Little blue wavelets were lapping on the pure white coral dust at his feet; above his head little white cloudlets were sailing upon the pure blue of the sky as Ned Blackborough lay on the flat of his back looking out over the soft southern sea. He had edged himself away from the turf beyond the sand for fear of crushing the great drifts of tiny iris which everywhere grew encircled by their bodyguard of grey-green scimitar-shaped leaves. Whether they were actually of the same sort as the one which Aura had dubbed "the most beautiful thing in the most beautiful place in the world," Ned was not botanist enough to know; but his heart warmed to them because of their likeness to it.
But then his heart went out to almost everything in this wonder island of the Sporades group, which he had purchased for a mere song from the Turkish Government. A mere song indeed! It filled him with awe to think of becoming the possessor of so much pure loveliness, when he had spent hundreds--nay! thousands of times as much--in trying to make one house fit for children to die in!
Even as it stood, it was an earthly paradise. When he had finished spending a little more money and a good deal more leisure on it, when the white marble ruins on it were restored, when books and music came to its pleasant pavilions, above all when Love came to take up her abode there, it would be a veritable fragment of the heavenly Jerusalem chipped off and dropped here by chance in the still, deep blue sea.
Yes! it was extraordinarily beautiful! It satisfied the soul!
Straight away from the water's edge, save where here and there a coral-sanded creek broke the clear cut of the cliff, the land rose steadily, cleft by sharp ravines, to a central peak, not high, yet high enough to hold, on this early morning in February, a dusting of frosty dew upon its summit, which shone evanescently, like snow, then disappeared before the rising sunbeams as they fell.
The ilex woods were already green and bronze in their new, soft, yet spike-set shoots; the olives grew sturdily amongst the burnished leafage of the wild lemon and the wild orange, and down the ravines, where trickled scantily among the stones tiny streams of water, the oleanders were already preparing their blaze of red and white.
And the flowers! Ye gods! what flowers! It would take Aura a lifetime simply to find out their names! Every thicket showed them aburst with coming blossom; and, the open spaces, even thus early, were carpeted with fritillaries and narcissus.
And the birds! A pair of tiny sun-birds flitted past him twittering, playful, a flash of scarlet wheeling wings and ruby throats. On the rock yonder, an emerald and sapphire kingfisher sat silent, looking with large, piercing eyes out to sea.
So indeed might Halcyon have sat looking for her Ceyx! And as he watched the bird, immobile, mournful, the full beauty of the far-way Greek legend struck Ned Blackborough's mind with new force.
Ay! So must all those who love the Something they know not what, which they find, or seem to find, in some woman's beauty, some man's strength--so must they watch and wait, flitting ever over the waves of life seeking the Beloved. Not even the halcyon days when Zeus gives the wisdom of calm, could end that ceaseless quest. Aura had been right. Behind love was the "Something better" which he had felt, in which both he and she had been lost, as they had sat together, hand in hand, listening to the robin as it sang on the holly-tree.
The sun-birds flitted past again less playfully, more lovingly, and Ned Blackborough started up remembering that it was the 14th of February--St. Valentine's day! Naturally the birds were pairing. Naturally there was spring in the air. Naturally his blood seemed to race through his veins; he also could have made love!
Fautes de mieux, why should he not send Aura a valentine? He had not written to her, he had virtually said he would not; but a valentine--especially a valentine by wire as this must be--was a very impersonal affair.
He strolled over to the rocky point, behind which, in a natural harbour, lay a fair-sized English sailing-boat. Beyond, at anchor, rode a steam yacht; but its fires were out--its crew had gone off that morning in a double lateen-sailed felucca to Rhodes for some festival--St. Valentine's day, no doubt.
But for this it would have been easy to steam over to the telegraph office.
There was the sailing-boat, however, and the weather was perfect. He looked out seawards critically. There was a certain hardness of outline in that deep blue horizon; otherwise the calm of fourteen days might well be beginning.
It would be a lovely sail. Twenty miles or so over these ripples, with just enough warm southerly wind behind one to blow the boat straight to the telegraph office without a tack! As for the return journey the felucca's crew would have to make that, and bring the yacht for him next morning. He liked Rhodes; it was a quaint old town full of memories, pagan and Christian.
Five minutes afterwards he was afloat, the sheet looped within reach, the tiller set steady towards a pale-blue cloud which lay upon the north-west horizon.
It was the most perfect of mornings. The boat lay over a trifle to the wind, which was stronger beyond the lee of the island, and sent a little half-apologetic tinkling, bubbling laugh of water along the side as it slid through the waving lines of ripple.
"Let me pass! good people," it seemed to say. "Let me laugh! I have a purpose--you have none. Ha--ha--ha!"
So, unheeding of the ripples, might the unchanging Purpose behind all things break through the little waves of the world and laugh at their disturbance.
Ned Blackborough lit a cigarette--a good sound, opium-soddened Egyptian cigarette such as his soul loved--and set himself deliberately to day-dreams. It was becoming more and more a temptation for him to do this, for he was only just beginning to realise the intense pleasure he derived from it! A sensual, purely Esthetic pleasure for the most part, though every now and again.... Yes! every now and again he left even the super-sensual part of him behind, and lost himself utterly. In what, he did not know. He only knew thatItwas there, andHewas forgotten.
To-day, however, he was in no mood for the infinite; the finite was quite sufficient for him, so he amused himself by looking steadily at the shining dark surface of some bilge water which lay by the tarred keel of the boat, and trying to imagine that he would see visions in it, as the little Cairo boys see them in a drop of ink.
He had tested this often, and knew that they did see strange things, just as Helen apparently had seen the fire on Cam's point in the crystal. Truly there were many mysteries!
It was, of course, not hard to conjure up Aura's face, or see her seated in the sheep shelter listening to the bird, or standing in the moonlight among the cedar shadows on the lawn holding out the sovereign, or on her knees beside the little purple iris while the sphinx looked down on her.
But beyond all these tricks of memory, what could he see? Nothing. Yet what was this? A wide stretch of blue--blue everywhere. Bah! it was only the reflection of the sky; it was the floor of heaven!
His eyes narrowed themselves from dreaminess to thought. It was strange that that inner eye, which could produce things from the past with such absolute accuracy, should be so helpless in regard to the present except in negation. It could make one forget that altogether.
As for the future? Truly the mind of man dreamt idly when it sought to discover what lay beyond; possibly because it sought to recognise itself in conditions in which Self should have been merged in something beyond Self.
So as he sat idly looking at the drop of dark water, he felt for a moment--aided, no doubt, by the opium in his cigarette!--as if he were sailing on over a sea that vibrated ceaselessly with a soft quiver which brought no sensation of light to his eyes, no sense of feeling to his touch, no sense of sound to his ears.
And the old Indian definition recurred to him--"A bubble upon the Ocean of Bliss."
The sharp rug of a running rope recalled him to the present; the loop of the sheet was slipping as the breeze freshened.
It was freshening indeed. Behind him lay quite a squall, crisping the ripples to little indignant waves, and over in the south-east a cloud, pale-grey but threatening, already showed as a widening arch from the horizon. One of the swift spring storms was coming up apace, and he must run for it for all he was worth. There was no more time for dreams; every ounce of the squall that goes before the storm must be made use of if he was to send his valentine.
But he would send it safe enough, unless the wind shifted. After a while, during which the boat, hard held, flew through the waves, and the blue cloud to the northward rose higher and higher on the horizon, the wind did shift just at a point or two towards the south, and he in his turn had to shift his tiller so as to keep that extreme north-eastern headland before him. So it became a harder tussle than ever between him and the wind to keep full way on the boat. She was carrying more sail than was safe, but he could not afford to lose a moment of time; although, all things being equal, he had still a fair chance of making the land.
Another slight shift! and now before him--a gleam of light on the land that was already shadowed by the coming storm--he saw a creek of white sand slightly to westward of him, where he could at least have a chance of beaching his boat, where, for the matter of that, if the worst came to worst, he would at least have a better chance of not being dashed to pieces if he tried to swim. Beyond, the coast was cliff-bound, rock-bound.
Would she take so much? He let the sheet slip through his fingers half inch by half inch, gauging the wind's pressure on the sail cautiously. Yes! she would take it. He could make the creek if all went well.
But he had reckoned without the current which here, close to the land, began to gather itself for a headlong race round that eastern cliff; so inch by inch the boat's prow slid from the white streak of safety to the rocks.
Would she stand another inch of rope?
She stood it, and leapt forward like a greyhound, giving to the full sweep of the storm which at that moment, with a crash of thunder, broke over them; then righting herself and careering before it like some mad thing, her way redoubled by the fierce wind which sang in Ned's ears, as, clinging to one taffrail with his hand, he stood almost on the other. There was no time now even for thought; the feeling of fight came in its place, since to steady the tiller for the creek one moment, and give to the huge rollers the next, was enough for soul, and brain, and body.
Then on the crest of a wave he saw the creek in front of him, but saw also that a giant roller just behind him must swamp the boat unless he steered straight towards the rocks on the north-east. They were sharp, jagged rocks, like teeth just showing above the boil of the waves. How far out did the reef run? What length was that ravening jaw?
Who could say? The next instant, with his boots kicked off, and the thwart, on which he had kept an eye this while past, held under his arm-pits by his outstretched arms, as a buoy, he had leapt into the roller as it lifted the boat. The water felt warm to him, spray and wind-chilled as he was; warm, but rough, as it seized him, ducked him, cuffed him, bruised him; all but broke him, ere with a mighty rush it flung him forwards. Ye gods! what it was not to be quite sound--to have an arm that could not stand a strain! Still that awful something against which he had struck in the downdraw had been warded off somehow and ...
Then once more the following roller, stronger of the giant twins which hunt the wide wastes of water in couples, overtook him, caught him, buffeted him, knocked him senseless, so, with a wild shrieking scramble of pebbles and coral sand, swept him up to the very last corner of the creek. His head, as he lay stunned, was within an inch of a jagged needle-point of rock which would have crashed into his skull as if it had been an egg-shell.
It was full five minutes ere another giant wave reached out for him and felt him about the feet. But by this time that was enough to rouse him. He stirred, sat up, and half-mechanically withdrew himself stiffly beyond any further touch. He was bleeding from cuts in the hands and on his knees; but that seemed to be all the damage done.
Except for the boat, of course ... What of the boat? It was matchwood already amongst those devilish rocks to the eastward.
"That was a nearish squeak," he murmured softly as he rose, and limping a little, sought shelter among the clefts of the cliff from the blinding torrents of rain.
An hour or so afterwards, however, having with easy grace and some small knowledge of Turkish and modern Greek hired a gaily caparisoned mule from a neighbouring farmer, he rode up the Knights' Street quite cheerfully, dried and warmed by the sun, which, after the brief storm, had shone out again radiantly, carelessly.
He had settled what the valentine was to be from the very moment that the idea of it had entered his head, but it took him fully half an hour to see it safely through the hands of the Turkish officials, and then they charged him for a message in cipher.
Yet it was only a very simple quotation:--
'Haply I think on thee, and then my state;Like to the lark at break of day uprisingFrom sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate.'
'Haply I think on thee, and then my state;Like to the lark at break of day uprisingFrom sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate.'
He did not even put his name to it, for it seemed impossible to him that she should not know who sent it.
By this time it was close on four o'clock, and he computed the difference in longitude by his watch.
"She ought to get it at latest by four," he said to himself as he strolled off to the old church to live awhile amongst the ghosts of the Crusaders and the Knights Hospitalliers of St. John.
As a matter of fact it was a quarter to four when the brick-dust coloured envelope was put into Aura's hands, but she was still looking at it with a certain scare in her eyes and a certain flutter at her heart when Ted came down from her grandfather's room at four o'clock. Of course she knew who had sent it. No one but Ned would have thought of anything at once so consoling and so disturbing. To rise from earth and "sing hymns at heaven's gate" was quite in order; but how about the "Haply I think on thee"?
"What's that?" asked Ted kindly, as he sat down beside her on the sofa, which had been imported into the bare, empty room for the invalid's use. "Anything I can do?"
That again was so like him; always thinking of material help in everything.
"Nothing," she replied, hurriedly crumpling up the paper, and thrusting it under the sofa cushion. "Nothing, at least of any consequence." She was wearing the diamonds now, and they flashed on her finger, bringing the sunburn brown of her hand into greater prominence. "You look worried, Ted," she went on. "You don't think grandfather is worse, do you? He was very disturbed, I know, but----"
Ted shook his head. "Not worse, certainly. I left him asleep. Besides, the doctor says there is no immediate danger of any sort. But I am worried. The fact is, my darling"--his arm was round her, but not too aggressively, for, in truth, though he loved her dearly, his world held many other interests besides love--"this sort of thing cannot go on. This is the third time I have been sent for since the New Year. I don't grudge it, dearest, one bit. There is always the joy of seeing you; but if Hirsch hadn't been kindness itself I couldn't have managed it. And it doesn't really do the dear old man any good. Here he is to-day fretting himself ill about my having to go away, about our being married. So I was wondering, dearest----"
"Yes, Ted," she put in calmly.
Ted took his arm away, and sat resting his head in his hands and looking vexedly into the fire. "It is a good deal to ask of us--especially to ask of you," he went on; "but you see I must go off this evening, so it wouldn't make any real difference, since we are bound indissolubly to each other as it is--aren't we?"
He took her left hand and kissed the diamond ring as he spoke.
"Of course we are," she assented. "Go on, Ted."
"So--if you will consent--I could fetch the rector--he is a surrogate, I find; but, as a matter of fact, I got the license at Blackborough--and we could be married before I go. Don't look so startled, my dearest! It shan't be if you don't wish it. And I hate asking for it, only I believe it would really quiet the dear old man, and give him a better chance--and me too, of course, for this sort of thing is a little--just a little--well! limiting. And, as I say, it would make no difference--except perhaps that I should find it harder than ever to leave my wife."
His voice sank to almost playful tenderness, his arm stole round her waist again, and she rose hurriedly.
"But--but is this possible?" she asked incredulously. "I thought there was so much formality----"
He smiled tolerantly. "Not at all! a special license is all that's required, and I have that; so if you--you dear, solemn thing!--will really consent to do without a wedding----"
She looked at him, startled. "But surely we are going to be married?"
He laughed loudly. "Of course we are. I meant the bridesmaids and the cake and the orange-blossoms and all that. I don't want them, darling, if you don't. It's enough for me to have you."
She set the question and his kiss aside as of no value whatever. "Then I think you had better get the rector if you can, Ted," she said thoughtfully. "I expect it will make a great difference to him--to grandfather, I mean--and to you also. And you've been so awfully good! Will you tell grandfather?" she added with a little blush as she released herself from her lover's thanks.
"Well, you see," he confessed, "I've half-promised him already--that is why he went to sleep. You are always so reasonable, Aura, I felt I might count on you----"
And then the sight of her standing there so sweet, so kind, so absolutely unconscious, seemed to overwhelm him, and he cried passionately, "Oh, my dear, my dear! I hope I shall make you happy--but you are a thousand times too good for me."
He told himself so over and over again as he hurried on his bicycle to the rectory, and he swore to himself almost incoherently that although the rush of mere moneymaking had absorbed much of his waking life, it should never invade the corner that was sacred to his love. And as he said this he turned his head suddenly towards the winter woods, for in his ears that mellow blackbird call to the wilds seemed to sound, as it had sounded that evening when, all unwitting, he had sold his soul to Mr. Hirsch.
When he had gone on his mission Aura drew out Ned's valentine again, smoothed it over, and looked at it once more. For the first time in her life she felt the need of some one--some woman to whom she could talk. Finally she folded up the telegram, put it on the mantelpiece, and went into the kitchen. There was always Martha, and Martha's sound common-sense was a byword.
"Martha," she said, after standing for a few moments watching the deft hands dab butter over paste, and roll it in with swift decision--it was almost like watching the mill which grinds small! "I want to ask you something; but you must promise not to mention it even to Adam."
"Even to Bate!" echoed Martha with a sniff. "If I'd my choice, Miss H'Aura, I'd as lief mention it to the town-crier. Not that Bate doesn't mean well. It ain't his fault being born so; but there, one must just take holt of men as they're made, and be thankful they is no worse."
Why this should have heartened Aura up it is hard to say, but it did. She actually smiled. "What I wanted to ask was this, Martha. In your experience--do you think it hurts a man very much to be in love--I mean, of course, to be in love with some one who doesn't want--I mean who won't marry him?"
Martha poised the rolling-pin on one hip, her hand on the other.
"Hurt 'em!" she echoed. "Lord sakes, no! It's the makin' o' them. Bate wouldn't be 'alf so spry at his years if he 'adn't bin wantin' to marry me any time this fourteen year back. That's why I won't 'ave him even now, Miss H'Aura. 'Bate,' says I, 'if I was to take you now, you'd get fat an' lazy. You wouldn't rise no more. You'd be like whipped eggs as is let stand, all gone to froth an' water.' No! Miss H'Aura, men is like heggs, they want beatin' 'ard all the time, else they'll never rise to better things."
The rolling-pin came down on the pastry with more decision than ever, and Aura laughed out loud. Something in the very phrasing of the last words comforted her.
Yet she was not quite content as she changed her day-dress for the white cambric one she wore in the evening; after all, it was but putting it on an hour or so before her usual time, and the Mechlin lace about her throat was a concession which would please her grandfather.
"Aura!--my dearest, you look quite bridal," exclaimed Ted, as he came in to find her sitting by the firelight. "It seems too good to be true--but the rector will be here in half an hour." He knelt down beside her, and laid his head in her lap. "My dear, my dear!" he said almost with a sob. "I don't seem able to say anything butthat, somehow," he added almost pathetically. Far away, dimly, he saw a vision of something better, unattainable, incompatible with his sensuous life. It was beautiful but--what would you? Man is but man; and he must have money wherewith to live.
"Then there is something which I must tell you--before," she said; "it is something which I think you ought to know. Ned asked me to marry him on New Year's Day--and I refused."
Ted's heart gave a great throb as it had done when Ned Blackborough had used much the same words nearly a month before.
"I--I am sorry for Ned," he said softly, "but I don't see----"
For answer she held out the telegram. "He sent me this to-day," she said, "and I wonder--if he is waiting."
"Waiting!" echoed Ted hotly. "Waiting for what? You say you refused him?"
"Yes! I told him I would not marry him--because I was afraid of loving him too much; that was the truth."
For one instant the whole room seemed to spin round with Ted; he had to steady himself by holding to the back of a chair.
"I don't understand what you mean," he said thickly.
"I don't think he did either," she replied with a lingering regret in her voice, "for he said he would ask me again in two months, as if that would alter anything."
Ted caught swiftly at the ray of light. "Then if he asked you again--you--you would refuse him?"
The firelight had died down so that he could not see the flush which surged into her face, but he could hear her voice as she replied, "Yes! I should refuse him--more than ever."
"Then," he said slowly after a pause, "I don't see why you need bother----"
"Oh! it was not that," she put in quickly. "I was only wondering--you see I know so little, and I have no mother--if he would expect me to wait."
The firelight flared up again, and he saw her with the lace about her throat. "Let him wait!" he exclaimed passionately; "he had his fair chance and I have mine. I am sorry, but one of us had to win. You can't help that, you poor little dear--that is fate."
He told himself it was indeed fate: he swore to himself that he would be the best husband ever woman had.
But for all that the ceremony damped even his joy. To begin with, Martha wept copiously in a corner, as she had wept ever since Ted had gone in to the kitchen and taken her away unceremoniously from her pastry-making as a witness. At first she had sunk into a chair, and steadfastly refused to budge (on the ground that she couldn't "'ave sech things going on in the 'ouse,") but after a time the importance of being in possession of a dead secret, and her perception that if his lordship was not going to come forward--and he seemed, indeed, inclined to play the back step--this was decidedly the next best thing for her darling, induced her to yield.
"And if you loves 'im and 'e loves you, there ain't no fear, same as there ain't no fear but what good barm and good flour'll make a good batch o' bread--no fear at all my deary dear," she had sobbed consolingly to Aura, who stood quite composed, but very white. Ted, strong and kindly, clasped her hand, and what soul was left over and above his bargain was in his eyes.
The rector, in biretta and cope, read the service unabridged, while Sylvanus Smith, propped comfortably in his arm-chair, averted his face from the sacerdotal symbols, even while he added an unctious "Amen" of his own to "let no man put asunder."
He even essayed a burst of hilarity as he kissed Mrs. Cruttenden, but Ted scarcely availed himself of his privileges. He only stood beside Aura, holding her hand, divided in his heart of hearts whether he should go or whether he should stay.
But in the end prudence triumphed and a sense of duty; for the last month of constant interruptions had not been favourable to business, and if Aura--if his wife--were ever to appear in that pink satin and diamonds, it behooved him to bestir himself.
So Adam Bate, coming in after milking the cows at eight o'clock, found the house silent, curiously silent, with Martha seated on a chair, her feet on the fender, her eyes on the fire.
He cast a glance at the table. It was bare, so after a while he coughed.
"Beant there no supper, Martha, woman?" he asked apologetically.
Martha rose in an instant, aflame.
"There's bin that, Adam Bate, a-goin' on in this 'ouse this day, as no one didn't want to 'ave no supper--not if they was Christian--but bein' a man--there's bread and cheese in the cupboard."
March had come in like a lion. Even in the village of Dinas, sheltered as it was, the east wind swept down the funnel of the valley and through the very houses, as only an east wind in Wales can sweep, bitter, absolutely unsparing of man or beast.
Alicia Edwards gathered her cross-over shawl closer to her as she stood in her father's shop and listened for the click of the telegraph instrument. It was almost the only amusement she had now, and any moment might bring the wire for which Adam Bate and the housekeeper at Cwmfaernog had been calling in vain these two days past.
It was becoming serious. They would have to bury the poor, dead gentleman after all, if some one did not come to help them to arrange--the other thing. For in this far away Welsh village, where every boy and girl had been educated up to the standard set by the most advanced progressivists of the day, the very idea of cremation was absolute damnation. It could be nothing else, since how could the Creator resurrect a body that did not exist? So half the village thought it only right that such an atheist as Mr. Sylvanus Smith had been in life should meet the fire without delay, and the other half, more mercifully inclined, explained the difficulty in getting hold of Mr. Cruttenden, the dead man's executor, as symptomatic of pity on the part of Providence.
Alicia Edwards, thinking over this, sighed. It was only one more case in which the teaching of school ran counter to the knowledge that was necessary in daily life. For what would her father, the elder, what would she herself say, if she was to allow even elementary science to interfere with her belief? The world was a very confusing place. There was but one certain thing in it for a woman, and that was love; but every one could not get love. She thought of her own struggle for it and her failure. Myfanwy had beaten her. She had reft Mervyn away even from his great vocation, and rumour had it that, after a little longer service in Williams and Edwards's shop, those two would be married and set up in a small business of their own. In face of this, what did all the rest matter? Despite all the talk in the village concerning Mervyn's sudden departure and Morris Pugh's equally sudden resignation of the pastorship of Dinas, she had held her tongue with fair discretion, only allowing a few mysterious surmises to leak out. To begin with, Myfanwy's last words had alarmed her, and then the offenders had passed altogether from her control. What would it matter to Mervyn, now employee in Williams and Edwards, if it was found out that he had ruined half the girls in Dinas?
Besides, something new and stern in her father's attitude towards her in regard to the revival made her suspect that he was not without his suspicions. The less said about morals the better, especially since the effect of those midnight meetings was already making itself felt in the immediate neighbourhood. For Isaac Edwards was relentless on this point. He had downright refused to let her go on with her sweet singing now that all her companions had died or disappeared; so having, of course, lost her post as pupil teacher, there was nothing for it but to stop at home and prepare, so her father said, for a normal college. The girl herself stiffened a sullen lip and looked down the lane which led to the minister's house now occupied by the Reverend Hwfa Williams; for he admired her. Of that there could be no question. The possibility of marrying him, indeed, had become quite a factor in her life, and she decided most points with a view to this possibility. Small wonder then if Alicia Edwards's amicability and her general desirability as a minister's wife had begun to strike Hwfa Williams himself, while even Isaac Edwards was beginning to waver in his insistance on Logarithms and the Science of Tuition.
"Put on your hat, Alicia," he said from his ledger, "and run down the road. It will warm you up before you have to go to the Bible class."
And Alicia went, nothing loth. It was better battling with the wind than watching for telegrams which never came, especially when there was the chance of coming back with the wind and with a man whose pale, heavy, dark-browed face was beginning to become to you, by diligent care and concentration, the handsomest in the world.
So she fought her ground steadily against the swirling clouds of dust.
Had she only gone up the hill over the short, springy grass and the broken brown bracken she would have enjoyed the wind, as Ned Blackborough was enjoying it on his way to Cwmfaernog. For it was the 1st of March, the day on which he had promised Aura he would return and ask her once more to marry him. He had come back from the East but the day before, and being, so to speak, made up of impulses, moods, fancies, in the indulgence of which he had of late sought his chief pleasures, he had determined to find his way to her, as he had found it that very first night, over the summit of Llwydd y Bryn, the "Eye of the World."
Such fancies hurt no one, but he was beginning to realise that in them lay all the salt of life. What was it to the world, absorbed conventionally in the sordid sleep which follows perforce on sordid money grubbing, if he found the highest rhythm of life in the quiver of the moonlit woods? Nothing. Let those see who had the eyes to see.
So when, a bit wearied with his climb, he sat down where he had carelessly put out his hand to catch the flying footsteps of day, it struck him now, thoughtfully, that, in truth, it was all a man's life, all he could do towards gaining happiness. He must just catch at the flying footsteps of something unseen. Ever since the day when death had so nearly overtaken him while he was studying life in a black drop of water, he had been haunted at times by that feeling of sightlessness, touchlessness, soundlessness which had come to him then.
It came to him now on the top of Llwydd y Bryn, though before his bodily eyes lay half the principality of Wales, spread out as if it were a map. Surpassingly beautiful too. In its way as beautiful as that island in the Ægean, now waiting ready for its mistress, for he was quite prepared to follow Aura into the wilderness if needs be. He had thought much concerning her and concerning himself during the last six weeks, and he had begun to recognise that in some ways she was right in shrinking from what she called love, as a desecration of herself and of him. The feeling, however, was due to the absolutely unnatural association in marriage of the MIND with the body. An association which was simply an attempt to find a mental fig-leaf for what either required none, or was beyond decent cover. One thing, however, seemed to him certain. Aura must both love him and also desire to marry him. Yes, she loved him, or thought she did, which to her was the same thing.
He sprang to his feet, that thought being enough to start him on any path, and, ere leaving the summit, cast one look round it, remembering gladly that it might be the last time he should see it.
All was as his recollection held it. Just a brown, peaty, stone-strewn rise, and beyond, on all sides, an immensity of sea and sky and land. Only the placard on the shieling had been damaged by the winter storms. The ultimate 6d. was gone and "ginger beer" stood alone, vaunting itself free like the nectar of the gods.
Ginger beer! That was about what it came to for the million.
With an amused shrug of the shoulders he began the descent, every step of which was beautiful, every sight in which brought to him the feeling as if he trod on air, as if nothing in heaven or earth could trammel him again.
As he crossed the stream above the farm buildings, where on that night nine months ago they had stood and shouted, the whole steading struck him as looking forlorn and deserted, but, being sure of finding Martha in the kitchen, he went boldly through the cottage and passed through the door that was like a coal cellar's to the garden room. But this time there was no flash of blinding sunlight to dazzle him. It was almost dark, for the green sun-blinds on either side were drawn down; that, however, was surely a figure by the window.
"At last!" came Aura's voice, full of infinite relief. "I am so glad."
Swept away by the whole-heartedness of his welcome he went forward swiftly and had her in his arms, but his first touch was enough; she shrank back with a half-articulate cry of surprise and thrust him from her by force.
"Aura!" he said almost incredulously, "and you sounded--so--so glad."
"I thought--I thought you were Ted," she explained with a little sob. "I've been expecting him so long, you see."
"Ted!" he echoed, "you have been expecting him? I don't understand."
"No," she replied hurriedly in a low voice. "Of course, I forgot you couldn't." There was a faint pause, then she collected herself. "We--we were married----" This time the pause remained unbroken until coolly, almost sarcastically, the question came.
"You were married! May I ask--when?"
The darkness of those drawn down blinds was in a way a godsend to them both. It hid all expression, and it seemed to Ned Blackborough in his incredulous dismay as if he were speaking to a disembodied spirit; was he also, by some chance, a disembodied spirit?
"I--I don't remember," came her voice, all strained and curiously weary. "Oh, yes; of course I do. It was on the 14th of February." She was just beginning to remember dates, and to recollect that this must be the 1st of March. Everything seemed to have been blotted out by her grandfather's sudden death two days before, and the impossibility of getting any answer to her telegram from Ted, Ted on whom she had learnt to rely.
Ned laughed suddenly. "St. Valentine's Day," he echoed. "So I sent you my valentine as a wedding present. If I had only known, I mightn't have taken so much--trouble--to send it off. I expect I was pretty near death when you were getting married, young lady, and I compliment you on the quickness----"
"But we were engaged, quite a long time before," she said in idle protest, for something in her seemed hammering at her head, beating into it the knowledge that she had been mean.
Once more he laughed. "May I ask how long?"
"On--on New Year's Day." He could scarcely hear what she said.
"On New Year's Day," he echoed incredulously, "impossible!" Then the conviction that, if this were so, Ted Cruttenden had--well! almost lied to him came to rouse his anger to the uttermost, and he strode towards her shadow. "But this is foolishness," he exclaimed, "You know you love me--you know you do----"
"Hush!" she cried, interrupting his swift rise in tone, "Remember, please, that my grandfather lies dead upstairs."
"Dead!" he said stupidly after a pause, "Dead! I--I didn't know. I--I am very sorry." The conventional words of sympathy came slowly as he stood, feeling baulked indescribably, done out, as it were, of his just claim to anger.
"Are there any more terrors to tell?" he asked at last recklessly. "Do you happen to be dead yourself, or has the 'coo' been killed? I beg your pardon--you won't understand the allusion----" he added hastily, "but I must be excused; there are limits! So, I see; you took me for Ted--for your husband, save the mark! Why isn't he here?--where he ought to be?"
The sudden blame, following her own thought so closely, took Aura all unprepared. The dull grievance which had been hers all those long hours of vain waiting became suddenly acute. She dissolved into young self-pitying tears.
"I don't know," she murmured, strangling her sobs, "and I don't in the least know what to do."
For an instant Ned Blackborough felt inclined to arraign high heaven for thus robbing him of righteous wrath.
But he was a gentleman, his heart was soft, so there was nothing for it save to accept the situation with the best grace he could. And the grace came, to his surprise, with such exceeding ease, despite his ill-usage, that he had to drive himself not towards patience, but to impatience, as he listened to Aura's tale of ignorance and loneliness.
A man with money behind him, or rather money with a man behind it, can do all things save avoid vulgarity, ensure happiness, or escape death.
By the evening, therefore, Ned Blackborough was able to give Aura a most sympathetic and affectionate telegram from her husband.
"We ran him to earth in Vienna, where he had gone on business," said Ned, refraining, why he scarcely knew, from saying also that Ted had been found in a Biergarten, and that he had left strict orders that telegrams were not to be forwarded. "I got him through Hirsch, but he again was unfortunately in Paris; they have some big scoop on hand. But it is all right now, and he should be home to-morrow. As for the rest, you need not bother. It is all settled, and I will tell Martha what to expect. So I will say good-bye."
She could not stifle down the quick appeal, "Must you go?"
"Of course, I must go," he replied roughly, "I ought never to have come, and I am sorry I did, even though I have helped you. Good-bye."
She watched him put on his greatcoat without another word, almost angry with herself for feeling so inexpressibly mean. She would have liked to tell him that she had been unable to wait, that even if she had waited her answer would have been the same; but she felt that all this must come afterwards when he had had time.
And then suddenly he turned to her again.
"I'll leave this here, I think," he said, putting a flat parcel he had taken out from his pocket on the piano, "you might while an hour or so by looking at them. It--it isn't all cussedness, Mrs. Cruttenden; I should like you to see them. I should like you to knowsomethingof it, once! Good-bye; throw them into the fire when you have done with them. I shall not want them again."
When he had gone she went over to the piano, and taking the packet crouched down with it beside the fading fire-light, which she stirred into a blaze. To other eyes the room might have looked inexpressibly dreary, large, bare, empty, even the very sofa, imported into it for the old man's invalid use, taken away for him when the stairs became too much for his strength. But Aura was accustomed to the bareness; it had been part of her life always.
They were sketches evidently, and on the fold of white paper, which was their last covering, Ned had written one word.
"Avilion."
She sat looking at them all, these plans and sketches of the island in the southern sea, that was to have been that Island of the Blessed, of which a glimpse only can be seen by mortals, when at sunset time the golden sea fades into the golden sky, and far away--is it land or is it cloud?--a purple shadow, tipped with rosy light into distant peaks, fades with the sky into the grey of night.
How beautiful they were! And in every one of them, in front, even of the foreground, looking out, as the painter himself must have looked out, over the blue ripples, down into the pellucid cave depths where strange fish showed in flashes of colour, towards the leafy contours of the ilex woods, along the flower-decked lawns, or through the fluted columns of marble pavilions, stood the filmy diaphanous figure of a woman, white, immobile, mist-like with averted face.
But she knew who it was, and a lump rose in her throat as she recognised it as his dream of her.
She was not worth it! No! Behind his dream of her stood a reality that had nothing to do with her. He was seeking, and she was seeking something that had nothing to do with manhood or womanhood.
The fire blazed up fiercely, fitfully, as one by one in obedience to his request, those dreamful figures caught, flared up for a space, and then died down into little trembling sparks.
Behind them all lay Darkness and Peace. So to her as she sat holding the Dream of a Man's Love in her hands, came for the first time a glimpse of the sightlessness and soundlessness, and touchlessness, which lie beyond all earthly things.
Ned meanwhile was giving his orders to Martha in the kitchen. She was taking them, as usual, with many subservient bobs, but with a certain waveringness of voice, and an unsteadiness of eye which augured ill for her calm of mind.
"I'll do my best, your lordship," she said finally with an odd little sniff, half tears, half anger. "But what with folks going away as shud 'ave stayed, an' them as might a-gone away an' welcome stoppin' on, an' both together comin' back an' staying away, I'm like a o-ven with the door bein' open constant--not fit to bake a penny-piece."
Ned looked at her, for a wonder, distastefully.
"Do you mean," he said, "that you didn't expect to see me again?"
Martha grew red, then white. "So sure as my name's Martha Higgins," she began tearfully, "If I'd expected your lordship wasn't playin' the back-step----"
He interrupted her calmly. "I'm sorry to say it, Martha, but I think you are a fool," he said calmly, and left her collapsed in a chair crying silently, not so much for herself as for him; since she had seen the tragedy of his face.
Adam Bate, coming in ten minutes later, found her so, and being diffident of his power to console, crept away again to administer comfort to a newly calved cow who was lowing for her young one.
"Coo-up, Coo-ep, m'dear," he said, wisping its back with a handful of straw, "th' shallt 'ave it for sure when th' bags full, so set th' mind to the makin' o' milk. See! there's a bit o' mangle fur 'ee, but mind 'ee 'to whom much is given of them shall much be requir-ed,' as passon says. So--'pail-full, cauf-full.' Think o' that an' dinnot squander God's strength on booin'."
He felt inclined to read some such moral lesson to Martha when he returned to find her in no better case, the fire dwindling and no sign of tea; but, as has been said, he felt diffident. So he contented himself with laying the tea, poking up the fire and putting on the kettle, accompanying these unwonted actions with the hissing noise which grooms use, apparently as an encouragement to their own ardour. Perhaps this aided him to courage; perhaps the presence of death in the house taking him back to fundamentals roused in him a revolt of vitality, a desire to secure safety in equilibrium; anyhow, after a time, he sat himself down in a kitchen chair, and scrooped it by excruciating half-inches towards Martha's, until they almost touched.
"Martha, woman!" he said tentatively, "If this sort o' thing's goin' on--If you 'urns goin' to be taken, this no supper, no tea way, as you 'urn bin doin' o' late--why there ain't nothin' for it but ter marry me, as doan't forgit them things."
Martha shook her head forlornly. "It--it'll have to come to that in the end, I sippose," she sobbed.
You might have knocked Adam down with a feather. After all these fourteen years to be even so grudgingly accepted as this, made him feel that the round world was no longer sure. He sat with his mouth wide open, wondering what topic of conversation would in the future take the place of unending proposal and refusal. Then the sense that he must leave such dark things to Providence, and do his duty in the present by himself, and Martha made him ask tremulously--
"Will you name the yappy day, my darlin'? Will you, my darlin', name the yappy day?"
Martha wiped her eyes and became more composed. "Some time afore we dies, I suppose," she said with a disconsolate whimper, "I can't promise more'n that, Adam Bate--an' don't ee see the kettle bilin'."