REJECTED AND ACCEPTED.
The dinner-party at Mr. Floyd's was a very merry one; and when John
Mellish and Talbot Bulstrode left the East Cliff to walk westward,
at eleven o'clock at night, the Yorkshireman told his friend that he
had never enjoyed himself so much in his life. This declaration must,
however, be taken with some reserve; for it was one which John was in
the habit of making about three times a week: but he really had been
very happy in the society of the banker's family; and, what was more,
he was ready to adore Aurora Floyd without any further preparation
whatever.
A few bright smiles and sparkling glances, a little animated
conversation about the hunting-field and the race-course, combined with
half a dozen glasses of those effervescent wines which Archibald Floyd
imported from the fair Moselle country, had been quite enough to turn
the head of John Mellish, and to cause him to hold wildly forth in the
moonlight upon the merits of the beautiful heiress.
"I verily believe I shall die a bachelor, Talbot," he said, "unless I
can get that girl to marry me. I've only known her half a dozen hours,
and I'm head-over-heels in love with her already. What is it that has
knocked me over like this, Bulstrode? I've seen other girls with black
eyes and hair, and she knows no more of horses than half the women in
Yorkshire; so it isn't that. What is it, then, hey?"
He came to a full stop against a lamp-post, and stared fiercely at his
friend as he asked this question.
Talbot gnashed his teeth in silence.
It was no use battling with his fate, then, he thought; the fascination
of this woman had the same effect upon others as upon himself; and
while he was arguing with, and protesting against, his passion, some
brainless fellow, like this Mellish, would step in and win the prize.
He wished his friend good night upon the steps of the Old Ship Hotel,
and walked straight to his room, where he sat with his window open
to the mild November night, staring out at the moon-lit sea. He
determined to propose to Aurora Floyd before twelve o'clock the next
day.
Why should he hesitate?
He had asked himself that question a hundred times before, and had
always been unable to answer it; and yet he had hesitated. He could
not dispossess himself of a vague idea that there was some mystery in
this girl's life; some secret known only to herself and her father;
some one spot upon the history of the past which cast a shadow on
the present. And yet, how could that be? How could that be, he asked
himself, when her whole life only amounted to nineteen years, and he
had heard the history of those years over and over again? How often
he had artfully led Lucy to tell him the simple story of her cousin's
girlhood! The governesses and masters that had come and gone at Felden
Woods. The ponies and dogs, and puppies and kittens, and petted foals;
the little scarlet riding-habit that had been made for the heiress,
when she rode after the hounds with her cousin Andrew Floyd. The worst
blots that the officer could discover in those early years were a few
broken china vases, and a great deal of ink spilt over badly-written
French exercises. And after being educated at home until she was nearly
eighteen, Aurora had been transferred to a Parisian finishing-school;
and that was all. Her life had been the every-day life of other girls
of her own position, and she differed from them only in being a great
deal more fascinating, and a little more wilful, than the majority.
Talbot laughed at himself for his doubts and hesitations. "What a
suspicious brute I must be," he said, "when I imagine I have fallen
upon the clue to some mystery simply because there is a mournful
tenderness in the old man's voice when he speaks to his only child! If
I were sixty-seven years of age, and had such a daughter as Aurora,
would there not always be a shuddering terror mingled with my love,--a
horrible dread that something would happen to take her away from me? I
will propose to Miss Floyd to-morrow."
Had Talbot been thoroughly candid with himself, he would perhaps have
added, "Or John Mellish will make her an offer the day after."
Captain Bulstrode presented himself at the house on the East Cliff
some time before noon on the next day; but he found Mr. Mellish on the
door-step, talking to Miss Floyd's groom and inspecting the horses,
which were waiting for the young ladies; for the young ladies were
going to ride, and John Mellish was going to ride with them.
"But if you'll join us, Bulstrode," the Yorkshireman said,
good-naturedly, "you can ride the gray I spoke of yesterday. Saunders
shall go back and fetch him."
Talbot rejected this offer rather sulkily. "I've my own horses here,
thank you," he answered. "But if you'll let your groom ride down to the
stables and tell my man to bring them up, I shall be obliged to you."
After which condescending request Captain Bulstrode turned his back
upon his friend, crossed the road, and folding his arms upon the
railings, stared resolutely at the sea. But in five minutes more the
ladies appeared upon the door-step, and Talbot, turning at the sound
of their voices, was fain to cross the road once more for the chance
of taking Aurora's foot in his hand as she sprang into her saddle; but
John Mellish was before him again, and Miss Floyd's mare was curveting
under the touch of her light hand before the captain could interfere.
He allowed the groom to attend to Lucy, and, mounting as quickly as his
stiff leg would allow him, he prepared to take his place by Aurora's
side. Again he was too late; Miss Floyd had cantered down the hill
attended by Mellish, and it was impossible for Talbot to leave poor
Lucy, who was a timid horsewoman.
The captain never admired Lucy so little as on horseback. His pale
saint with the halo of golden hair seemed to him sadly out of place
in a side-saddle. He looked back at the day of his morning visit to
Felden, and remembered how he had admired her, and how exactly she
corresponded with his ideal, and how determined he was to be bewitched
by her rather than by Aurora. "If she had fallen in love with me," he
thought, "I would have snapped my fingers at the black-browed heiress,
and married this fair-haired angel out of hand. I meant to do that when
I sold my commission. It was not for Aurora's sake I left the army, it
was not Aurora whom I followed down here. Which did I follow? What did
I follow, I wonder? My destiny, I suppose, which is leading me through
such a witch's dance as I never thought to tread at the sober age of
three-and-thirty. If Lucy had only loved me, it might have been all
different."
He was so angry with himself, that he was half inclined to be angry
with poor Lucy for not extricating him from the snares of Aurora. If he
could have read that innocent heart, as he rode in sulky silence across
the stunted turf on the wide downs! If he could have known the slow
sick pain in that gentle breast, as the quiet girl by his side lifted
her blue eyes every now and then to steal a glance at his hard profile
and moody brow! If he could have read her secret later, when, talking
of Aurora, he for the first time clearly betrayed the mystery of his
own heart! If he could have known how the landscape grew dim before
her eyes, and how the brown moorland reeled beneath her horse's hoofs
until they seemed going down, down, down into some fathomless depth of
sorrow and despair! But he knew nothing of this; and he thought Lucy
Floyd a pretty, inanimate girl, who would no doubt be delighted to wear
a becoming dress as bridesmaid at her cousin's wedding.
There was to be a dinner-party that evening upon the East Cliff, to
which both John Mellish and Talbot were invited; and the captain
savagely determined to bring matters to an issue before the night was
out.
Talbot Raleigh Bulstrode would have been very angry with you, had
you watched him too closely that evening as he fastened the golden
solitaire in his narrow cravat before his looking-glass in the
bow-window at the Old Ship. He was ashamed of himself for being
causelessly savage with his valet, whom he dismissed abruptly before
he began to dress; and had not the courage to call the man back again
when his own hot hands refused to do their office. He spilt half a
bottleful of perfume upon his varnished boots, and smeared his face
with a scented waxy compound bought of Monsieur Eugène Rimmel, which
promised to _lisser sans graisser_ his moustache. He broke one of the
crystal-boxes in his dressing-case, and put the bits of broken glass
in his waistcoat-pocket from sheer absence of mind. He underwent
semi-strangulation with the unbending circular collar in which, as a
gentleman, it was his duty to invest himself; and he could have beaten
the ivory backs of his brushes upon his head in blind execration of
that short, stubborn black hair, which only curled at the _other ends;_
and when at last he emerged from his room, it was with a spiteful
sensation that every waiter in the place knew his secret, and had a
perfect knowledge of every emotion in his breast, and that the very
Newfoundland dog lying on the door-step had an inkling of the truth, as
he lifted up his big head to look at the captain, and then dropped it
again with a contemptuously lazy yawn.
Captain Bulstrode offered a handful of broken glass to the man who
drove him to the East Cliff, and then confusedly substituted about
fifteen shillings worth of silver coin for that abnormal species
of payment. There must have been two or three earthquakes and an
eclipse or so going on in some part of the globe, he thought, for this
jog-trot planet seemed all tumult and confusion to Talbot Bulstrode.
The world was all Brighton, and Brighton was all blue moonlight, and
steel-coloured sea, and glancing, dazzling gas-light, and hare-soup and
cod and oysters, and Aurora Floyd. Yes, Aurora Floyd, who wore a white
silk dress, and a thick circlet of dull gold upon her hair, who looked
more like Cleopatra to-night than ever, and who suffered Mr. John
Mellish to take her down to dinner. How Talbot hated the Yorkshireman's
big fair face, and blue eyes, and white teeth, as he watched the two
young people across a phalanx of glass and silver, and flowers and
wax-candles, and pickles, and other Fortnum-and-Mason ware! Here was a
golden opportunity lost, thought the discontented captain, forgetful
that he could scarcely have proposed to Miss Floyd at the dinner-table,
amidst the jingle of glasses and popping of corks, and with a big
powdered footman charging at him with a side-dish or a sauce-tureen
while he put the fatal question. The desired moment came a few hours
afterwards, and Talbot had no longer any excuse for delay.
The November evening was mild, and the three windows in the
drawing-room were open from floor to ceiling. It was pleasant to look
out from the hot gas-light upon that wide sweep of moon-lit ocean,
with a white sail glimmering here and there against the purple night.
Captain Bulstrode sat near one of the open windows, watching that
tranquil scene, with, I fear, very little appreciation of its beauty.
He was wishing that the people would drop off and leave him alone with
Aurora. It was close upon eleven o'clock, and high time they went. John
Mellish would of course insist upon waiting for Talbot; this was what a
man had to endure on account of some old school-boy acquaintance. All
Rugby might turn up against him in a day or two, and dispute with him
for Aurora's smiles. But John Mellish was engaged in a very animated
conversation with Archibald Floyd, having contrived with consummate
artifice to ingratiate himself in the old man's favour, and the
visitors having one by one dropped off, Aurora, with a listless yawn
that she took little pains to conceal, strolled out on to the broad
iron balcony. Lucy was sitting at a table at the other end of the room,
looking at a book of beauty. Oh, my poor Lucy! how much did you see
of the Honourable Miss Brownsmith's high forehead and Roman nose? Did
not that young lady's handsome face stare up at you dimly through a
blinding mist of tears that you were a great deal too well educated to
shed? The chance had come at last. If life had been a Haymarket comedy,
and the entrances and exits arranged by Mr. Buckstone himself, it
could have fallen out no better than this. Talbot Bulstrode followed
Aurora on to the balcony; John Mellish went on with his story about the
Beverley foxhounds; and Lucy, holding her breath at the other end of
the room, knew as well what was going to happen as the captain himself.
Is not life altogether a long comedy, with Fate for the stage-manager,
and Passion, Inclination, Love, Hate, Revenge, Ambition, and Avarice by
turns in the prompter's box? A tiresome comedy sometimes, with dreary,
talkee-talkee front scenes which come to nothing, but only serve to
make the audience more impatient as they wait while the stage is set
and the great people change their dresses; or a "sensation" comedy,
with unlooked-for tableaux and unexpected _dénouements;_ but a comedy
to the end of the chapter, for the sorrows which seem tragic to us
are very funny when seen from the other side of the footlights; and
our friends in the pit are as much amused with our trumpery griefs as
the Haymarket _habitués_ when Mr. Box finds his gridiron empty, or
Mr. Cox misses his rasher. What can be funnier than other people's
anguish? Why do we enjoy Mr. Maddison Morton's farces, and laugh till
the tears run down our cheek at the comedian who enacts them? Because
there is scarcely a farce upon the British stage which is not, from
the rising to the dropping of the curtain, a record of human anguish
and undeserved misery. Yes, undeserved and unnecessary torture--there
is the special charm of the entertainment. If the man who was weak
enough to send his wife to Camberwell _had_ crushed a baby behind a
chest of drawers, his sufferings wouldn't be half so delightful to an
intellectual audience. If the gentleman who became embroiled with his
laundress _had_ murdered the young lady in the green boots, where would
be the fun of that old Adelphi farce in which poor Wright was wont to
delight us? And so it is with our friends on the other side of the
footlights, who enjoy our troubles all the more because we have not
always deserved them, and whose sorrows we shall gloat over by-and-by,
when the bell for the next piece begins, and it is their turn to go on
and act.
Talbot Bulstrode went out on to the balcony, and the earth stood still
for ten minutes or so, and every steel-blue star in the sky glared
watchfully down upon the young man in this the supreme crisis of his
life.
Aurora was leaning against a slender iron pilaster, looking aslant into
the town and across the town to the sea. She was wrapped in an opera
cloak; no stiff, embroidered, young-ladyfied garment; but a voluminous
drapery of soft scarlet woollen stuff, such as Semiramide herself might
have worn. "She looks like Semiramide," Talbot thought. "How did this
Scotch banker and his Lancashire wife come to have an Assyrian for
their daughter?"
He began brilliantly, this young man, as lovers generally do.
"I am afraid you must have fatigued yourself this evening, Miss Floyd,"
he remarked.
Aurora stifled a yawn as she answered him. "I am rather tired," she
said.
It wasn't very encouraging. How was he to begin an eloquent speech,
when she might fall asleep in the middle of it? But he did; he dashed
at once into the heart of his subject, and he told her how he loved
her; how he had done battle with this passion, which had been too
strong for him; how he loved her as he never thought to love any
creature upon this earth; and how he cast himself before her in all
humility to take his sentence of life or death from her dear lips.
She was silent for some moments, her profile sharply distinct to him
in the moonlight, and those dear lips trembling visibly. Then, with
a half-averted face, and in words that seemed to come slowly and
painfully from a stifled throat, she gave him his answer.
That answer was a rejection!
Not a young lady's No, which means Yes to-morrow; or which means
perhaps that you have not been on your knees in a passion of despair,
like Lord Edward Fitz-Morkysh in Miss Oderose's last novel. Nothing
of this kind; but a calm negative, carefully and tersely worded, as
if she feared to mislead him by so much as one syllable that could
leave a loophole through which hope might creep into his heart. He was
rejected. For a moment it was quite as much as he could do to believe
it. He was inclined to imagine that the signification of certain words
had suddenly changed, or that he had been in the habit of mistaking
them all his life, rather than that those words meant this hard fact;
namely, that he, Talbot Raleigh Bulstrode, of Bulstrode Castle, and of
Saxon extraction, had been rejected by the daughter of a Lombard-Street
banker.
He paused--for an hour and a half or so, as it seemed to him--in order
to collect himself before he spoke again.
"May I--venture to inquire," he said,--how horribly commonplace the
phrase seemed! he could have used no worse had he been inquiring for
furnished lodgings,--"may I ask if any prior attachment--to one more
worthy----"
"Oh, no, no, no!"
The answer came upon him so suddenly, that it almost startled him as
much as her rejection.
"And yet your decision is irrevocable?"
"Quite irrevocable."
"Forgive me if I am intrusive; but--but Mr. Floyd may perhaps have
formed some higher views----"
He was interrupted by a stifled sob as she clasped her hands over her
averted face.
"Higher views!" she said; "poor dear old man! no, no, indeed."
"It is scarcely strange that I bore you with these questions. It is so
hard to think that, meeting you with your affections disengaged, I
have yet been utterly unable to win one shadow of regard upon which I
might build a hope for the future."
Poor Talbot! Talbot, the splitter of metaphysical straws and chopper of
logic, talking of building hopes on shadows, with a lover's delirious
stupidity.
"It is so hard to resign every thought of your ever coming to alter
your decision of to-night, Aurora,"--he lingered on her name for a
moment, first because it was so sweet to say it, and secondly, in the
hope that she would speak,--"it is so hard to remember the fabric of
happiness I had dared to build, and to lay it down here to-night for
ever."
Talbot quite forgot that, up to the time of the arrival of John
Mellish, he had been perpetually arguing against his passion, and had
declared to himself over and over again that he would be a consummate
fool if he was ever beguiled into making Aurora his wife. He reversed
the parable of the fox; for he had been inclined to make faces at the
grapes while he fancied them within his reach, and now that they were
removed from his grasp, he thought that such delicious fruit had never
grown to tempt mankind.
"If--if," he said, "my fate had been happier, I know how proud my
father, poor old Sir John, would have been of his eldest son's choice."
How ashamed he felt of the meanness of this speech! The artful sentence
had been constructed in order to remind Aurora whom she was refusing.
He was trying to bribe her with the baronetcy which was to be his in
due time. But she made no answer to the pitiful appeal. Talbot was
almost choked with mortification. "I see--I see," he said, "that it is
hopeless. Good night, Miss Floyd."
She did not even turn to look at him as he left the balcony; but with
her red drapery wrapped tightly round her, stood shivering in the
moonlight, with the silent tears slowly stealing down her cheeks.
"Higher views!" she cried bitterly, repeating a phrase that Talbot
used,--"higher views! God help him!"
"I must wish you good-night and good-bye at the same time," Captain
Bulstrode said, as he shook hands with Lucy.
"Good-bye?"
"Yes; I leave Brighton early to-morrow."
"So suddenly?"
"Why, not exactly suddenly. I always meant to travel this winter. Can I
do anything for you--at Cairo?"
He was so pale and cold and wretched-looking, that she almost pitied
him--pitied him in spite of the wild joy growing up in her heart.
Aurora had refused him--it was perfectly clear--refused _him!_ The soft
blue eyes filled with tears at the thought that a demigod should have
endured such humiliation. Talbot pressed her hand gently in his own
clammy palm. He could read pity in that tender look, but possessed no
lexicon by which he could translate its deeper meaning.
"You will wish your uncle good-bye for me, Lucy," he said. He called
her Lucy for the first time; but what did it matter now? His great
affliction set him apart from his fellow-men, and gave him dismal
privileges. "Good-night, Lucy; good-night and good-bye. I--I--shall
hope to see you again--in a year or two."
The pavement of the East Cliff seemed so much air beneath Talbot
Bulstrode's boots as he strode back to the Old Ship; for it is
peculiar to us, in our moments of supreme trouble or joy, to lose all
consciousness of the earth we tread, and to float upon an atmosphere of
sublime egotism.
But the captain did not leave Brighton the next day on the first stage
of his Egyptian journey. He stayed at the fashionable watering-place;
but he resolutely abjured the neighbourhood of the East Cliff, and, the
day being wet, took a pleasant walk to Shoreham through the rain; and
Shoreham being such a pretty place, he was no doubt much enlivened by
that exercise.
Returning through the fog at about four o'clock, the captain met Mr.
John Mellish close against the turnpike outside Cliftonville.
The two men stared aghast at each other.
"Why, where on earth are you going?" asked Talbot.
"Back to Yorkshire by the first train that leaves Brighton."
"But this isn't the way to the station!"
"No; but they're putting the horses in my portmanteau, and my shirts
are going by the Leeds cattle-train; and----"
Talbot Bulstrode burst into a loud laugh, a harsh and bitter
cachinnation, but affording wondrous relief to that gentleman's
overcharged breast.
"John Mellish," he said, "you have been proposing to Aurora Floyd."
The Yorkshireman turned scarlet. "It--it--wasn't honourable of her to
tell you," he stammered.
"Miss Floyd has never breathed a word to me upon the subject. I've just
come from Shoreham, and you've only lately left the East Cliff. You've
proposed, and you've been rejected."
"I have," roared John; "and it's deuced hard when I promised her she
should keep a racing stud if she liked, and enter as many colts as she
pleased for the Derby, and give her own orders to the trainer, and I'd
never interfere;--and--and--Mellish Park is one of the finest places
in the county; and I'd have won her a bit of blue ribbon to tie up her
bonny black hair."
"That old Frenchman was right," muttered Captain Bulstrode: "there
_is_ a great satisfaction in the misfortune of others. If I go to my
dentist, I like to find another wretch in the waiting-room; and I like
to have my tooth extracted first, and to see him glare enviously at
me as I come out of the torture chamber, knowing that my troubles are
over, while his are to come. Good-bye, John Mellish, and God bless
you. You're not such a bad fellow after all."
Talbot felt almost cheerful as he walked back to the Ship, and he
took a mutton cutlet and tomata sauce, and a pint of Moselle for his
dinner: and the food and wine warmed him; and not having slept a wink
on the previous night, he fell into a heavy indigestible slumber, with
his head hanging over the sofa-cushion, and dreamt that he was at
Grand Cairo (or at a place which would have been that city had it not
been now and then Bulstrode Castle, and occasionally chambers in the
Albany); and that Aurora Floyd was with him, clad in imperial purple,
with hieroglyphics on the hem of her robe, and wearing a clown's jacket
of white satin and scarlet spots, such as he had once seen foremost
in a great race. Captain Bulstrode arose early the next morning, with
the full intention of departing from Sussex by the 8.45 express; but
suddenly remembering that he had but poorly acknowledged Archibald
Floyd's cordiality, he determined on sacrificing his inclinations on
the shrine of courtesy, and calling once more at the East Cliff to take
leave of the banker. Having once resolved upon this line of action, the
captain would fain have hurried that moment to Mr. Floyd's house; but
finding that it was only half-past seven, he was compelled to restrain
his impatience and await a more seasonable hour. Could he go at nine?
Scarcely. At ten? Yes, surely, as he could then leave by the eleven
o'clock train. He sent his breakfast away untouched, and sat looking
at his watch in a mad hurry for the time to pass, yet growing hot and
uncomfortable as the hour drew near.
At a quarter to ten he put on his hat and left the hotel. Mr. Floyd
was at home, the servant told him--upstairs in the little study, he
thought. Talbot waited for no more. "You need not announce me," he
said; "I know where to find your master."
The study was on the same floor as the drawing-room; and close against
the drawing-room door Talbot paused for a moment. The door was open;
the room empty; no, not empty: Aurora Floyd was there, seated with her
back towards him, and her head leaning on the cushions of her chair. He
stopped for another moment to admire the back view of that small head
with its crown of lustrous raven hair, then took a step or two in the
direction of the banker's study; then stopped again, then turned back,
went into the drawing-room, and shut the door behind him.
She did not stir as he approached her, nor answer when he stammered
her name. Her face was as white as the face of a dead woman, and her
nerveless hands hung over the cushions of the arm-chair. A newspaper
was lying at her feet. She had quietly swooned away sitting there by
herself, with no one by to restore her to consciousness.
Talbot flung some flowers from a vase on the table, and dashed the
water over Aurora's forehead; then wheeling her chair close to the open
window, he set her with her face to the wind. In two or three moments
she began to shiver violently, and soon afterwards opened her eyes,
and looked at him; as she did so, she put her hands to her head, as if
trying to remember something. "Talbot!" she said, "Talbot!"
She called him by his Christian name, she who five-and-thirty hours
before had coldly forbidden him to hope.
"Aurora," he cried, "Aurora, I thought I came here to wish your father
good-bye; but I deceived myself. I came to ask you once more, and once
for all, if your decision of the night before last was irrevocable."
"Heaven knows I thought it was when I uttered it."
"But it was not?"
"Do you wish me to revoke it?"
"Do I wish? do I----"
"Because if you really do, I will revoke it; for you are a brave and
honourable man, Captain Bulstrode, and I love you very dearly."
Heaven knows into what rhapsodies he might have fallen, but she put
up her hand, as much as to say, "Forbear to-day, if you love me,"
and hurried from the room. He had accepted the cup of _bang_ which
the siren had offered, and had drained the very dregs thereof, and
was drunken. He dropped into the chair in which Aurora had sat, and,
absent-minded in his joyful intoxication, picked up the newspaper that
had lain at her feet. He shuddered in spite of himself as he looked at
the title of the journal; it was 'Bell's Life.' A dirty copy, crumpled,
and beer-stained, and emitting rank odours of inferior tobacco. It was
directed to Miss Floyd, in such sprawling penmanship as might have
disgraced the potboy of a sporting public-house:--
"Miss Floid,
fell dun wodes,
kent."
The newspaper had been redirected to Aurora by the housekeeper at
Felden. Talbot ran his eye eagerly over the front page; it was almost
entirely filled with advertisements (and such advertisements!), but in
one column there was an account headed, "Frightful Accident in Germany:
an English Jockey killed."
Captain Bulstrode never knew why he read of this accident. It was in
no way interesting to him, being an account of a steeple-chase in
Prussia, in which a heavy English rider and a crack French horse had
been killed. There was a great deal of regret expressed for the loss of
the horse, and none for the man who had ridden him, who, the reporter
stated, was very little known in sporting circles; but in a paragraph
lower down was added this information, evidently procured at the last
moment: "The jockey's name was Conyers."