, and that he, Bulstrode, needn't make
such a howling about it.
While the two men are getting to high words about her, Aurora is seated
in her dressing-room, listening to Lucy Floyd's babble about the ball.
"There was never such a delightful party," that young lady said; "and
did Aurora see So-and-so, and So-and-so, and So-and-so? and above all,
did she observe Captain Bulstrode, who had served all through the
Crimean war, and who walked lame, and was the son of Sir John Walter
Raleigh Bulstrode, of Bulstrode Castle, near Camelford?"
Aurora shook her head with a weary gesture. No, she hadn't noticed any
of these people. Poor Lucy's childish talk was stopped in a moment.
"You are tired, Aurora dear," she said: "how cruel I am to worry you!"
Aurora threw her arms about her cousin's neck, and hid her face upon
Lucy's white shoulder.
"I am tired," she said, "very, very tired."
She spoke with such an utterly despairing weariness in her tone, that
her gentle cousin was alarmed by her words.
"You are not unhappy, dear Aurora?" she asked anxiously.
"No, no--only tired. There, go, Lucy. Good night, good night."
She gently pushed her cousin from the room, rejected the services of
her maid, and dismissed her also. Then, tired as she was, she removed
the candle from the dressing-table to a desk on the other side of the
room, and seating herself at this desk, unlocked it, and took from one
of its inmost recesses the soiled pencil-scrawl which had been given
her a week before by the man who tried to sell her a dog in Cockspur
Street.
The diamond bracelet, Archibald Floyd's birthday gift to his daughter,
lay in its nest of satin and velvet upon Aurora's dressing-table. She
took the morocco-case in her hand, looked for a few moments at the
jewel, and then shut the lid of the little casket with a sharp metallic
snap.
"The tears were in my father's eyes when he clasped the bracelet on my
arm," she said, as she reseated herself at the desk. "If he could see
me now!"
She wrapped the morocco case in a sheet of foolscap, secured the parcel
in several places with red wax and a plain seal, and directed it thus:--
"J. C.,
Care of Mr. Joseph Green,
Bell Inn,
Doncaster."
Early the next morning Miss Floyd drove her aunt and cousin into
Croydon, and, leaving them at a Berlin-wool shop, went alone to the
post-office, where she registered and posted this valuable parcel.