“What is it?” she asked; “what has happened, Captain Bulstrode?”
“Nothing—I have received a letter from Cornwall which obliges me to—”
His hollow voice died away into a hoarse whisper before he could finish the sentence.
“Lady Bulstrode—or Sir John—is ill perhaps?” hazarded Lucy.
Talbot pointed to his white lips and shook his head. The gesture might mean anything. He could not speak. The hall was full of visitors and children going into dinner. The little people were to dine with their seniors that day, as an especial treat and privilege of the season. The door of the dining-room was open, and Talbot saw the gray head of Archibald Floyd dimly visible at the end of a long vista of lights and silver and glass and evergreens. The old man had his nephews and nieces and their children grouped about him; but the place at his right hand, the place Aurora was meant to fill, was vacant. Captain Bulstrode turned away from that gaily-lighted scene and ran up the staircase to his room, where he found his servant waiting with his master’s clothes laid out, wondering why he had not come to dress.
The man fell back at the sight of Talbot’s face, ghastly in the light of the wax-candles on the dressing-table.
“I am going away, Philman,” said the captain, speaking very fast, and in a thick indistinct voice. “I am going down to Cornwall by the express tonight, if I can get to town in time to catch the train. Pack my clothes and come after me. You can join me at the Paddington Station. I shall walk up to Beckenham, and take the first train for town. Here, give this to the servants for me, will you?”
He took a confused heap of gold and silver from his pocket, and dropped it into the man’s hand.
“Nothing wrong at Bulstrode, I hope, sir?” said the servant. “Is Sir John ill?”
“No, no; I’ve had a letter from my mother—I—you’ll find me at the Great Western.”
He snatched up his hat, and was hurrying from the room; but the man followed him with his greatcoat.
“You’ll catch your death, sir, on such a night as this,” the servant said, in a tone of respectful remonstrance.
The banker was standing at the door of the dining-room when Talbot crossed the hall. He was telling a servant to look for his daughter.
“We are all waiting for Miss Floyd,” the old man said; “we cannot begin dinner without Miss Floyd.”
Unobserved in the confusion, Talbot opened the great door softly, and let himself out into the cold winter’s night. The long terrace was all ablaze with the lights in the high narrow windows, as upon the night when he had first come to Felden; and before him lay the park, the trees bare and leafless, the ground white with a thin coating of snow, the sky above gray and starless—a cold and desolate expanse, in dreary contrast with the warmth and brightness behind. All this was typical of the crisis of his life. He was leaving warm love and hope, for cold resignation or icy despair. He went down the terrace-steps, across the trim garden-walks and out into that wide, mysterious park. The long avenue was ghostly in the gray light, the tracery of the interlacing branches above his head making black shadows, that flickered to and fro upon the whitened ground beneath his feet. He walked for a quarter of a mile before he looked back at the lighted windows behind him. He did not turn, until a bend in the avenue had brought him to a spot from which he could see the dimly lighted bay-window of the room in which he had left Aurora. He stood for some time looking at this feeble glimmer, and thinking—thinking of all he had lost, or all he had perhaps escaped—thinking of what his life was to be henceforth without that woman—thinking that he would rather have been the poorest ploughboy in Beckenham parish than the heir of Bulstrode, if he could have taken the girl he loved to his heart, and believed in her truth.
X
Fighting the Battle
The new year began in sadness at Felden Woods, for it found Archibald Floyd watching in the sickroom of his only daughter.
Aurora had taken her place at the long dinner-table upon the night of Talbot’s departure; and except for being perhaps a little more vivacious and brilliant than usual, her manner had in no way changed after that terrible interview in the bay-windowed room. She had talked to John Mellish, and had played and sung to her younger cousins; she had stood behind her father, looking over his cards through all the fluctuating fortunes of a rubber of long whist; and the next morning her maid had found her in a raging fever, with burning cheeks and bloodshot eyes, her long purple-black hair all tumbled and tossed about the pillows, and her dry hands scorching to the touch. The telegraph brought two grave London physicians to Felden before noon; and the house was clear of visitors by nightfall, only Mrs. Alexander and Lucy remaining to assist in nursing the invalid. The West-End doctors said very little. This fever was as other fevers to them. The young lady had caught a cold perhaps; she had been imprudent, as these young people will be, and had received some sudden chill. She had very likely overheated herself with dancing, or had sat in a draught, or eaten an
