Early dawn in a house where the new-dead lie unheeding whether it be darkness or day. Dawn when those who have seen the light of life fade from a beloved face watch the slow sunlight steal once more over the edge of the world, and claim all things for its own.
Yet watching alone, how peaceful such a dawn may be, when one can face death, not as a thing apart, but as a part of life; when there is no need to cloud its kindly form with sentimentalities, when we need not drug ourselves into disregarding its dignity by some narcotic of belief in life to come, when it is enough to feel that this life has passed where all life goes.
In the old Keep, however, where the master lay dead in his study among his fishing-rods and guns, as they had left him till the inquest should be over, there was no one near enough to the dead man so to watch, for Helen was still unconscious in her room upstairs. Dr. Ramsay, whose hands were full with many claimants on his care, spoke of a severe nervous crisis, which had evidently been coming on for some time. Her best chance was this semi-cataleptic state from which she would recover in her own good time. So she lay in her simple white room, on her simple little bed, and the dawn stole in slowly through the open window bringing the dayspring song of birds with it. But she was not there. She might have been with her father for all the bystanders could tell.
Ned, his face drawn with pain from the fractured arm over which Dr. Ramsay had instantly looked severe, but for which Ned refused to lay himself up absolutely until certain necessary details had been arranged, looked in and envied her. He had told the doctor of her visit to his room, and his wild stern-chase of her to Betty Cam's chair, and of his wonder--a wonder that grew as he thought over it--as to how she could possibly have got home, changed her dress and come on in the Wrexham's motor in so short a space of time. Still she had done it.
Evidently she had done it, the doctor had replied guardedly, and there, in the stress of many calls, the subject had dropped.
And yet as Ned went about giving orders in hopes of lessening anxieties and distress, he was remembering the strange unkenned look he had noticed on his cousin's face. Was it possible that--No! it was impossible. Anyhow he had no time to think it over as yet.
The roll-call of inmates had, thank Heaven! been on the whole satisfactory. Only two had failed to answer. Mrs. Massingham and, curiously enough, his friend Charteris, who had arranged to leave the next morning when his attack of Indian fever should have passed away. The only man who knew of the danger! It was a coincidence certainly. As for Mrs. Massingham, the fright must have brought on one of her heart attacks; else there was no reason why she should not have escaped, taking Maidie with her; it had not been a good life anyhow. But what an awful home-coming for the husband! He might arrive that very day, but it would be better if he did not. Not for a few days, till the whole thing, body and soul alike, should have gone out of ken for ever.
Then there was the ship. It was a transport from India, a bit out of its course through having damaged an engine. It had mistaken the fire for the lighthouse further west, and had struck lightly on a sunken rock just off the headland beyond Cam's Bay. It seemed none the worse, and would most likely float off in the next tide or two as the wind strengthened. In the meantime that would entail another funeral, as they had had a death on board that night.
So much Mr. Hirsch told Ned, when the latter went to see him about wiring to the office of the new company.
"I've looked to that," he replied curtly, "and I must get all these" (a perfect pile of forms lay beside him) "off at once; only the nuisance is my motor is damaged."
"Ted Cruttenden is cycling with mine," began Ned. Mr. Hirsch looked up quickly--"You will be careful, won't you?"
"I won't foul my own nest more than I can help," said Ned bitterly.
"That's right! And you know----" Mr. Hirsch was still writing hurriedly--"I don't believe it was the wires at all. It certainly began in the back premises, and they tell me the cook was dead drunk after dinner, and half the servants as well--they were dancing break-downs to the gramaphone."
"That doesn't take away the taste," burst out Ned passionately, "or take away the responsibility for having put such a ghastly monstrosity on that point, before that sea, under the stars of heaven----"
Mr. Hirsch looked up with the surprised kindly look an elder gives to a child who has suddenly burst out crying over a broken toy.
"You really ought to go to bed, Lord Blackborough," he said. "All this is so exhausting to the nerves. I shall do so, when I have sent off my telegrams."
Was it the roll of the double r which made Ned inclined to kick Mr. Hirsch? It was a relief when Ted Cruttenden ended the conversation by entering in the silent, unobtrusive way, which people adopt in the house of mourning.
"Messages ready?" he asked.
"Mine are! Mr. Hirsch has some. I suppose you wanted to be off, It's a shocking bad road to Haverton," remarked Ned, full of ill-humour as he left the room.
"I shall not go to Haverton though," said Ted. "I shall save time by cycling to Wellhampton. Five miles further, but there's an all-night office, and it seems a pity to waste time till eight o'clock."
"Good," nodded Mr. Hirsch, "though----" here he gave one of his short explosive laughs--"I am in no particular hurry. I must give Jenkin time--good Lord, what a relief to get rid of Jenkin--ahem!" He pulled himself up hurriedly and went on writing.
It was the first time Ted had come to close quarters with a millionaire, a millionaire too of European reputation as a financier more than as mere money seeker, and the effect was stimulating. It roused his admiration, his imagination. He stood at the window, waiting and watching Mr. Hirsch's head--it was growing, in truth, a trifle bald at the crown--as it bent over his papers and thinking what it must feel like to possess the art of transmuting baser things to gold.
"I will give you a sovereign," began the great man condescendingly. "One is in cipher, and that costs. The change in stamps, if you please. I have many letters to write."
Typical of the man, thought Ted Cruttenden, while Mr. Hirsch, noticing how careful the young man was in discriminating between his and Lord Blackborough's telegrams, but putting them into different pockets, smiled. "You are metodical, I see," he remarked, with just that faint slur over the th which occasionally told he was not English. "It is a great gift in business."
Ted smiled also, and flushed with pleasure, since Mr. Hirsch's praise was worth having; and so, then and there, almost as if some chemical affinity had manifested itself between the molecules composing his brain and Mr. Hirsch's, he made up his mind to try and follow his example. He was no fool; other people succeeded, why not he?
As he rode off his mind was full of this new determination. And yet, one short week ago he had thought himself uncommonly lucky to have pushed himself so far up the ladder as to be in receipt of a hundred and fifty pounds a year. For it must not be forgotten that he was no-man's son. His mother had refused to give his father's name. When she lay dying, and her people, seeking to trick her, asked what name the child should be called, she had smiled derisively at them. "Edward Cruttenden, of course," had been her reply, the latter being her own name, a common enough one in the Black Country.
Ted had thought all this out many times; yet it came back to him--with no rancour against his mother, but a good deal against his unknown father. On this fine June morning as he made his way across the high Cornish tableland, dipping down--with both brakes on--into some steep combe and thereinafter climbing out of it again, pushing his bicycle.
If he had only begun earlier to think about making money, he would have had a better chance with Aura. No doubt at his age Hirsch had been operating on the Exchange and promoting companies.
Promoting! Operating! These were words indeed!
But it must be uphill work--so was this last combe; for it was to be one of those hot June days, when the freshness of dawn is gone in half an hour, and the very grass has no trace of dew on it.
He sat down at the top of the hill and drew out his handkerchief in order to mop his face.
In doing so one of Mr. Hirsch's telegrams came out also and fluttered to the ground.
It was the one in cipher, and, as he glanced at it, he found that by a pure chance he knew it, or something very like it. His little friend and admirer in the stockbroker's office was an expert in ciphers, and had shown him several. This--one of the easiest--amongst the number.
He could not choose but read the first word, "Buy."
Buy! That was curious. He should have expected it to be "sell."
Buy what?
Buy Sea-views all below five shillings. Hirsch.
He sat looking at the words for some time, puzzled, then rode on, his mind busy with the problem; but the puzzle remained until, as he was going into the telegraph office at Wellhampton, he met Mr. Jenkin coming out. Then the memory of Mr. Hirsch's laugh of relief at "getting rid of Jenkin," which he had hardly noticed at the time, came back to him. Jenkin apparently was to be given time to sell, while Mr. Hirsch was to buy. It was a straight lead-over. What if he were to follow it even to the extent of but a hundred pounds? His heart gave a great throb; he felt as a man might, when put on a horse for the first time and the reins given into his hand. Who was to prevent him going where he chose--except, of course, the horse!
He returned to the Keep by breakfast time, but for a wonder he had no appetite, since he was of that healthy strong-nerved sort to whom even personal sorrow comes as an expenditure of force which requires recuperation. And there was no personal feeling in this tragedy except for Blackborough's share in it; for that he was unfeignedly sorry. He, however, had been finally ordered to his room by Dr. Ramsay who was too busy to speak to any one. The Wrexhams left early, followed at intervals by the other guests, and the Keep settled down into the slack collapse which always follows on the excitement of a catastrophe. The servants seemed to remember they had been up all night; Mr. Hirsch was the only person who was really awake, but Ted did not somehow care to see Mr. Hirsch; though as the day wore on and the latter went off once more to Cam's point, Ted took down some telegrams which had come for him, and watched him read them anxiously. They seemed satisfactory, but by this time Ted was telling himself he had behaved like a fool in sending that wire to his friend on the Stock Exchange.
The desolation on the point, where workmen were still searching for any traces of Mr. Charteris' body, made him still more depressed, so he strolled over to Camshaven, thereby letting himself in for additional dreariness; since, just as he abutted on the little quay, he saw one of the transport's boats, disembarking a coffin. The dead officer, of course. Poor chap, to die like that within sight of home was rough luck. He stood with bared head watching the guard of honour form up and prepare to take the body to the church, where it was to lie until directions came by wire from the relatives.
"You don't happen to know the name?" he asked of the local pilot who was close beside him.
"Not for sure, sir," he replied, "tho' I did hear'm say Massin'ham; same name as the poor madam they people burnt in her bed las' night."
"Massingham!" echoed Ted--"that is very curious."
It was. Indeed, Mr. Hirsch, coming back to the Keep half an hour afterwards, was quite pale, and called for a whisky-and-soda before he could explain to Dr. Ramsay the extraordinary coincidence of Major Massingham's body being brought in for burial to Camshaven, where those of his poor wife and child already awaited him as it were. But he, Mr. Hirsch, had seen the captain of the transport, and everything was quite simple--terribly simple. Major Massingham had come on board at Bombay ill, but had not, however, let his people know of his illness, as he expected the voyage to set him up. He had unfortunately taken a chill off Gibraltar: pneumonia had set in, and in his delirium he had constantly talked of his wife and child, and begged not to be buried at sea. The latter idea had been quite an obsession with him; almost the last words he spoke being "Not at sea--not at sea!" That had been two hours before the ship struck, and when they discovered there was no danger, it had seemed another curious coincidence to ensure poor Massingham's wish. But the whole affair was ...
Here Mr. Hirsch became quite unintelligible in his admixture of English and German.
"It is certainly--curious," assented Dr. Ramsay thoughtfully; "very curious. But it is just as well he should come home dead--the news would have broken him. By the way, I don't want Lord Blackborough disturbed. There is a nasty splinter that will give trouble; and he was in such pain, I ordered a sleeping-draught. Indeed----" Here he smiled. "I am thinking of a sleep myself till dinner time."
"I also," yawned Mr. Hirsch. "Mein Gott! Tragedy is fatiguing off the stage as well as on it, and this poor Major Massingham ...Himmel! es ist un-be-greiflich-auf-erlegbar!" And he went off to his room, looking a perfect wreck, aged by ten years; for deep down below the hard shell which grubbing for gold requires, his heart was soft. And these things were uncomfortable--they were not in the bond--they belonged to a spiritual life in which he had no part.
They weighed heavily on Ted Cruttenden also, for he had the Englishman's innate antagonism to anything which hints at the unknown, anything which might suggest a wider outlook than the one he already possesses. But the hundred pounds he had adventured, following Mr. Hirsch's lead, weighed on him still more heavily. Why had he been so impulsive? At the most he could gain three hundred; and what would Mr. Hirsch say if it were to come out? Not that it mattered, since he was not likely to see much more of Mr. Hirsch, for he must go back to Blackborough next morning. So, after a time, he also sought his room and a rest.
Dr. Ramsay, however, was deprived of his; for, looking in while passing to see how Lord Blackborough fared, he found him not only wide awake, but greatly excited by the news which a servant had brought him.
"Curse the fool!" said Peter Ramsay vexedly. "I made sure you would be asleep. Yes! it is extremely curious, but----"
"What does it mean, doctor--that's what I want to know," burst in Ned. "What is it, this strange something which every now and again seems to show us a solemn, shrouded face, and then disappears in mocking, devilish laughter--in charlatans' tricks?"
Dr. Ramsay shook his head. "If I could tell you that, Lord Blackborough, I--well! For one thing, I should be the richest man in the world. All we doctors can say is that there is something--something which can be explained away if one chooses to explain it away. But the explanation isn't scientific. It is easy to say a man is mad because he believes himself to be the Emperor of China, but what about the question, 'Why does a man think he is the Emperor of China when he is mad?' We have got to answer that, and show what it is which induces delusions and hysteria, and why hypnotic sleep causes certain specific alterations in the body corporate, as it does. But we've only just woke up to the fact that we stand on the verge of some great discovery; we've only just begun to question the nerve centres, and see the incalculable power of suggestion. Now take this case of your cousin's," he continued eagerly. "Whatever it may or may not be, it is certain that I suggested to her first that she was mentally unstable; second, that she might be able to project herself ... then Lady Wrexham slips in with her crystal-gazing suggestion--and--and the thing is done."
"There is something else," said Ned slowly, almost reluctantly, "which might--we were talking of old Betty Cam in the morning--she and I--and I told her it wasn't safe for her to be always watching the sea--I warned her--in joke of course--of her hereditary----" Here he broke off impatiently. "But it is of no use talking--the thing is frankly--impossible."
"Hardly that," remarked Dr. Ramsay dryly. "We have to learn, apparently, that many things are possible--at times."
Ned looked at him curiously. "One wouldn't credit you with such beliefs, Ramsay," he said.
"I don't credit them myself," replied the doctor shortly. "Personally I wish these phenomena didn't exist. They complicate the equation of life tremendously. But they are there. It is no use dismissing them as hysterical manifestations. That only alters the title of the problem, and we have to refer to the phenomena again under the heading 'What is hysteria?'"
"Of one thing I am certain," remarked Ned suddenly, with conviction: "it was not Helen altogether, as she is now, whom I left in Betty Cam's chair last night. I have been going over the whole incident in my mind, and I am conscious of having had a sense all through that there was something unkenned, something not quite real----"
"The question is," put in Dr. Ramsay, "how much she will remember when she wakes, and that cannot be very long now, for she was much more normal when I went in to see her last, two hours ago. I shall look in again as I go upstairs."
"I hope she will remember nothing," said Ned quickly.
Peter Ramsay shook his head. "It may be everything; you cannot possibly tell----" he broke off as a knock was heard at the door, and a voice said, "May I come in?" "My God!" he continued, "there she is!"
It was indeed Helen who, entering as he held open the door, passed swiftly to her cousin's side.
"Poor Ned!" she said, her face, on which showed the marks of recent tears, full of a grateful, affectionate solicitude. "How foolish it has been of me to leave you to bear the brunt of it all; but I am all right now, and shall manage. He ought to be in bed, oughtn't he?" she continued, her eyes narrowing a little as they met Peter Ramsay's, her whole expression showing for an instant a half-puzzled pain, as if she sought for some memory of past trouble. "I am sure you think so--don't you?"
"I think so very much indeed, Mrs. Tressilian," he replied. "Your cousin's arm----"
"Poor arm!" she interrupted softly, "that was broken before I came down--I was asleep, I suppose, when they called me--it seems so strange that I could have slept, and I seem to have forgotten everything except the awful suspense; then the awful night on the point--but--but you couldn't have saved him, Ned. It was the stairs--if only they had been fireproof!--for he knew every turn. I--I have been down to see him, Ned, and he looks so peaceful--so content. You see he had done all he could--all a Pentreath should have done--so--so it is best. And now, dear, you really must go to bed. I can manage nicely. I will send to meet the Massinghams--poor souls!--how terribly sad, and how inexplicable it all is!"
Inexplicable indeed! They looked at each other silently.
She evidently knew all that they knew, but of what they did not know she also knew nothing. The interval between the time when she had passed upstairs to her room, joking and laughing with the others, and her first sight of the halo of fire had simply lapsed into a great suspense.
It was as well, Dr. Ramsay admitted to himself, and yet he felt annoyed. For, looking at Helen Tressilian's face, he recognised that his chance--and the chance of science was over.
In all probability that would be her one solitary intrusion into the unknown dimension which whetted his curiosity so much. She was normal now; she might conceivably marry some deserving idiot, and settle down to half a dozen children. She might even become a nurse!
All things were possible to the calm self-possession with which she insisted on rest for them both. So, in an evil temper, he followed her advice.
Meanwhile Ted Cruttenden, after wandering about aimlessly, uncertain whether to bless or curse himself for his morning's work, had also sought rest, and was asleep dreaming of Aura. Aura, as he had seen her in her blue linen smock and sandals, Aura as he could picture her in pink satin and diamonds. Which was the most beautiful, the most beautified? He scarcely knew. When he felt inclined to bless himself, it was because he could picture her in the latter; when curses came it was because he regretted the former.
So to him in troubled slumber, came a knock at the door.
"Come in," he called drowsily; then sat up with beating heart on the edge of his bed, feeling for his slippers with his feet. He did not know that the dapper little figure at the door was to him Mephistopheles, that he was about to sell his soul to the devil; but he was vaguely conscious of an approaching crisis in his life.
"Soh!my young friend, you have bought Sea View shares! Why?"
The room was growing dark. There was a wide interval of shadowy light from the windows between the young man as, having found mental and bodily foothold, he stood coatless, defiant, as if prepared to fight Fate, and Mr. Hirsch decently robed for dinner, and with, as ever, the large white flower of a blameless life in his button-hole. Through the open window the mellow pipe of a blackbird, full of the glad song of wood and dale, forced its way insistently. The memory of it lingered with Ted always. In after years that joyous invitation to the wilds always seemed to sound in his ears whenever a question of choice arose.
Now, though he heard it, he was too busy to heed it.
"Why?" he echoed. "I bought them, sir--because I--I believed in you ... there you have it in a nutshell."
"And why did you believe in me?"
Ted, having recovered his confidence, gave a short laugh. "Upon my soul, I don't know. I did it--that's all."
"Then you had no private intimation--you had not overheard anything--you--it wasunvertraute gut--no more?"
"You gave me a lead over yourself, you know," replied Ted argumentatively. "You said Jenkin must have time--and the rest followed--I couldn't help knowing the cipher, could I?"
A faint chuckle came from the gloom by the door. "Soh!you have prains! Mr. Cruttenden, I ought to be angry, I ought to tell you many things, but I have searched long for one to believe in me. I need him. Let this be--you have won three hundred pounds. I give you this per year as my clerk. You accept?"
It was all over in a moment. The blackbird ceased his song, and as Ted Cruttenden hurriedly dressed for dinner his head was in a whirl. This was a chance indeed. By Christmas he might stand on more equal ground. And after Christmas? His fancy ran riot in pink satin and diamonds.
But, when he left with Mr. Hirsch next morning, the latter was in a towering bad temper. Lord Blackborough was a fool. He had refused to listen to reason, and Mrs. Tressilian was no better. They had both of them declined to be mixed up any further with the hotel, and would not even let him buy them out. The insurance had no doubt been made in accordance with business principles, but----
"He will divest himself of every farthing in two years if he goes on being soverdammlich gerecht. Yes! I give him two years to be a pauper," said poor Mr. Hirsch, and then his eyes positively filled with tears as he considered how all his efforts to secure a competency for Helen had failed.
It was early autumn, and Aura was standing in the garden, looking more like a Botticelli angel than ever, for her face was mutinous, the very curls about her temples and ears all crisped and gold-edged as she defied even the sunlight.
She was engaged in an argument with Martha, who, in Mr. Sylvanus Smith's brief yearly absences on the work of the Socialistic Congress, still attempted an authority which she had once held undisputed.
"Well, I wouldn't, not if it was ever so," asserted the worthy woman, her face aflame with righteous indignation. "Mr. Meredith, the rector, he know his part, an' being unbaptized there won't be no funeral, so what's the use of flowers?"
Aura's eyebrows almost met in a sudden frown. "You don't mean that they will refuse----"
"I don't know nothin', Miss H'Aura," interrupted Martha; "only what I hear tell. I don't 'old with baptism, nor yet with burials, specially the penny things they has hereabout. I don't want no halfpence to help bury me. I ain't like the folk nowadays, as is that restless they don't know where they'll lie, much less where they'll go to when they're dead. But I do hear it said that there'll be a fuss, becos the Calvinists wouldn't baptize the babby, hoping to get hold o' the name o' the father, for itwasa sin and a shame, her not bein', as it were, all there, an' now the rector'll object to a unbaptized, except in the odd corner where they puts the 'fellow deceased.' No, it ain't the sort of thing for you to be mixing yourself up with, Miss H'Aura. Them lovely lilies'd be ashamed o' your taking them to that gurl Gwen."
Aura bent her head caressingly to the great bunch of gold-rayed Japanese lilies she held.
"I am taking them to a dead baby," she said quietly, "the lilies won't be ashamed of it."
And with that she turned on her heel superbly, leaving Martha speechless, to watch the blue linen smock cross the lawn and disappear behind the rhododendrons. A glimmer of it showed like a bit of heaven among the birchwood beyond the bridge ere the older woman found her tongue, and going over to where Adam was weeding beetroot confided in him.
"You mark my word, Adam Bate," she said solemnly, "Miss H'Aura" (thehwas always added on such occasions as a point of ceremony) "'ll marry the wrong man, sure as eggs is eggs."
Adam looked up aghast. "The wrong 'un? Why, sakes me, she ain't got never one at all; and sorry be, for 'twud be a right sight to see 'un billin' and cooin' 'mongst the yapple trees, as true lovers shud."
Martha's repressed indignation found instant outlet. "Adam Bate," she remarked severely, "you 'em's got a low depraved mind, that's what's the matter with you. Miss H'Aura ain't o' the cuddlin' sort, no, nor me neither, as you know to your cost, or shud do by this time. No! Miss H'Aura, bless her dear heart, has such a outlook as no man can ever reach to it truly; an' when one is a-lookin' down from a 'eight, it's hard to tell on what rung o' the ladder a feller's standing. There's always somethin' in the way o' right seein', either 'is body or 'is head, specially if it has good looks."
"Not if 'e be low 'nuff, Martha, woman," replied Adam, stooping closer to his beetroot, some of which seemed to get into his sunburnt ears. "When she be so high as a star, and he be a creepin' wum in the yerth, an' there never cud be no count of bein' ekal----"
"Then 'e'd better leave coortin' alone," interrupted Martha uncompromisingly, "seein' 'e cud never clasp her, try 'e ever so hard. But head or heart, you mark my word, when Miss H'Aura's time comes, him as cares least, an' lays least finger to her, is the one for that prize. An' there won't be no billin' and cooin' among your yapple trees, Mr. Bate--so there!"
Adam stood looking after her admiringly. "'Twarn't so bad if it hadn't bin for that trick o' blushin'; but there, beet is beet, and what's in the hands comes out in the face. I'll tell her so when I gives it in fur bilin'."
With which remark he chuckled, and settled down to his weeding once more. For fifteen years he had made ineffectual attempts to court Martha, and nothing now would have surprised or taken him aback more than the faintest success.
On her side, Martha kept up the conflict with external spirit, but with a certain sneaking admiration also for his pertinacity. As she went back to her kitchen she also chuckled. "Blushed like a babby," she murmured, "an' he wrinkled like a bad batch o' bread. I'll tell him that there beetroot's bled when he brings it in."
Aura by this time was out of the woods and cresting the bracken-patched hillside, the silly Welsh sheep, alarmed even at her gracious presence, fleeing from the tussocks and rocks far ahead of her with grunts and whistles such as no other sheep in the world can make.
The lilies on her arm brought a passing sweetness into the fresh morning air, and as she carried them her thoughts were busy with what Martha had said to her. What did it all mean? Her arms, which in all their young and vigorous life had never held a child, closed tenderly round the flowers as if they had been the body of the dead baby. Poor little babe! to come into this world unsought, to leave it to be quarrelled over. The motherhood which was hers by right of her sex wakened in her strongly; she laid her soft cheek caressingly once more on a white petal, then, in sudden impulse, she kissed it softly. Poor little childie! But Gwen had loved it, and it had not minded being unbaptized. It had not even minded its fatherlessness. Neither had Gwen; but then she, poor soul, was what people called wanting. Wanting in what? Not in motherhood, certainly.
Aura had often seen the two playing together on the sunny banks about the shepherd's cottage; the toddling baby with its fists full of its mother's curly hair, both faces aglow with laughter and with love.
And now the child was dead. Poor Gwen!
Aura, accustomed to look at Nature with clear eyes, and utterly untouched by conventional conclusions, felt a wellspring of sympathy rise up in her heart. Such a pretty baby, too, as it had been! More than once she had paused in passing to watch it and wish that she too had so delightful a plaything, thinking that with so abiding an interest in them, the hills and woods, the streams and flowers of her secluded valley would suffice for her life.
And now it was dead!
Her eyes, blurred with tears, made a misty halo round the cottage, tucked out of man's way in a little hollow among the hills. A desolate-looking little cottage, gardenless, fenceless, a mere human habitation set down beside a spouting spring, which day and night, night and day, splashed on in high-pitched, feeble, querulous iteration.
As she came up to it a black shadow showed on the doorstep, and, through the mist of her unshed tears, she recognised it as the figure of a man. It was, indeed, the Reverend Morris Pugh coming away from consolation. He paused at the sight of her, as any man well might, and over his keen Celtic face swept a wave of enthusiastic approval. His hat was off, his smile shone out brilliantly.
"Excuse me," he said, "I am the minister, and this is kind indeed; those beautiful lilies, they will surely comfort the poor mother, and teach her to trust in the mercy of Him who considers the flowers of the fields--it--it is a Christian act." There were almost tears in his voice.
Aura looked at him and smiled.
"But I am not a Christian. I brought them for the baby," she said simply.
Morris Pugh's eyes narrowed. "I am sorry; and they can do no good to the child. God has taken him. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, I will repay. Gwen has to learn her lesson, poor child."
"You mean,"--Aura's face had grown a little pale,--"that the child's death is--is a punishment?"
"It is done in love--the Lord loveth whom He chasteneth," he replied gently.
"And you have told her so?"
Something in the girl's tone made him reply on the instant: "She did not need the telling; she knew it already."
"She knew it already!"
Aura passed him like a flame of fire, and entered the cottage eager with her purely human consolation; but the note of preparation within struck a chill to her very soul.
Old Mrs. Evans, Gwen's mother, sat in a black dress with her Bible before her at the receipt of custom. The door between the living-room and the bedroom was half open, and through it, lying on a table covered with a white sheet, was a tiny, still, uncovered form in a white gown. Aura could see the little dimpled hands folded so sedately on the little breast; it sent a great pang through her to think of them so quiet.
And Gwen? What of her?
"I have brought these lilies," she said almost apologetically to stout Mrs. Evans; "I should like to give them to Gwen, if I may."
Mrs. Evans's English being of the smallest, she sighed, rose, and saying "Pliss you, come this way," ushered Aura with her armful of lilies into the bedroom. In the further corner of it, her apron over her face, sat Gwen rocking herself to and fro, and muttering under her breath. She drew down the apron at her mother's touch and quick sentence in Welsh, and so sat staring across the body of the dead baby at Aura. Her face was more vacant than distraught, its pink and white prettiness seeming to hide the tragedy of grief which must surely lie beneath it.
"I have brought these," said Aura, laying one of the lilies beside the dead child.
With a cry, fierce as a wild animal, Gwen sprang to her feet, snatched at the flower, tore it shred from shred, and flung them to the corners of the room.
"Stand back, Englishwoman!" she cried in Welsh, her eyes blazing with sudden, wild, distracted passion. "Leave us alone! We are accursed! accursed! we want no flowers here." Then she clung to her mother and wailed, "Oh! mother, take it away--take the child away--I do not want it; it is accursed. God has taken it away, and it must go. Let her take it if she wants it; take it away and bury it out of sight. I must forget my sin--my sin--my sin!Beth n'ai! Beth n'ail Gwae fi! beth n'ai!"
The mingled sobbing of the two women, roused in an instant to the very highest pitch of unrestrained emotion, smote on Aura's ears turning her to veritable stone. She understood enough to grasp the drift of what she heard, and with a quick pulse of pity for the quiet rest thus rudely disturbed, she bent and kissed the clay-cold child, then turned without a word and left the room. Not to be long alone, however.
The elder woman, recovering her self-control as quickly as she had lost it, followed her into the sunshine beyond the low door, and arrested her with mingled tears and apologies. Gwen, she said in quaintest English and Welsh, was a madiolin--just a silly nonsense--though it was just true the child wass better to die. It was not as the 'nother one--here she looked sorrowfully at a five-year-old who was busy making mud pies by the waterspout, and shook her head--that one wass two shillin' and sixpence a week. Yess, indeed! because her daughter wass for ever in the good shentleman placiss; but Gwen--silly nonsense, Gwen--she could pay nothing. She was not all wise----
Aura, staring out into the sunshine which happed the whole beautiful world-expanse of hill and wood in its magic mantle, looked in the woman's really grief-stricken face, in slow, almost incredulous wonder.
"You mean that--that--" she hesitated, pointing to the child--"that your other daughter in service pays you half a crown?"
Something in her voice made Mrs. Evans mop her eyes with her apron still more strenuously. "It is the price," she protested; "there is many askiss three shillin'. Mrs. Jhones and she have two, an' Mrs. Daviss, an'----"
"And Gwen gave nothing!"
The words seemed to Aura to burden the sunshine; she turned swiftly to go, feeling the need of escape.
"But the ladiess," sobbed Mrs. Evans, "would be given a shillings or so when they be comning. Yess, indeed! a shillings or so."
Aura wheeled, the lilies still in her arms. "I have no money," she cried, her voice ringing with passionate scorn, "I never have any money, thank God!"
So with quick, springing step, her whole young soul aflame with indignation, she was off breasting the hill, leaving the hollows behind her, wishing with all her heart that she could have carried the dead baby with her. To call it accursed! To count it unbaptized! The darling lying there so peaceful, so still, so waxen, so like the lilies. Ah! if she could only take it away from all the sordid thoughts, what burial would not her fingers compass there on the bosom of the kindly earth! For it and for the lilies. How soft it should lie, how flower-decked! Yes, the great white petals should shield the little white face from the touch of the close, damp earth, and it should sleep--sleep--sleep!
The tears ran down her cheeks silently as, almost at the limit of her young and vigorous pace, she passed on, passed upwards, pursued by the one overmastering impulse to get away, to find some safe resting-place for what she would fain have carried.
But, by degrees, her thoughts became calmer; she began to see the whole pitiful story and put her finger intuitively on the points of offence; for she had seen little of the world, and knew still less of its ways. She thought of the lowing heifer and its bull-calf, of the second brood of young blackbirds over whose first flight she had but that morning seen the parents so excited, and then she thought of the fatherless unsought child whose only worth was the bringing of two-and-sixpence a week to its grandmother!
Truly her grandfather was right. Money was a curse.
But so were other things. The religion, for instance, which told poor Gwen that her child was accursed, that its death was a punishment. Poor Gwen seated in her threadbare black, with her apron over her head, so unlike the girl in a blue cotton dress who used to tumble about on the thyme banks with her boisterous, rosy-cheeked baby.
It was pitiful. That cryBeth n'ai! Beth n'ai! Gwae fi! beth n'ai!rang in Aura's ears as she sat down at last among the rocks of a sheep-shelter on the crest of a hill. Here in winter the south-west winds howled and swept the bare braes, wasting their force against the lichen-set boulders behind which even the shearling lambs could lie snugly, but in this early autumn the sun baked into the close-cropped turf, and mushrooms grew in clusters where the lambs had lain.
It was a favourite outlook of Aura's, for it gave over the widening estuary and the sea beyond. Beyond that again the setting sun; for it was growing late, and the autumn days began to close in.
She sat there on the wild thyme thinking, making up--as the young do almost unconsciously--her mind about many things, reaching forward to the future vaguely with certain new thoughts regarding it in her mind, and all the while watching the great pageant of the Death of Day enact itself out in the West.
It was a lurid sunset; full of flames, of deep, purple-stained clouds. It was a pageant of passion, self-existent, self-destroying.
Yet it was beautiful! She would sit and watch it to the end, she would see the anger and the threat of it pass into grey calm when the sun had gone.
So she sat on, the lilies still in her lap, until she was roused by a step, by one word--
"Gwen!"
She turned startled, to see the startled face of a young man behind her. It was a beautiful face, the sort of a face which women love, and in its quick amaze there was almost a hint of appeal, of hope for fair hearing.
The girl grasped the situation in a moment. He had been misled by her blue dress. He had thought she was Gwen; poor frail Gwen who was not "all wise," yet still had been wise enough to keep this secret of hers.
He turned with a half-muttered apology, in another instant he would have been gone, but Aura's strong, firm fingers were on his wrist; she looked at him from head to foot, judging him.
Then with one swift sweep of her other hand she struck his handsome face full with the fading lilies she still held.
"Coward!" she said. "Go! your task is done!"
The flowers broke softly on his warm flesh and blood, leaving no mark, but her words seemed to shrivel him; he slunk away.
She watched him disappear down the hillside, then with a sob she flung herself face down on the short turf, crushing the lilies to their death, and cried as though her heart would break.
The little village of Dinas was in a turmoil. Considering its small size, and the extreme peace of its situation happed round by everlasting hills, and so cuddled close to the very heart of calm creation, it held an extraordinary capability for fuss. The hot Celtic blood would get into the hot Celtic brain at the slightest provocation, and it had risen from the sub-normal of rural life to the fever-heat of a revolution over a baby whom some one had refused to baptize, and some one else had declined to bury.
The rector, relying on the Middle Ages, had pointed to the nettle-grown corner reserved for those whose salvation was doubtful. The whole Calvinistic body, forgetful of election and predestination, had fled as one man from the authority of the Bible to that of the Burials Act.
Radical religion and religious radicalism had once more met in grips, and the guarantors of the little telegraph station in the village breathed freely by reason of the wires that were sent, and that came from the princes and powers of darkness and light all over the country.
The result was, of course, that foregone conclusion of these later days--a compromise. The churchyard belonged to the parish, the burial service to the Church. And so, with a curious falter at its innermost heart because of the absence of the rector's familiar surplice and biretta, the village had signalised its victory by a triumphal following of Gwen's baby to the grave, not of its fathers, but its mothers.
As they gathered round the coffin which looked so tiny far away down in the greasy, black earth, the sound of "Day of wrath, that dreadful day," sung by the rector at his usual evening service, floated out from the church to join Morris Pugh's indignant militant prayer to the Almighty; but the peaceful little dead child slept undisturbed by either.
Yet the rector, honest man, had no ill-feeling at all, but rather a profound pity for the lamb of his flock who had been lost through ignorance on his part, for had he known of its illness nothing would have prevented him from storming the shepherd's hut and claiming his right as rector. Indeed, but for the necessity for reprobating the scandalous withholding of one of the Church's sacraments from an innocent soul because its parents were blameworthy, there is small doubt that he would have asked no questions, and buried the small dead body decently and in order. As it was he came, after service was over, tall and cassock-garbed, to stand beside the tiny mound of new-turned soil which broke the lush green of the churchyard, make the sign of the cross over it, and pray a little prayer for mercy.
Nevertheless, he went back to his study and his ecclesiastical histories a harder man for the incident. His bishop had not upheld the authority of the Church; he had--in all reverence be it spoken--hedged, and the Rev. Gawain Meredith was too priestly, soul and body, for hedging with heretics.
For there was no mincing of words about him. The Wesleyans were possibly schismatics; all other dissenters were heretics, and the Calvinistic Methodists the most distinctly dangerous heretics with whom he had to deal. They reminded him in their social, religious, and political organisation of the Jesuits whose history he was studying. He had a reluctant admiration for their determination to force means to an end, and he saw plainly how much capital they would make out of his refusal to bury the body. Elections to the parish council were coming on, and he had already made himself unpopular by questioning the expenditure. So he read the paragraphs concerning the baby's burial which he found waiting for him on his study table in the weekly local, with a setting of his thin lips. They might turn him out of the council if they choose, but while he was in it, he would do his duty by the ratepayers.
Morris Pugh had read these same paragraphs in manuscript; they had been sent to him for revision, and he had returned them without a word of comment; yet he had felt a vague regret pluck at his heart.
He was an enthusiast, pure and simple. Those chiefs of his party, who seized so quickly on every point of vantage, were enthusiasts and something more.
He felt ill at ease; though, in attempting to get at the truth concerning Gwen's fault he had acted almost at the instigation of his elders. Isaac Edwards and Richard Jones, stern fathers of the village, had been inexorable, and so Gwen, once the pride of the choir, despite her being "light in the weighing," had been practically excommunicated. Not that there had ever been any intention of such excommunication being permanent, or of its injuring the child; but spasmodic croup waits for nothing, and so--so the Middle Ages and the Burials Act had come into conflict.
This, however, was not the only cause for Morris Pugh's uneasiness.
Oddly enough, the disturbing element was the hundred pounds which Ned Blackborough had hidden in the cleft of the rocks. The last two months had been one long temptation to go and take it at all costs--take it and say nothing. And yet his soul revolted from the very idea. The constant conflict, however, had forced him into clearer thought, and he had shrunk back in horror from much that he saw in himself and others. The greed of gold! How it riddled all human life; it even touched the next, for it was the mainspring of religion. Money! Money! There was a perpetual call for it. Half the spiritual life of his flock was due to the efforts of those who had built the chapel and who worked--for God, no doubt--but also to get five per cent. interest on their mortgages.
Yes! the souls for whom Christ died were bartering them for gold.
O! for something, some voicing of the Great Spirit, to stir them to a nobler commerce!
This was his desire, his constant prayer, and he had grown haggard and anxious over the stress of both.
The last two days also had brought a fresh anxiety. Mervyn, his brother, had returned from a month's visit to Blackborough, curiously moody, curiously unlike himself; that is the earnest, clever lad who for years had been the pride of the village, the joy of his mother's and of his brother's heart. No doubt his failure to pass the examination had discouraged him; but was that all? It did not really matter; he was young yet, had another chance, and meanwhile could go on as he was, earning enough to keep him as clerk to the village councils and boards.
So as Morris Pugh, hollow-eyed, pale, lingered at the grave of the little child which he had just committed to the dust whence it had come, there was no stability in his thoughts. They wandered on dreamily until, suddenly as a flash, came the certainty that one of the many mourners, who had but a minute before been looking down on the tiny coffin, was father to what it held.
And he had stood there silent, unrepentant!
Yes; it must be so, for poor Gwen was no wanderer; her own people sufficed for that limited life.
He covered his face with his hands and turned swiftly, almost to stumble over his brother who stood behind him. His face was haggard also, and Morris looked at it with a quick dread clutching at his heart.
"There's--there's nothing wrong is there--Merve--" he faltered.
The lad flushed crimson. "Only you've trodden on my toe; that's all," he answered, bending low to brush off the dust of the grave which his brother's foot had left on his boot.
"I beg your pardon," replied Morris Pugh slowly; then the remembrance that he was pastor here as elsewhere made him add, "I was so overcome by the horrible thought that the father of that poor child must have been here--beside us, Merve."
But the lad's face was up again; he looked his brother calmly in the face.
"I suppose he was; but what is the use of bothering about it? The thing's over--" He glanced at the grave as he spoke, and looked back at his brother almost impatiently. "Oh! for God's sake, Morris, let her be--I dare say it--it was a sort of mistake--he mayn't have meant--but anyhow, the thing's done with!
"Done!" echoed Morris; "how can it be done without repentance?"
Mervyn's handsome eyes narrowed, his lip set. "And how do you know he doesn't repent? If the--the baby had lived it might have been worth while; but now--" he smiled suddenly. "Don't worry any more about it, there's a good chap. Mother will be waiting tea for us, and you have all those envelopes to send round this evening."
Morris Pugh winced under the reminder. Yes! tomorrow was Collection Sunday, and each household of the faith must be provided with an envelope addressed to it in which the offering must be enclosed, thus enabling those in authority to trace home any inadequate donation.
Oh! would the time never come to the Church of Christ when the Elect would need no such precautions against cheating their God? For that was what it meant.
His whole soul sickened as he thought of how each one of his flock would weigh the balance between this world and the next. And yet a good collection was the vivifier of spiritual life. Without it, how could extra preachers be paid for, and the religio-social work of the community be kept up?
It was late ere all the arrangements for the morrow, including a reception and prayer-meeting in honour of the Reverend Hwfa Morgan, who was to conduct the morning service, were over; but even then Morris Pugh had not finished his work. That was to wrestle through the night in prayer for Divine Guidance, for Divine Help.
And all the while the slow, certain stars wheeled in their appointed courses to meet the dawn, the dawn that came true to its appointed time.
There was a stir in the village, of course. To begin with, there was the excitement of a new preacher. Would he come up to his reputation? And would the performance of the village choir be satisfactory? Then, as all the outlying members of the congregation came in from the distant farms early, there was the additional excitement of hearing and giving gossip. As one of the yearly functions, too, Collection Sunday was a festival for fine clothes. Alicia Edwards wore hers, an entirely new get-up which, remembering Myfanwy's look at Mervyn, and having in mind various penny novelettes in which jealousy played the principal part, she had ordered from another shop in Blackborough. For she was becoming reckless. At heart she was an excellent creature, but her education had been against her. She had learnt so much that was absolutely unnecessary for what she wanted to make out of life. What did it matter to her whether she could reel off the names of the claimants to the crown of Spain during the War of Succession? All she really desired was love; sentimental, not overpassionate love. Life without emotion was to her an empty life. Other girls, feeling as restless as she did, might have defied home authority and followed, say, Myfanwy Jones's lead; but she was too dutiful, and in addition she had a reputation to keep up, the reputation of being the best girl in the village. Her father, of whom she was desperately afraid, talked of a Training College for Teachers; she held her peace, and lived feverishly for the moment. That, at any rate, was productive of emotion!
So she put on her finest clothes and went down to meet Mervyn at the chapel door, and greet him with a sprightly challenge and a little quiver of her lip: Not that she was really in love with him. Any other of the stalwart young men, who cultivated the same forehead curl, would have done as well, if he had been attracted by her and called her his darling, and asked her to be his wife; for all her education had left her woman--woman pure and simple.
There was quite a crowd at the chapel door, a general excitement over the thought of the new preacher, though to many a bent old man and worn old woman the great event of the day was in the envelope, safely tucked away in the Bibles they clutched so confidently. For, realising that this might be their last donation, they had given their ransom for the skies. Isaac Edwards fussed round, keeping a watchful eye for the doubtful members of the flock; and the Reverend Hwfa Morgan, a tall young man who might have looked sensual but for his exceeding pallor, spoke to the favoured few, giving them a taste of his fluency.
He was extraordinarily fluent. His periods swept along soundfully and brought forth many encomiums in the brief period between the services, for the evening hour had been put forward to the afternoon in order to allow the outermost outsiders to get home ere dark, and thus have no excuse for absence.
So the westering sun shone full into the bare, whitewashed chapel when Morris Pugh, as a preliminary to his final appeal, stepped forward, and the Reverend Hwfa Morgan stepped back for the moment.
There was the difference of two worlds between their faces. As Morris gave out a well-known Welsh hymn, a little sudden thrill seemed to vibrate in the humanity-burdened air of the packed chapel.
What was it?
The quaint modulations rose and fell in wide compass, now high, now low. Would the Spirit of the Lord speak in a singing voice?
The thought was no new one; it had been in Morris Pugh's mind as he had listened of late to the oft-told tale--which grew in the telling-- of the mysterious music in the church on Trinity Sunday.
But no! The hymn died away to its Amen, and there was no sign. So he began his address.
And then suddenly his eye caught a figure by the door, a figure in black, close veiled. Surely it was Gwen--Gwen the sinner?
And then he spoke again. He had passed the night in prayer; he had eaten nothing; the whole body and soul of him was in deadly earnest.
Whether there was something more than this or not, that in itself has to be reckoned with, especially with an emotional audience.
So, as he spoke of the dead child, an old woman, her face seamed with wrinkles, seemed to feel a half-forgotten tug at her breast and began to weep; an old man, straining with almost sightless eyes for some glimpse which might make the young, flexible, lamenting voice more earthly, less heavenly, followed suit. Then the golden haze which filled the chapel seemed to hold a radiance, and close to the speaker, Alicia Edwards gave a little half-suffocated cry and tore, as if for breath, at the laces round her throat.
And still the insistent, strenuous voice held to its high protesting pitch of passionate reproof. Its cadence was the only sound----
No! What was that?
From the figure by the door a sound--the merest shadow of a sound!
'Just as I am without one plea.'
The Welsh translation of a sinner's joy was familiar, and a thrill, individual yet collective, ran through the chapel as, turning, every one in it saw Gwen, her whole face, sodden with tears, transfigured into angelic light and peace and joy as she sang--
'Save that Thy Blood was shed for me.'
The strenuous man's voice failed suddenly before the exquisite sweetness of the woman's, but only for a moment. A voice less strenuous, yet still a man's, joined in the singing, then another woman's.
So, by ones and twos and threes, the message of certain salvation grew from a whisper to a storm of sound.
'O Lamb of God, I come!'
And then?
Then, while Morris Pugh stood white, trembling, almost appalled, the Reverend Hwfa Morgan sprang forward with a shout of "Hallelujah!"
It swept away the last barrier of reserve. With cries and groans the congregation leapt to its feet or grovelled in the dust.
"Speak to them, man, speak to them, the Spirit is upon you," urged the Reverend Hwfa Morgan, as Morris Pugh still stood, paralysed by the realisation of his prayer.
So he essayed to speak, but the power did not lie with him. It lay in the soft, almost unearthly, harmonies of Gwen's voice, and Mervyn's, and Alicia Edwards, followed by those of many a young man and maiden. Over and over again some wild Welsh chant pitted itself against prayer or preaching, or even the earnest confession of sin from some sinner, and always with the same result, a victory for the service of song. Against that soothing background even Time itself seemed lost. The evening drew in wet and stormy. The necessity for closing the chapel doors burdened the pent air still more with man's great need of forgiveness. The miserable ventilation, which sanitation allows to churches and forbids to theatres, made women faint and strong men turn sick, while every now and again a burst of unrestrained laughter or sobbing told of nerves strained to the breaking point.
It was nigh dawn when, by the light of a pale moon obscured by drifting storm-clouds, Morris Pugh turned the key in the chapel door with a trembling hand. The Reverend Hwfa Morgan and Isaac Edwards were waiting for him on the wet, glittering steps.
"That is over," he muttered slowly in Welsh.
"Over!" echoed his brother cleric. "If the Lord will, it has just begun: from it will spread a wave of revival. You and those sweet singers--!" His excitement was too much for him, he reverted to English, "Yes, indeed! We will have a collection----"
Isaac Edwards slapped his thigh with an inarticulate ejaculation.
"Morris Pugh," he said, his voice quivering with regret, "we have forgotten it. God forgive us, we have forgotten the money!"