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 goodbye 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 goodbye. 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. Goodbye, 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.
