Aurora Floyd

by M. E. Braddon

  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 it was the face of the dead.

  The banker was the first to speak.

  "My darling girl," he said, "what is it you want of 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 check 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 the money for, my dear?" he asked, gravely.

  "Never mind what, papa. It is my own 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, "Oh, 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 can not 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 can not 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 arms 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 laboring 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 Aurora's muslin dress rustled against the drab trowsers 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 check 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 h'office.

  "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 learned 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."

  CHAPTER XX.

  CAPTAIN PRODDER.

  While the Doncaster express was carrying Mr. and Mrs. Mellish northward, another express journeyed from Liverpool to London with its load of passengers.

  Among these passengers there was a certain broad-shouldered and rather bull-necked individual, who attracted considerable attention during the journey, and was an object of some interest to his fellow-travellers and the railway officials at the two or three stations where the train stopped.

  He was a man of about fifty years of age, but his years were worn very lightly, and only recorded by some wandering streaks and patches of gray among his thick blue-black stubble of hair. His complexion, naturally dark, had become of such a bronzed and coppery tint by perpetual exposure to meridian suns, tropical hot winds, the fiery breath of the simoon, and the many other inconveniences attendant upon an out-door life, as to cause him to be frequently mistaken for the inhabitant of some one of those countries in which the complexion of the natives fluctuates between burnt sienna, Indian red, and Vandyke brown. But it was rarely long before he took an opportunity to rectify this mistake, and to express that hearty contempt and aversion for all furriners which is natural to the unspoiled and unsophisticated Briton.

  Upon this particular occasion he had not been half an hour in the society of his fellow-passengers before he had informed them that he was a native of Liverpool, and the captain of a merchant vessel, trading, in a manner of speaking, he said, everywhere; that he had run away from his father and his home at a very early period of his life, and had shifted for himself in different parts of the globe ever since; that his Christian name was Samuel, and his surname Prodder, and that his father had been, like himself, a captain in the merchant service. He chewed so much tobacco, and drank so much fiery Jamaica rum from a pocket-pistol in the intervals of his conversation, that the first-class compartment in which he sat was odorous with the compound perfume. But he was such a hearty, loud-spoken fellow, and there was such a pleasant twinkle in his black eyes, that the passengers (with the exception of one crusty old lady) treated him with great good-humor, and listened very patiently to his talk.

  "Chewin' a'n't smokin,' you know, is it?" he said, with a great guffaw, as he cut himself a terrible block of Cavendish; "and railway companies a'n't got any laws against that. They can put a fellow's pipe out, but he can chew his quid in their faces; though I won't say which is wust for their carpets, neither."

  I am sorry to be compelled to confess that this brown-visaged merchant-captain, who said wust and chewed Cavendish tobacco, was uncle to Mrs. John Mellish, of Mellish Park; and that the motive for this very journey was neither more nor less than his desire to become acquainted with his niece.

  He imparted this fact—as well as much other information relating to himself, his tastes, habits, adventures, opinions, and sentiments—to his travelling companions in the course of the journey.

  "Do you know for why I'm going to London by this identical train?" he asked generally, as the passengers settled themselves into their places after taking refreshment at Rugby.

  The gentlemen looked over their newspapers at the talkative sailor, and a young lady looked up from her book, but nobody volunteered to speculate an opinion upon the mainspring of Mr. Prodder's actions.

  "I'll tell you for why," resumed the merchant-captain, addressing the assembly as if in answer to their eager questioning. "I'm going to see my niece, which I have never seen before. When I ran away from father's ship, the Ventur'some, nigh upon forty years ago, and went aboard the craft of a captain by the name of Mobley, which was a good master to me for many a day, I had a little sister as I had left behind at Liverpool, which was dearer to me than my life." He paused to refresh himself with rather a demonstrative sip from the pocket-pistol. "But if you," he continued generally, "if you had a father that'd fetch you a clout of the head as soon as look at you, you'd run away, perhaps, and so did I. I took the opportunity to be missin' one night as father was settin' sail from Yarmouth Harbor; and, not settin' that wonderful store by me which some folks do by their only sons, he shipped his anchor without stoppin' to ask many questions, and left me hidin' in one of the little alleys which cut the town of Yarmouth through and across like t
hey cut the cakes they make there. There was many in Yarmouth that knew me, and there was n't one that did n't say, 'Sarve him right,' when they heard how I'd given father the slip, and the next day Cap'en Mobley gave me a berth as cabin-boy about the Mariar Anne."

  Mr. Prodder again paused to partake of refreshment from his portable spirit store, and this time politely handed the pocket-pistol to the company.

  "Now, perhaps you'll not believe me," he resumed, after his friendly offer had been refused, and the wicker-covered vessel replaced in his capacious pocket—"you won't perhaps believe me when I tell you, as I tell you candid, that up to last Saturday week I never could find the time nor the opportunity to go back to Liverpool, and ask after the little sister that I'd left no higher than the kitchen-table, and that had cried fit to break her poor little heart when I went away. But whether you believe it or whether you don't, it's as true as gospel," cried the sailor, thumping his ponderous fist upon the padded elbow of the compartment in which he sat; "it's as true as gospel. I've coasted America, North and South. I've carried West-Indian goods to the East Indies, and East-Indian goods to the West Indies. I've traded in Norwegian goods between Norway and Hull. I've carried Sheffield goods from Hull to South America. I've traded between all manner of countries and all manner of docks; but somehow or other I've never had the time to spare to go on shore at Liverpool, and find out the narrow little street in which I left my sister Eliza, no higher than the table, more than forty years ago, until last Saturday was a week. Last Saturday was a week I touched at Liverpool with a cargo of furs and poll-parrots—what you may call fancy goods; and I said to my mate, I said, 'I'll tell you what I'll do, Jack; I'll go ashore and see my little sister Eliza.' "