Aurora Floyd (Feminist Classic). Mary Elizabeth Braddon
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said which, Mr. Mellish flung himself upon a chair, which creaked under his weight, and fell to poking the fire furiously.
It was hard for poor Talbot to have to excuse himself for having won Aurora’s hand. He could not very well remind John Mellish that if Miss Floyd had accepted him, it was perhaps because she preferred him to the honest Yorkshireman. To John the matter never presented itself in this light. The spoiled child had been cheated out of that toy above all other toys, upon the possession of which he had set his foolish heart. It was as if he had bidden for some crack horse at Tattersall’s, in fair and open competition with a friend, who had gone back after the sale to outbid him in some underhand fashion. He could not understand that there had been no dishonesty in Talbot’s conduct, and he was highly indignant when that gentleman ventured to hint to him that perhaps, on the whole, it would have been wiser to have kept away from Felden Woods.
Talbot Bulstrode had avoided any further allusion to Mr. Matthew Harrison, the dog-fancier, and this, the first dispute between the lovers, had ended in the triumph of Aurora.
Miss Floyd was not a little embarrassed by the presence of John Mellish, who roamed disconsolately about the big rooms, seating himself ever and anon at one of the tables to peer into the lenses of a stereoscope, or to take up some gorgeously bound volume and drop it on the carpet in gloomy absence of mind, and who sighed heavily when spoken to, and was altogether far from pleasant company. Aurora’s warm heart was touched by the piteous spectacle of this rejected lover, and she sought him out once or twice, and talked to him about his racing-stud, and asked him how he liked the hunting in Surrey; but John changed from red to white, and from hot to cold, when she spoke to him, and fled away from her with a scared and ghastly aspect, which would have been grotesque had it not been so painfully real.
But by and by John found a more pitiful listener to his sorrows than ever Talbot Bulstrode had been, and this gentle and compassionate listener was no other than Lucy Floyd, to whom the big Yorkshireman turned in his trouble. Did he know, or did he guess, by some wondrous clairvoyance, that her griefs bore a common likeness to his own, and that she was just the one person, of all others, at Felden Woods to be pitiful to him and patient with him? He was by no means proud, this transparent, boyish, babyish good fellow. Two days after his arrival at Felden he told all to poor Lucy.
“I suppose you know, Miss Floyd,” he said, “that your cousin rejected me? Yes, of course you do; I believe she rejected Bulstrode about the same time; but some men have n’t a ha’porth of pride; I must say I think the captain acted like a sneak.”
A sneak! Her idol, her adored, her demigod, her dark-haired and gray-eyed divinity, to be spoken of thus! She turned upon Mr. Mellish with her fair cheeks flushed into a pale glow of anger, and told him that Talbot had a right to do what he had done, and that whatever Talbot did was right.
Like most men whose reflective faculties are entirely undeveloped, John Mellish was blessed with a sufficiently rapid perception — a perception sharpened just then by that peculiar sympathetic prescience, that marvellous clairvoyance of which I have spoken; and in those few indignant words, and that angry flush, he read poor Lucy’s secret; she loved Talbot Bulstrode as he loved Aurora — hopelessly.
How he admired this fragile girl, who was frightened of horses and dogs, and who shivered if a breath of the winter air blew across the heated hall, and who yet bore her burden with this quiet, uncomplaining patience; while he, who weighed fourteen stone, and could ride forty miles across country with the bitterest blasts of December blowing on his face, was powerless to endure his affliction. It comforted him to watch Lucy, and to read in these faint signs and tokens, which had escaped even a mother’s eye, the sad history of her unrequited affection.
Poor John was too good-natured and unselfish to hold out for ever in the dreary fortress of despair which he had built up for his habitation; and on Christmas eve, when there were certain rejoicings at Felden, held in especial honor of the younger visitors, he gave way, and joined in their merriment, and was more boyish than the youngest of them, burning his fingers with blazing raisins, suffering his eyes to be bandaged at the will of noisy little players at blind-man’s -buff, undergoing ignominious penalties in their games of forfeits, performing alternately innkeepers, sheriff’s officers, policemen, clergymen, and justices in the acted charades, lifting the little ones who wanted to see “de top of de Kitmat-tee” in his sturdy arms, and making himself otherwise agreeable and useful to young people of from three to fifteen years of age, until at last, under the influence of all this juvenile gayety, and perhaps two or three glasses of Moselle, he boldly kissed Aurora Floyd beneath the branch of mistletoe hanging, “for this night only,” in the great hall at Felden Woods.
And having done this, Mr. Mellish fairly lost his wits, and was “off his head” for the rest of the evening, making speeches to the little ones at the supper-table, and proposing Mr. Archibald Floyd and the commercial interests of Great Britain with three times three; leading the chorus of those tiny treble voices with his own sonorous bass, and weeping freely — he never quite knew why — behind his table-napkin. It was through an atmosphere of tears, and sparkling wines, and gas, and hot-house flowers, that he saw Aurora Floyd, looking — ah! how lovely, in those simple robes of white which so much became her, and with a garland of artificial holly round her head. The spiked leaves and the scarlet berries formed themselves into a crown — I think, indeed, that a cheese-plate would have been transformed into a diadem if Miss Floyd has been pleased to put it on her head — and she looked like the genius of Christmas: something bright and beautiful — too beautiful to come more than once a year.
When the clocks were striking 2 A. M., long after the little ones had been carried away muffled up in opera-cloaks, terribly sleepy, and I’m afraid, in some instances, under the influence of strong drink — when the elder guests had all retired to rest, and the lights, with a few exceptions, were fled, the garlands dead, and all but Talbot and John Mellish departed, the two young men walked up and down the long billiard-room, in the red glow of the two declining fires, and talked to each other confidentially. It was the morning of Christmas day, and it would have been strange to be unfriendly at such a time.
“If you’d fallen in love with the other one, Bulstrode,” said John, clasping his old school-fellow by the hand, and staring at him pathetically, “I could have looked upon you as a brother; she’s better suited to you, twenty thousand times better adapted to you than her cousin, and you ought to have married her — in common courtesy — I mean to say as an honorable — having very much compromised yourself by your attentions — Mrs. Whatshername — the companion — Mrs. Powell — said so — you ought to have married her.”
“Married her! Married whom?” cried Talbot, rather savagely, shaking off his friend’s hot grasp, and allowing Mr. Mellish to sway backward upon the heels of his varnished boots in rather an alarming manner. “Who do you mean?”
“The sweetest girl in Christendom — except one,” exclaimed John, clasping his hot hands and elevating his dim blue eyes to the ceiling; “the loveliest girl in Christendom, except one — Lucy Floyd.”
“Lucy Floyd!”
“Yes, Lucy; the sweetest girl in —”
“Who says that I ought to marry Lucy Floyd?”
“She says so — no, no, I don’t mean that; I mean,” said Mr. Mellish, sinking his voice to a solemn whisper, “I mean that Lucy Floyd loves you! She did n’t tell me so — oh, no, bless your soul! she never uttered a word upon the subject; but she loves you. Yes,” continued John, pushing his friend away from him with both hands, and staring at him as if mentally taking his pattern for a suit of clothes, “that girl loves you, and has loved you all along. I am not a fool, and I give you my word and honor that Lucy Floyd loves you.”
“Not a fool!” cried Talbot; “you’re worse than a fool, John Mellish — you’re drunk!”
He turned upon his heel contemptuously, and, taking a candle from a table near the door, lighted it, and strode out of the room,
John stood rubbing his hands through his curly hair, and staring helplessly after the captain.
“This is the