MONEY MATTERS.
Archibald Floyd was very lonely at Felden Woods without his daughter.
He took no pleasure in the long drawing-room, or the billiard-room
and library, or the pleasant galleries, in which there were all
manner of easy corners, with abutting bay-windows, damask-cushioned
oaken benches, china vases as high as tables, all enlivened by the
alternately sternly masculine and simperingly feminine faces of
those ancestors whose painted representations the banker had bought
in Wardour Street. (Indeed, I fear those Scottish warriors, those
bewigged worthies of the Northern Circuit, those taper-waisted ladies
with pointed stomachers, tucked-up petticoats, pannier-hoops, and
blue-ribbon bedizened crooks, had been painted to order, and that there
were such items in the account of the Wardour Street _rococo_ merchant
as, "To one knight banneret, killed at Bosworth 25_l._ 5_s._") The old
banker, I say, grew sadly weary of his gorgeous mansion, which was of
little avail to him without Aurora.
People are not so very much happier for living in handsome houses,
though it is generally considered such a delightful thing to occupy
a mansion which would be large enough for a hospital, and take your
simple meal at the end of a table long enough to accommodate a board
of railway directors. Archibald Floyd could not sit beside both the
fireplaces in his long drawing-room, and he felt strangely lonely
looking from the easy-chair on one hearth-rug, through a vista of
velvet-pile and satin-damask, walnut-wood, buhl, malachite, china,
parian, crystal, and ormolu, at that solitary second hearth-rug and
those empty easy-chairs. He shivered in his dreary grandeur. His
five-and-forty by thirty feet of velvet-pile might have been a patch
of yellow sand in the Great Sahara for any pleasure he derived from
its occupation. The billiard-room, perhaps, was worse; for the cues
and balls were every one made precious by Aurora's touch; and there
was a great fine-drawn seam upon the green cloth, which marked the
spot where Miss Floyd had ripped it open that time she made her first
juvenile essay at a cannon.
The banker locked the doors of both these splendid apartments, and gave
the keys to his housekeeper.
"Keep the rooms in order, Mrs. Richardson," he said, "and keep them
thoroughly aired; but I shall only use them when Mr. and Mrs. Mellish
come to me."
And having shut up these haunted chambers, Mr. Floyd retired to that
snug little study in which he kept his few relics of the sorrowful past.
It may be said that the Scottish banker was a very stupid old man,
and that he might have invited the county families to his gorgeous
mansion; that he might have summoned his nephews and their wives, with
all grand nephews and nieces appertaining, and might thus have made
the place merry with the sound of fresh young voices, and the long
corridors noisy with the patter of restless little feet. He might have
lured literary and artistic celebrities to his lonely hearth-rug,
and paraded the lions of the London season upon his velvet-pile. He
might have entered the political arena, and have had himself nominated
for Beckenham, Croydon, or West Wickham. He might have done almost
anything; for he had very nearly as much money as Aladdin, and could
have carried dishes of uncut diamonds to the father of any princess
whom he might take it into his head to marry. He might have done almost
anything, this ridiculous old banker; yet he did nothing but sit
brooding over his lonely hearth--for he was old and feeble, and he sat
by the fire even in the bright summer weather--thinking of the daughter
who was far away.
He thanked God for her happy home, for her devoted husband, for her
secure and honourable position; and he would have given the last drop
of his blood to obtain for her these advantages; but he was, after all,
only mortal, and he would rather have had her by his side.
Why did he not surround himself with society, as brisk Mrs. Alexander
urged, when she found him looking pale and care-worn?
Why? Because society was not Aurora. Because all the brightest
_bon-mots_ of all the literary celebrities who have ever walked this
earth seemed dull to him when compared with his daughter's idlest
babble. Literary lions! Political notabilities! Out upon them! When
Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton and Mr. Charles Dickens should call in Mr.
Makepeace Thackeray and Mr. Wilkie Collins, to assist them in writing
a work, in fifteen volumes or so, about Aurora, the banker would be
ready to offer them a handsome sum for the copyright. Until then, he
cared very little for the best book in Mr. Mudie's collection. When
the members of the legislature should bring their political knowledge
to bear upon Aurora, Mr. Archibald Floyd would be happy to listen to
them. In the interim, he would have yawned in Lord Palmerston's face or
turned his back upon Earl Russell.
The banker had been a kind uncle, a good master, a warm friend, and a
generous patron; but he had never loved any creature except his wife
Eliza and the daughter she had left to his care. Life is not long
enough to hold many such attachments as these; and the people who love
very intensely are apt to concentrate the full force of their affection
upon one object. For twenty years this black-eyed girl had been the
idol before which the old man had knelt; and now that the divinity
is taken away from him, he falls prostrate and desolate before the
empty shrine. Heaven knows how bitterly this beloved child had made
him suffer, how deeply she had plunged the reckless dagger to the
very core of his loving heart, and how freely, gladly, tearfully, and
hopefully he had forgiven her. But she had never atoned for the past.
It is poor consolation which Lady Macbeth gives to her remorseful
husband when she tells him that "what's done cannot be undone;" but
it is painfully and terribly true. Aurora could not restore the year
which she had taken out of her father's life, and which his anguish
and despair had multiplied by ten. She could not restore the equal
balance of the mind which had once experienced a shock so dreadful as
to shatter its serenity, as we shatter the mechanism of a watch when
we let it fall violently to the ground. The watchmaker patches up the
damage, and gives us a new wheel here, and a spring there, and sets the
hands going again; but they never go so smoothly as when the watch was
fresh from the hands of the maker, and they are apt to stop suddenly
with no shadow of warning. Aurora could not atone. Whatever the nature
of that girlish error which made the mystery of her life, it was not
to be undone. She could more easily have baled the ocean dry with a
soup-ladle,--and I dare say she would gladly have gone to work to spoon
out the salt water, if by so doing she could have undone that bygone
mischief. But she could not; she could not! Her tears, her penitence,
her affection, her respect, her devotion, could do much; but they could
not do this.
The old banker invited Talbot Bulstrode and his young wife to make
themselves at home at Felden, and drive down to the Woods as freely
as if the place had been some country mansion of their own. They
came sometimes, and Talbot entertained his great uncle-in-law with
the troubles of the Cornish miners, while Lucy sat listening to her
husband's talk with unmitigated reverence and delight. Archibald Floyd
made his guests very welcome upon these occasions, and gave orders
that the oldest and costliest wines in the cellar should be brought
out for the captain's entertainment, but sometimes in the very middle
of Talbot's discourses upon political economy the old man would
sigh wearily, and look with a dimly yearning gaze far away over the
tree-tops in a northward direction, towards that distant Yorkshire
household in which his daughter was the queen.
Perhaps Mr. Floyd had never quite forgiven Talbot Bulstrode for the
breaking off of the match between him and Aurora. The banker had
certainly of the two suitors preferred John Mellish; but he would have
considered it only correct if Captain Bulstrode had retired from the
world upon the occasion of Aurora's marriage, and broken his heart in
foreign exile, rather than advertising his indifference by a union
with poor little Lucy. Archibald looked wonderingly at his fair-haired
niece, as she sat before him in the deep bay-window, with the sunshine
upon her amber tresses and the crisp folds of her peach-coloured dress,
looking for all the world like one of the painted heroines so dear to
the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, and marvelled how it was that Talbot
could have come to admire her. She was very pretty, certainly, with
pink cheeks, a white nose, and rose-coloured nostrils, and a species of
beauty which consists in very careful finishing off and picking out
of the features; but, oh, how tame, how cold, how weak, beside that
Egyptian goddess, that Assyrian queen with the flashing eyes and the
serpentine coils of purple-black hair!
Talbot Bulstrode was very calm, very quiet, but apparently
sufficiently happy. I use that word "sufficiently" advisedly. It is a
dangerous thing to be too happy. Your high-pressure happiness, your
sixty-miles-an-hour enjoyment, is apt to burst up and come to a bad
end. Better the quietest parliamentary train, which starts very early
in the morning and carries its passengers safe into the terminus when
the shades of night come down, than that rabid, rushing express, which
does the journey in a quarter of the time, but occasionally topples
over a bank, or rides pickaback upon a luggage train, in its fiery
impetuosity.
Talbot Bulstrode was substantially happier with Lucy than he ever
could have been with Aurora. His fair young wife's undemonstrative
worship of him soothed and flattered him. Her gentle obedience, her
entire concurrence in his every thought and whim, set his pride at
rest. She was not eccentric, she was not impetuous. If he left her
alone all day in the snug little house in Halfmoon Street which he
had furnished before his marriage, he had no fear of her calling for
her horse and scampering away into Rotten Row, with not so much as
a groom to attend upon her. She was not strong-minded. She could be
happy without the society of Newfoundlands and Skye terriers. She
did not prefer Landseer's dog-pictures above all other examples of
modern art. She might have walked down Regent Street a hundred times
without being once tempted to loiter upon the curb-stone and bargain
with suspicious-looking merchants for a "noice leetle dawg." She was
altogether gentle and womanly, and Talbot had no fear to trust her to
her own sweet will, and no need to impress upon her the necessity of
lending her feeble little hands to the mighty task of sustaining the
dignity of the Raleigh Bulstrodes.
She would cling to him sometimes half lovingly, half timidly, and,
looking up with a pretty deprecating smile into his coldly handsome
face, ask him, falteringly, if he was _really_, REALLY happy.
"Yes, my darling girl," the Cornish captain would answer, being very
well accustomed to the question, "decidedly, very happy."
His calm business-like tone would rather disappoint poor Lucy, and she
would vaguely wish that her husband had been a little more like the
heroes in the High-Church novels, and a little less devoted to Adam
Smith, McCulloch, and the Cornish mines.
"But you don't love me as you loved Aurora, Talbot?" (There were
profane people who corrupted the captain's Christian name into
"Tal;" but Mrs. Bulstrode was not more likely to avail herself of
that disrespectful abbreviation than she was to address her gracious
Sovereign as "Vic.") "But you don't love me as you loved Aurora,
Talbot dear?" the pleading voice would urge, so tenderly anxious to be
contradicted.
"Not _as_ I loved Aurora, perhaps, darling."
"Not as much?"
"As much and better, my pet; with a more enduring and a wiser love."
If this was a little bit of a fib when the captain first said it, is
he to be utterly condemned for the falsehood? How could he resist the
loving blue eyes so ready to fill with tears if he had answered coldly;
the softly pensive voice, tremulous with emotion; the earnest face;
the caressing hand laid so lightly upon his coat-collar? He must have
been more than mortal had he given any but loving answers to those
loving questions. The day soon came when his answers were no longer
tinged with so much as the shadow of falsehood. His little wife crept
stealthily, almost imperceptibly, into his heart; and if he remembered
the fever-dream of the past, it was only to rejoice in the tranquil
security of the present.
Talbot Bulstrode and his wife were staying at Felden Woods for a few
days during the burning July weather, and sat down to dinner with
Mr. Floyd upon the day succeeding the night of the storm. They were
disturbed in the very midst of that dinner by the unexpected arrival
of Mr. and Mrs. Mellish, who rattled up to the door in a hired vehicle
just as the second course was being placed upon the table.
Archibald Floyd recognized the first murmur of his daughter's voice,
and ran out into the hall to welcome her.
She showed no eagerness to throw herself into her father's arms,
but stood looking at John Mellish with a weary, absent expression,
while the stalwart Yorkshireman allowed himself to be gradually
disencumbered of a chaotic load of travelling-bags, sun-umbrellas,
shawls, magazines, newspapers, and over-coats.
"My darling, my darling!" exclaimed the banker, "what a happy surprise,
what an unexpected pleasure!"
She did not answer him, but, with her arms about his neck, looked
mournfully into his face.
"She would come," said John Mellish, addressing himself generally; "she
would come. The deuce knows why! But she said she must come, and what
could I do but bring her? If she asked me to take her to the moon, what
could I do but take her? But she wouldn't bring any luggage to speak
of, because we're going back to-morrow."
"Going back to-morrow!" repeated Mr. Floyd; "impossible!"
"Bless your heart!" cried John, "what's impossible to Lolly? If she
wanted to go to the moon, she'd go, don't I tell you? She'd have a
special engine, or a special balloon, or a special something or other,
and she'd go. When we were in Paris she wanted to see the big fountains
play; and she told me to write to the Emperor and ask him to have them
set going for her. She did, by Jove!"
Lucy Bulstrode came forward to bid her cousin welcome; but I fear
that a sharp jealous pang thrilled through that innocent heart at the
thought that those fatal black eyes were again brought to bear upon
Talbot's life.
Mrs. Mellish put her arms about her cousin as tenderly as if she had
been embracing a child.
"You here, dearest Lucy!" she said. "I am so very glad!"
"He loves me," whispered little Mrs. Bulstrode, "and I never, never can
tell you how good he is."
"Of course not, my darling," answered Aurora, drawing her cousin
aside while Mr. Mellish shook hands with his father-in-law and Talbot
Bulstrode. "He is the most glorious of princes, the most perfect of
saints, is he not? and you worship him all day; you sing silent hymns
in his praise, and perform high mass in his honour, and go about
telling his virtues upon an imaginary rosary. Ah, Lucy, how many kinds
of love there are! and who shall say which is the best or highest? I
see plain, blundering John Mellish yonder, with unprejudiced eyes; I
know his every fault, I laugh at his every awkwardness. Yes, I laugh
now, for he is dropping those things faster than the servants can pick
them up."
She stopped to point to poor John's chaotic burden.
"I see all this as plainly as I see the deficiencies of the servant who
stands behind my chair; and yet I love him with all my heart and soul,
and I would not have one fault corrected, or one virtue exaggerated,
for fear it should make him different to what he is."
Lucy Bulstrode gave a little half-resigned sigh.
"What a blessing that my poor cousin is happy!" she thought; "and yet
how can she be otherwise than miserable with that absurd John Mellish?"
What Lucy meant, perhaps, was this:--How could Aurora be otherwise
than wretched in the companionship of a gentleman who had neither a
straight nose nor dark hair? Some women never outlive that school-girl
infatuation for straight noses and dark hair. Some girls would have
rejected Napoleon the Great because he wasn't "tall," or would have
turned up their noses at the author of 'Childe Harold' if they had
happened to see him in a stand-up collar. If Lord Byron had never
turned down his collars, would his poetry have been as popular as
it was? If Mr. Alfred Tennyson were to cut his hair, would that
operation modify our opinion of 'The Queen of the May'? Where does that
marvellous power of association begin and end? Perhaps there may have
been a reason for Aurora's contentment with her commonplace, prosaic
husband. Perhaps she had learned at a very early period of her life
that there are qualities even more valuable than exquisitely-modelled
features or clustering locks. Perhaps, having begun to be foolish very
early, she had outstripped her contemporaries in the race, and had
earlier learned to be wise.
Archibald Floyd led his daughter and her husband into the dining-room,
and the dinner-party sat down again with the two unexpected guests, and
the luke-warm salmon brought in again for Mr. and Mrs. Mellish.
Aurora sat in her old place on her father's right hand. In the old
girlish days Miss Floyd had never occupied the bottom of the table, but
had loved best to sit close to that foolishly-doting parent, pouring
out his wine for him in defiance of the servants, and doing other
loving offices which were deliciously inconvenient to the old man.
To-day Aurora seemed especially affectionate. That fondly-clinging
manner had all its ancient charm to the banker. He put down his glass
with a tremulous hand to gaze at his darling child, and was dazzled
with her beauty, and drunken with the happiness of having her near him.
"But, my darling," he said, by-and-by, "what do you mean by talking
about going back to Yorkshire to-morrow?"
"Nothing, papa, except that I _must_ go," answered Mrs. Mellish,
determinedly.
"But why come, dear, if you could only stop one night?"
"Because I wanted to see you, dearest father, and talk to you
about--about money matters."
"That's it," exclaimed John Mellish, with his mouth half full of salmon
and lobster-sauce. "That's it! Money matters! That's all I can get out
of her. She goes out late last night, and roams about the garden, and
comes in wet through and through, and says she must come to London
about money matters. What should she want with money matters? If she
wants money, she can have as much as she wants. She shall write the
figures, and I'll sign the cheque; or she shall have a dozen blank
cheques to fill in just as she pleases. What is there upon this earth
that I'd refuse her? If she dipped a little too deep, and put more
money than she could afford upon the bay filly, why doesn't she come to
me instead of bothering you about money matters? You know I said so in
the train, Aurora, ever so many times. Why bother your poor papa about
it?"
The poor papa looked wonderingly from his daughter to his daughter's
husband. What did it all mean? Trouble, vexation, weariness of spirit,
humiliation, disgrace?
Ah, Heaven help that enfeebled mind whose strength has been shattered
by one great shock! Archibald Floyd dreaded the token of a coming storm
in every chance cloud on the summer's sky.
"Perhaps I may prefer to spend my _own_ money, Mr. John Mellish,"
answered Aurora, "and pay any foolish bets I have chosen to make out of
my _own_ purse, without being under an obligation to any one."
Mr. Mellish returned to his salmon in silence.
"There is no occasion for a great mystery, papa," resumed Aurora; "I
want some money for a particular purpose, and I have come to consult
with you about my affairs. There is nothing very extraordinary in that,
I suppose?"
Mrs. John Mellish tossed her head, and flung this sentence at the
assembly, as if it had been a challenge. Her manner was so defiant,
that even Talbot and Lucy felt called upon to respond with a gentle
dissenting murmur.
"No, no, of course not; nothing more natural," muttered the captain;
but he was thinking all the time,--"Thank God I married the other one."
After dinner the little party strolled out of the drawing-room windows
on to the lawn, and away towards that iron bridge upon which Aurora
had stood, with her dog by her side, less than two years ago, on the
occasion of Talbot Bulstrode's second visit to Felden Woods. Lingering
upon that bridge on this tranquil summer's evening, what could the
captain do but think of that September day, barely two years agone?
Barely two years! not two years! And how much had been done and thought
and suffered since! How contemptible was the narrow space of time! yet
what terrible eternities of anguish, what centuries of heart-break,
had been compressed into that pitiful sum of days and weeks! When the
fraudulent partner in some house of business puts the money which is
not his own upon a Derby favourite, and goes home at night a loser,
it is strangely difficult for that wretched defaulter to believe that
it is not twelve hours since he travelled the road to Epsom confident
of success, and calculating how he should invest his winnings. Talbot
Bulstrode was very silent, thinking of the influence which this family
of Felden Woods had had upon his destiny. His little Lucy saw that
silence and thoughtfulness, and, stealing softly to her husband, linked
her arm in his. She had a right to do it now. Yes, to pass her little
soft white hand under his coat-sleeve, and even look up, almost boldly,
in his face.
"Do you remember when you first came to Felden, and we stood upon this
very bridge?" she asked: for she too had been thinking of that faraway
time in the bright September of '57. "Do you remember, Talbot dear?"
She had drawn him away from the banker and his children, in order to
ask this all-important question.
"Yes, perfectly, darling. As well as I remember your graceful figure
seated at the piano in the long drawing-room, with the sunshine on your
hair."
"You remember that!--you remember _me!_" exclaimed Lucy, rapturously.
"Very well, indeed."
"But I thought--that is, I know--that you were in love with Aurora
then."
"I think not."
"You only think not?"
"How can I tell!" cried Talbot. "I freely confess that my first
recollection connected with this place is of a gorgeous black-eyed
creature, with scarlet in her hair; and I can no more disassociate her
image from Felden Woods than I can, with my bare right hand, pluck
up the trees which give the place its name. But if you entertain one
distrustful thought of that pale shadow of the past, you do yourself
and me a grievous wrong. I made a mistake, Lucy; but, thank Heaven! I
saw it in time."
It is to be observed that Captain Bulstrode was always peculiarly
demonstrative in his gratitude to Providence for his escape from the
bonds which were to have united him to Aurora. He also made a great
point of the benign compassion in which he held John Mellish. But in
despite of this, he was apt to be rather captious and quarrelsomely
disposed towards the Yorkshireman; and I doubt if John's little
stupidities and weaknesses were, on the whole, very displeasing to
him. There are some wounds which never quite heal. The jagged flesh
may reunite; cooling medicines may subdue the inflammation; even the
scar left by the dagger-thrust may wear away, until it disappears in
that gradual transformation which every atom of us is supposed by
physiologists to undergo; but the wound _has been_, and to the last
hour of our lives there are unfavourable winds which can make us wince
with the old pain.
Aurora treated her cousin's husband with the calm cordiality which she
might have felt for a brother. She bore no grudge against him for the
old desertion; for she was happy with her husband. She was happy with
the man who loved and believed in her, with a strength of confidence
which had survived every trial of his simple faith. Mrs. Mellish and
Lucy wandered away among the flower-beds by the water-side, leaving the
gentlemen on the bridge.
"So you are very, very happy, my Lucy?" said Aurora.
"Oh, yes, yes, dear. How could I be otherwise? Talbot is so good to me.
I know, of course, that he loved you first, and that he doesn't love me
quite--in the same way, you know--perhaps, in fact--not as much." Lucy
Bulstrode was never tired of harping on this unfortunate minor string.
"But I am very happy. You must come and see us, Aurora dear. Our house
is so pretty!"
Mrs. Bulstrode hereupon entered into a detailed description of the
furniture and decorations in Halfmoon Street, which is perhaps scarcely
worthy of record. Aurora listened rather absently to the long catalogue
of upholstery, and yawned several times before her cousin had finished.
"It's a very pretty house, I dare say, Lucy," she said at last, "and
John and I will be very glad to come and see you some day. I wonder,
Lucy, if I were to come in any trouble or disgrace to your door,
whether you would turn me away?"
"Trouble! disgrace!" repeated Lucy looking frightened.
"You wouldn't turn me away, Lucy, would you? No; I know you better
than that. You'd let me in secretly, and hide me away in one of the
servants' bedrooms, and bring me food by stealth, for fear the captain
should discover the forbidden guest beneath his roof. You'd serve two
masters, Lucy, in fear and trembling."
Before Mrs. Bulstrode could make any answer to this extraordinary
speech the approach of the gentlemen interrupted the feminine
conference.
It was scarcely a lively evening, this July sunset at Felden Woods.
Archibald Floyd's gladness in his daughter's presence was something
damped by the peculiarity of her visit; John Mellish had some shadowy
remnants of the previous night's disquietude hanging about him; Talbot
Bulstrode was thoughtful and moody; and poor little Lucy was tortured
by vague fears of her brilliant cousin's influence. I don't suppose
that any member of that "attenuated" assembly felt very much regret
when the great clock in the stable-yard struck eleven, and the jingling
bedroom candlesticks were brought into the room.
Talbot and his wife were the first to say good-night. Aurora lingered
at her father's side, and John Mellish looked doubtfully at his dashing
white sergeant, waiting to receive the word of command.
"You may go, John," she said; "I want to speak to papa."
"But I can wait, Lolly."
"On no account," answered Mrs. Mellish sharply. "I am going into papa's
study to have a quiet confabulation with him. What end would be gained
by your waiting? You've been yawning in our faces all the evening.
You're tired to death, I know, John; so go at once, my precious pet,
and leave papa and me to discuss our money matters." She pouted her
rosy lips, and stood upon tiptoe, while the big Yorkshireman kissed her.
"How you do henpeck me, Lolly!" he said rather sheepishly. "Good-night,
sir. God bless you! Take care of my darling."
He shook hands with Mr. Floyd, parting from him with that
half-affectionate, half-reverent manner which he always displayed
to Aurora's father. Mrs. Mellish stood for some moments silent and
motionless, looking after her husband; while her father, watching her
looks, tried to read their meaning.
How quiet are the tragedies of real life! That dreadful scene between
the Moor and his Ancient takes place in the open street of Cyprus,
according to modern usage. I can scarcely fancy Othello and Iago
debating about poor Desdemona's honesty in St. Paul's Churchyard, or
even in the market-place of a country town; but perhaps the Cyprus
street was a dull one, a _cul-de-sac_, it may be, or at least a
deserted thoroughfare, something like that in which Monsieur Melnotte
falls upon the shoulder of General Damas and sobs out his lamentations.
But our modern tragedies seem to occur indoors, and in places where we
should least look for scenes of horror. Who can forget that tempestuous
scene of jealous fury and mad violence which took place in a second
floor in Northumberland Street, while the broad daylight was streaming
in through the dusty windows, and the common London cries ascending
from the pavement below?
Any chance traveller driving from Beckenham to West Wickham would have
looked, perhaps enviously, at the Felden mansion, and sighed to be
lord of that fair expanse of park and garden; yet I doubt if in the
county of Kent there was any creature more disturbed in mind than
Archibald Floyd the banker. Those few moments during which Aurora stood
in thoughtful silence were as so many hours to his anxious mind. At
last she spoke.
"Will you come to the study, papa?" she said; "this room is so big, and
so dimly lighted. I always fancy there are listeners in the corners."
She did not wait for an answer; but led the way to a room upon the
other side of the hall,--the room in which she and her father had been
so long closeted together upon the night before her departure for
Paris. The crayon portrait of Eliza Floyd looked down upon Archibald
and his daughter. The face wore so bright and genial a smile that it
was difficult to believe that it was the face of the dead.
The banker was the first to speak.
"My darling girl," he said, "what is it you want with me?"
"Money, papa. Two thousand pounds."
She checked his gesture of surprise, and resumed before he could
interrupt her.
"The money you settled upon me on my marriage with John Mellish is
invested in our own bank, I know. I know, too, that I can draw upon
my account when and how I please; but I thought that if I wrote a
cheque for two thousand pounds the unusual amount might attract
attention,--and it might possibly fall into your hands. Had this
occurred you would perhaps have been alarmed, at any rate astonished. I
thought it best, therefore, to come to you myself and ask you for the
money, especially as I must have it in notes."
Archibald Floyd grew very pale. He had been standing while Aurora
spoke; but as she finished he dropped into a chair near his little
office table, and resting his elbow upon an open desk leaned his head
on his hand.
"What do you want money for, my dear?" he asked gravely.
"Never mind that, papa. It is my money, is it not; and I may spend it
as I please?"
"Certainly, my dear, certainly," he answered, with some slight
hesitation. "You shall spend whatever you please. I am rich enough to
indulge any whim of yours, however foolish, however extravagant. But
your marriage settlement was rather intended for the benefit of your
children--than--than for--anything of this kind; and I scarcely know
if you are justified in touching it without your husband's permission;
especially as your pin-money is really large enough to enable you to
gratify any reasonable wish."
The old man pushed his gray hair away from his forehead with a weary
action and a tremulous hand. Heaven knows that even in that desperate
moment Aurora took notice of the feeble hand and the whitening hair.
"_Give_ me the money, then, papa," she said. "Give it me from your own
purse. You are rich enough to do that."
"Rich enough! Yes, if it were twenty times the sum," answered the
banker slowly. Then, with a sudden burst of passion, he exclaimed, "O
Aurora, Aurora! why do you treat me so badly? Have I been so cruel
a father that you can't confide in me? Aurora, why do you want this
money?"
She clasped her hands tightly together, and stood looking at him for a
few moments irresolutely.
"I cannot tell you," she said, with grave determination. "If I were
to tell you--what--what I think of doing, you might thwart me in my
purpose. Father! father!" she cried, with a sudden change in her voice
and manner, "I am hemmed in on every side by difficulty and danger; and
there is only one way of escape--except death. Unless I take that one
way, I must die. I am very young,--too young and happy, perhaps, to die
willingly. Give me the means of escape."
"You mean this sum of money?"
"Yes."
"You have been pestered by some connection--some old associate of--his?"
"No!"
"What then?"
"I cannot tell you."
They were silent for some moments. Archibald Floyd looked imploringly
at his child, but she did not answer that earnest gaze. She stood
before him with a proudly downcast look: the eyelids drooping over
the dark eyes, not in shame, not in humiliation; only in the stern
determination to avoid being subdued by the sight of her father's
distress.
"Aurora," he said at last, "why not take the wisest and the safest
step? Why not tell John Mellish the truth? The danger would disappear;
the difficulty would be overcome. If you are persecuted by this low
rabble, who so fit as he to act for you? Tell him, Aurora--tell him
all!"
"No, no, no!"
She lifted her hands and clasped them upon her pale face.
"No, no; not for all this wide world!" she cried.
"Aurora," said Archibald Floyd, with a gathering sternness upon his
face, which overspread the old man's benevolent countenance like some
dark cloud,--"Aurora,--God forgive me for saying such words to my own
child,--but I must insist upon your telling me that this is no new
infatuation, no new madness, which leads you to----" He was unable to
finish his sentence.
Mrs. Mellish dropped her hands from before her face, and looked at him
with her eyes flashing fire, and her cheeks in a crimson blaze.
"Father," she cried, "how dare you ask me such a question? New
infatuation! New madness! Have I suffered so little, do you think, from
the folly of my youth? Have I paid so small a price for the mistake
of my girlhood, that you should have cause to say these words to me
to-night? Do I come of so bad a race," she said, pointing indignantly
to her mother's portrait, "that you should think so vilely of me? Do
I----"
Her tragical appeal was rising to its climax, when she dropped suddenly
at her father's feet, and burst into a tempest of sobs.
"Papa, papa, pity me!" she cried; "pity me!"
He raised her in his arms, and drew her to him, and comforted her, as
he had comforted her for the loss of a Scotch terrier-pup twelve years
before, when she was small enough to sit on his knee, and nestle her
head in his waistcoat.
"Pity you, my dear!" he said. "What is there I would not do for you
to save you one moment's sorrow? If my worthless life could help you;
if----"
"You will give me the money, papa?" she asked, looking up at him half
coaxingly through her tears.
"Yes, my darling; to-morrow morning."
"In bank-notes?"
"In any manner you please. But, Aurora, why see these people? Why
listen to their disgraceful demands? Why not tell the truth?"
"Ah, why, indeed!" she said thoughtfully. "Ask me no questions, dear
papa; but let me have the money to-morrow, and I promise you that this
shall be the very last you hear of my old troubles."
She made this promise with such perfect confidence that her father was
inspired with a faint ray of hope.
"Come, darling papa," she said; "your room is near mine; let us go
up-stairs together."
She entwined her arm in his, and led him up the broad staircase; only
parting from him at the door of his room.
Mr. Floyd summoned his daughter into the study early the next morning,
while Talbot Bulstrode was opening his letters, and Lucy strolling up
and down the terrace with John Mellish.
"I have telegraphed for the money, my darling," the banker said.
"One of the clerks will be here with it by the time we have finished
breakfast."
Mr. Floyd was right. A card inscribed with the name of a Mr. George
Martin was brought to him during breakfast.
"Mr. Martin will be good enough to wait in my study," he said.
Aurora and her father found the clerk seated at the open window,
looking admiringly through festoons of foliage, which clustered round
the frame of the lattice, into the richly-cultivated garden. Felden
Woods was a sacred spot in the eyes of the junior clerks in Lombard
Street, and a drive to Beckenham in a Hansom cab on a fine summer's
morning, to say nothing of such chance refreshment as pound-cake and
old Madeira, or cold fowl and Scotch ale, was considered no small treat.
Mr. George Martin, who was labouring under the temporary affliction of
being only nineteen years of age, rose in a confused flutter of respect
and surprise, and blushed very violently at sight of Mrs. Mellish.
Aurora responded to his reverential salute with such a pleasant nod as
she might have bestowed upon the younger dogs in the stable-yard, and
seated herself opposite to him at the little table by the window. It
was such an excruciatingly narrow table that the crisp ribbons about
Aurora's muslin dress rustled against the drab trousers of the junior
clerk as Mrs. Mellish sat down.
The young man unlocked a little morocco pouch which he wore suspended
from a strap across his shoulder, and produced a roll of crisp notes;
so crisp, so white and new, that, in their unsullied freshness, they
looked more like notes on the Bank of Elegance than the circulating
medium of this busy, money-making nation.
"I have brought the cash for which you telegraphed, sir," said the
clerk.
"Very good, Mr. Martin," answered the banker. "Here is my cheque ready
written for you. The notes are----?"
"Twenty fifties, twenty-five twenties, fifty tens," the clerk said
glibly.
Mr. Floyd took the little bundle of tissue-paper, and counted the notes
with the professional rapidity which he still retained.
"Quite correct," he said, ringing the bell, which was speedily answered
by a simpering footman. "Give this gentleman some lunch. You will
find the Madeira very good," he added kindly, turning to the blushing
junior; "it's a wine that is dying out; and by the time you're my age,
Mr. Martin, you won't be able to get such a glass as I can offer you
to-day. Good morning."
Mr. George Martin clutched his hat nervously from the empty chair on
which he had placed it, knocked down a heap of papers with his elbow,
bowed, blushed, and stumbled out of the room, under convoy of the
simpering footman, who nourished a profound contempt for the young men
from the "hoffice."
"Now, my darling," said Mr. Floyd, "here is the money. Though, mind, I
protest against----"
"No, no, papa, not a word," she interrupted; "I thought that was all
settled last night."
He sighed with the same weary sigh as on the night before, and seating
himself at his desk, dipped a pen into the ink.
"What are you going to do, papa?"
"I'm only going to take the numbers of the notes."
"There is no occasion."
"There is always occasion to be business-like," said the old man
firmly, as he checked the numbers of the notes one by one upon a sheet
of paper with rapid precision.
Aurora paced up and down the room impatiently while this operation was
going forward.
"How difficult it has been to me to get this money!" she exclaimed.
"If I had been the wife and daughter of two of the poorest men in
Christendom, I could scarcely have had more trouble about this two
thousand pounds. And now you keep me here while you number the notes,
not one of which is likely to be exchanged in this country."
"I learnt to be business-like when I was very young, Aurora," answered
Mr. Floyd, "and I have never been able to forget my old habits."
He completed his task in defiance of his daughter's impatience, and
handed her the packet of notes when he had done.
"I will keep the list of numbers, my dear," he said. "If I were to give
it to you, you would most likely lose it."
He folded the sheet of paper and put it in a drawer of his desk.
"Twenty years hence, Aurora," he said, "should I live so long, I should
be able to produce this paper, if it were wanted."
"Which it never will be, you dear methodical papa," answered Aurora.
"My troubles are ended now. Yes," she added, in a graver tone, "I pray
God that my troubles may be ended now."
She encircled her arms about her father's neck, and kissed him tenderly.
"I must leave you, dearest, to-day," she said; "you must not ask me
why,--you must ask me nothing! You must only love and trust me,--as my
poor John trusts me,--faithfully, hopefully, through everything."