"If Madam will leave it to us," said Myfanwy Jones, "we will give her satisfaction."
She took in all Aura's grace and beauty as she spoke. Full of shrewd sense, appreciative by virtue of her race, of all that makes for beauty, knowledgeable in all that enhances beauty, her bold dark eyes realised that here was some one worth dressing.
"We will--yes! we will make it of whitevelours-panneand dead white velvet. It will become Madam, I am sure. I will consult the buyer regarding the price."
She swept away over the Turkey carpets of Williams and Edwards' shop, her shiny, undulating black satin train rippling behind her, towards a tall, most immaculate figure in a long frock coat, who was busy comparing scraps of silk with another tall, broad-shouldered young man. Both might have entered a grenadier company and looked all too big and strong for their task.
"Excuse me, Mr. Morris," said Myfanwy, with the most superb courtesy, "but I should like to speak to Mr. Pugh for an instant." Having got him to herself, her manner changed.
"Merve!" she said sharply. "What price order costume,panneand velvet, my wedding-dress design--you know. I want to make it."
"For that lady?" he said, looking across to where Aura stood, feeling as she still felt in shops, utterly shy and miserable. In an instant a hot flush overspread his face, and he turned back to the silk patterns.
"Thirty guineas."
Myfanwy sniffed scornfully. "You will oblige me, Mervyn Pugh, by having some sense. Look at her! will she give more than fifteen guineas for a dress? Never! and I want to make it."
"Five-and-twenty," he said, refraining from the look. He would gladly have stuck to the thirty, and so have driven Aura from the shop, had he dared. But he did not dare. He was under Myfanwy's orders, and, so far, he had had no reason to regret the fact. He had climbed like Jonah's gourd, and was now Williams and Edwards' first buyer. And next year when, after his marriage with Myfanwy (who was now head of the costume department) the additional interest of making money for himself instead of for others had come in his life, and there could be no doubt of their success. He had all the Cymric's fine feelings for feminine fal-lals (which is shown indubitably by the names over the drapers' shops in London) and Myfanwy had a perfect genius for dress. Considering, therefore, the crowds of women absolutely without any taste at all who desire to dress well, the result was assured. He began to wonder how he had ever thought seriously of being a pedagogue, a demagogue, or a minister.
"I shall say twenty," remarked Myfanwy reflectively, "it can be made for fifteen, and she shall have it for that in the end. But I want to make it. She is lovely--and I want to know how I shall look in my wedding-dress."
"Twenty!" said Mervyn wavering.
"I hope it may buy her all she desires as my dress will buy me," contended Myfanwy, with a challenge of lip and eyes. "I will say eighteen, Mervyn, to begin with."
With that she swept back to Aura. "It will be eighteen guineas, Madam," she said sweetly; "but if Madam will give us the Mechlin scarf she is wearing to utilise, it will be fifteen."
Fifteen! It seemed enormous to Aura's ignorance. Yet Ted had given twelve, she knew, for the pink satin, and he had bidden her--since he was too busy to shop--be sure and get something very nice indeed for Ned Blackborough's dance on New Year's Eve. Fifteen whole sovereign remedies and fifteen shillings over! What an immense amount to spend upon herself, she who at best was but a poor maimed thing. Every now and again this feeling of being, as it were, a castaway, a derelict on Life's sea, would come to her, though she knew that millions of women, many from choice, went through the world and left their mark on it with never a child to call them mother. Still the sense of being, as it were, out of the fighting-line was at times oppressive. So few things seemed to matter; certainly not the spending of money.
"It will have to be ready by the 31st," she stipulated, and then she smiled as she invariably did when she remembered Ned Blackborough.
Myfanwy Jones took in the smile with critical shrewdness. Had she been asked, she would have said it was not exactly the smile of a married woman, although Aura had given her name as Mrs. Cruttenden.
What of that? Myfanwy's notions were decidedly broad, and if she could compass a good time, as she herself counted a good time, for this lovely girl, the lovely girl should have one.
"Miss Moore! Madam's measure!" she called in queenly fashion, and searched in her beaded-satchel--pockets would have disturbed the elegant set of her dress--for a pencil. It had slipped inside a folded paper, and as Myfanwy removed it, she smiled in her turn. For she had caught a glimpse of the writing and printing inside the paper.
"Miss Alicia Edwards," "Messrs. Williams and Edward," "per M. Jones."
Only that morning Myfanwy had paid the bill and received her commission on the sales; so there it was awaiting developments.
"If Madam will come for one fitting," suggested Myfanwy superbly. She was going to stake her reputation on this dress, and she meant not to lose it.
The result exceeded even her expectations.
Aura looked at herself in the long glass and then at Myfanwy, who, with infinite condescension, had insisted on seeing Madam dressed.
"What have you done to me?" she asked, "I don't know myself."
Was it the long, straight, brilliant, moonshiny folds that made her look so tall and slim? Was it the tiny, scarcely-seen silver threads outlining the flowing curves of dead-white velvet about the hem which made one think of moonlit clouds? Was it the cunningly devised drapery of lace which made the bodice seem a loose sheath to loveliness?
Myfanwy Jones looked at Aura with undisguised pity. "It is only that Madam is so seldom dressed; she is only clothed; but to-night she will be the best-dressed person in the rooms." She looked at her doll with a sphynx-like expression not without some malice in it. "If Madam will allow me," she said, and her deft fingers were in the bronze hair: "so--the shape of Madam's head is heavenly--and--and not the diamond brooch--the dress requires nothing but Madam's self. That is right! I trust Madam will enjoy herself."
Aura went downstairs to show herself to her husband, with a queer new feeling of power tingling in every vein. Why at two-and-twenty should she hold herself derelict? A ship need not always steer straight to the pole.
Ted had been extremely busy and rather irritable ever since she had returned; not irritable with her--he never was that--butdistraitand careless. In a way it had been a relief, since it had given her time to try and adjust herself to her new outlook. She had not even spoken to him regarding that new outlook; she was almost doubting if she should. Her silence would, no doubt, be a bar to perfect confidence; but was such a thing as perfect confidence possible between two people so dissimilar as she and Ted? Perhaps it was better to drift on. Whither?
The question would come with a pang, sometimes bringing the thought that it might have been better if she and the little one--the little daughter they told her--had gone out hand in hand to wander in the "groves of asphodel." That was Ned's phrase; and with that would come another pang.
What would she do without Ned? He had been so kind. He had lent her books to read, he had taken her out in the motor, he had even talked of the dead baby almost as if he understood how dear a memory it had to be.
Ted looked at her from head to foot, and a slow smile crept over his good-looking sensible face.
"That is something like," he said. "By Jove! you look most awfully fetching! A little ice-bergy," he continued, bending to kiss the white shoulder above the Mechlin lace: "but--but that's your style. Only I wish you had more colour. If this 'biz' of mine comes off, we'll take a holiday somewhere--Monte Carlo, perhaps--the Hirsches are going there. Now we ought to be starting. You don't mind my dancing, do you dearest? I do wish you'd learn. It looks so odd your sitting out with the old fogies."
"I shall sit out with Ned," she replied lightly.
For the first time in her life Ted frowned at her. "It seems to me," he said quite nastily, "that you have done a lot of sitting-out with Ned lately. I don't half like it."
She stared at him, and all the way to New Park sat thinking of what he had said. Was it possible he was going to be jealous of her? Of her who had married him to get rid of the very possibility.
A ray of light from a gas-lamp lit up her face, and she found Ted's eyes fastened on her.
"You are most awfully fetching to-night--you look so jolly mysterious somehow," he said joyously, putting his cheek against hers. "Give me a kiss, wifelet."
She gave him one. She would have given him a dozen of the trivial things had he asked for them! Then she laid her hand on his.
"You weren't serious about Ned, were you?" she asked.
"Not--not altogether," he admitted with a smile; "but you can't be too careful, my child. People are the devil to talk. And you mustn't forget that he did want to marry you."
She must not forget! And all her efforts had been to forget it utterly. What a queer world it was!
"Here we are," said Ted cheerfully. "By Jove! Blackborough is doing it well!"
For once, indeed, New Park looked habitable. Ned, remembering the East, had had it illuminated in Indian fashion, and even the heavy-browed architraves and the stucco columns looked passable outlined by rows of little lamps. Great cressets blazed following the ground plan of the huge pile, the balustrades of the formal terraces shone in lines of light. The wide portico, carefully enclosed, was full of palms, and festooned with vines from which hung great clusters of grapes. Within, it was impossible to recognise the formal suites of rooms. They seemed to have vanished, taking with them all the stiff furniture, the gorgeous clogging carpets. In their places were airy pavilions, orange gardens, great groves of tall lilies. Money had been spent lavishly in getting rid of all traces of money. And in the centre of it all stood Ned Blackborough with Helen Tressilian, looking years younger, beside him, as she received congratulations on her approaching marriage, all the time keeping a watchful eye lest Peter Ramsay should weary after his recent illness; but he looked alert and keen as ever.
"A small and early, and you come at a quarter past nine!" said Ned, then paused, absolutely dazzled by the shiny folds, the moonlit clouds, the parted sheath of the bodice concealing surely the most beautiful thing in the world. His vagrant mind reverted on the instant with a quaint admixture of regret and exultation to the adornment he had ordered for the select supper-table at which Aura was to be entertained. This woman was beyond such simplicities as a little purple iris. For her, white roses, tuberoses, gardenias, stephanotis; all the deadly sweet white things in the world, even the poisonousdhatura!
"I have put my name down for some dances later on," he said, handing her a programme; "I shall be busy at first, but--let me see--Lord Scudamore, I am going to give you the honour of being presented to Mrs. Cruttenden. Remember, you are engaged to me for supper."
"Is that wise? What willtheysay?" asked Helen doubtfully, as Aura and her cavalier--a diplomatic-looking wearer of an immaculate dress-suit, with some sort of a ribbon across the shirt--moved off.
"They, my dear Helen, will by that time be envying me my good luck, at least all the men will, and I will tell the cavilling women she is a bride. Did you ever see such a fairly bewildering dress? She is the whole Dream of Fair Women rolled into one."
"Let us go into the Winter Palace. Have you seen it?" said Aura's diplomat, and she went with him nothing loth. Ten minutes afterwards, however, she complained of a draught, and left it somewhat hurriedly, she with fine flaming cheeks and he somewhat sulkily. That was the worse of rustics; they could not understand the most ordinarypersiflage.
"Where would you like to sit? I am afraid I am engaged for this dance," he said icily.
"Oh I anywhere, I like to be alone," replied Aura.
It was not long her fate. Mr. Hirsch spied her out and bore down upon her, white waistcoat and all. His open admiration was almost a relief, mixed up as it was with still more boundless adoration of his daughter, who came flitting past in Ted's arms. They were too much absorbed in their waltz and their enjoyment of it to notice the sitters out, but Mr. Hirsch waxed enthusiastic over their appearance. They were a couple to be proud of, and he reallywasbecoming quite proud of Ted, who promised to be a very rich man. He felt quite like a father towards him; he had indeed fathered him into the world of speculation, and--ha--ha--ha--then he waxed exceedingly hilarious--if Mr. Cruttenden hadn't been in such a terrible hurry to get married, who knows but what a family arrangement--she must excuse him, but really if she would look so superlatively beautiful she must expect the world to go crazy.
"What are you laughing at so loudly, papa?" asked Miss Hirsch, pulled up in the next round by her parent's laughter. "I'm sure he must be boring you terribly, Mrs. Cruttenden. And there is Mr. Leveson, papa, just dying to be introduced--he told me so just now--do go and fetch him. You'll find him awfully amusing, Mrs. Cruttenden, he has seen so much life."
He had seen too much for Aura. She came out from the conservatory white with anger. By this time half the men in the room were looking at her, and it was no longer any question of being alone. She was beginning to feel frightened, she looked vainly for Ted, but he having seen her, as he phrased it self-complacently, "well-started," was amusing himself. So, in the crush of smiling, flattering faces, she saw Ned Blackborough's, and caught almost convulsively at his arm, and his quiet decorous claim.
"Our dance, I think."
"Oh! Ned!" she said hurriedly, "do let us go to some quiet place where we can get away from everybody."
The suggestion was but too welcome. Free for a time from his duties as host, he cast all prudence to the winds. The sort of thing that had been going on was all very well, but it must end in the inevitable way. When she was happy, he might have been a fool. Now, he would not be one. It was not as if he would be doing Ted any real harm. If he was free of her he would be free to marry and have sons to inherit his money, he could even marry Miss Hirsch!
The library whither they escaped looked snug and comfortable, all untouched by the babel without. The reading lamp by the blazing fire; Ned's book as he had left it.
"This is nice," she said with a little shiver of satisfaction, and taking up the book crouched down in her usual fashion by the fire to see what it was.
Ned's pulses were bounding. It was all he could do to keep his voice steady.
"You oughtn't to do Cinderella in that lovely gown!" he said.
Aura looked at him critically. "I feel like Cinderella," she said. "I believe I want to go home before twelve; and I don't think I like the gown; it makes me something I never was before."
There was a silence. Ned Blackborough was telling himself he was a fool.
"I shall put out the light if you insist on trying to read a bad French novel instead of speaking to me," he said. "There!--" the click of the electric button sounded clear. "It's much nicer with the firelight. Give that thing to me."
"Bad French novel," she echoed. "Why do you read it if it is bad? I wouldn't."
"All people are not perfect," he said recklessly. "Most of us--except you--have a bad side. I often wonder what you would say if I were to show you mine?"
"You couldn't," she said softly.
He had literally to harden his heart before he could go on, and then he had to double back. "It--it isn't a bad book after all," he went on turning the leaves idly, "it is only real life. I'll tell you the story if you like. Of course it is about a woman, and a man, and--and a husband--the old story that is always cropping up in the world, so the book's no good." He threw it aside in sudden impulse upon the table, and knelt down beside her. "Aura," he said passionately, "you and I know the beginning of the story well. Why should we try and escape from the ending of it? Oh! for God's sake, child, don't look like that!"
She had sprung up and was glancing down at the white shimmering folds of her gown in absolute horror.
"It is the dress," she muttered. "It is not me--it is not you, Ned--oh Ned, it can't be you--it is the dress--I will go home--I must go home----"
"Aura!" he cried, but she eluded him and was out in the wide lit corridor ere he could even ask her to be calm--to forgive him--to forget. He glanced after her for a moment; then with a curse at himself closed the door and sat down moodily before the fire. What was the good?
Between the palms, the roses, the endless flowers and curtains of the corridor were many a cosy corner, many a prepared nook where men and women in the intervals between the dances sought seclusion and love-making, more or less casual according to the taste of the makers--and where passion, doubtless, had gone further than Ned's brief outburst.
"Hullo, Aura!" came her husband's voice as he issued from one of these corners with Miss Hirsch on his arm. "All alone! Why, what's up?"
The necessity for calm came to her. "I was looking for you," she said. "I want you to order the carriage for me. I'm feeling--not very well--and I shall be better at home--you see, as I don't dance." She looked helplessly at him wondering if she would be allowed to go.
"I'll take you home, of course, if you want to go," he said gloomily--"that is, if Miss Hirsch will excuse me." His regret for three more dances with the jolliest girl he had met for years was in his voice.
"Then I won't go," she began, "I couldn't spoil----"
"You are not looking a bit well," said Miss Hirsch kindly. "See! I'll take you to the ladies' room. Mr. Cruttenden, you might send her in a glass of champagne. Then you can have a quiet rest there, and go home later if you want to, but I expect you'll be all right by supper time."
She nodded knowingly to Ted and went off with Aura, bursting over with friendliness.
But, left alone in charge of a bevy of prim maids, with the untouched champagne before her, Aura's courage rose. She would do what she wanted to do. So, on her programme card she wrote a note to her husband using all the most consoling phrases she could think of--"Feeling a little bilious," was in itself sufficient to allay any anxiety--ended up with a cheerful--"I shall be asleep long ere you come home, please enjoy yourself," and leaving this to be given to him when he came to inquire, slipped away. The clocks were just striking half-past eleven when she paid the cabman at the gate. She had forgotten the latch-key, but, thank heaven, the servants were still up. It was New Year's Eve. Her thoughts flew back to Cwmfaernog, to the last New Year's Day when she had learnt so many things.
She was going to learn more now. She could not understand. She did not know what the world meant. She was going to see for herself once and for all.
As she thought this she was stripping off Myfanwy's creation.
"Enjoy herself!" She flung it into a corner almost with a cry, and the next minute stood in her white serge and the brown Tam-o'-Shanter. Mercifully some faint instinct of self-preservation made her muffle up the bronze beauty of her hair and hide some of the perfection of her face under a thick veil. The next instant she had carefully closed the front door again, and was hurrying away down the road towards the electric tram. They went till midnight; that would take her quickest to the heart of the great city. She had Ted's duplicate latch-key with her; she would try and be back before he returned.
Hitherto she had sought for the uttermost wisdom of nature amongst the everlasting hills--now she was going to seek the uttermost wisdom of man in his haunts.
"Hullo! Polly, my dear, ain't you comin' my side?" came a voice from the shadows over the way, but she was close to the tram lines now, and a car was coming along. It was full of holiday-makers singing, shouting, harmless enough, but over hilarious. Here there were more appeals to Polly (why perpetually Polly rather puzzled her) as she clung to a strap, until a jovial elderly man pulled her down on his knee. Whereat the whole car roared as if it were some exquisite joke. But they meant no harm; they were only just a little convivial.
The car stopped at the Cross, the centre of the great city, and she got out. It was a fine old Cross, weather-beaten, worn, bearing on its four sides beneath the soaring quaintly floreated Symbol of Salvation, four bas-reliefs of the Passion of the Master, the Scourging, the Mocking, the Cross-carrying, the Crucifying.
Beneath the latter Aura stood looking out with clear eyes at the conduct of Christendom. The radiating streets were all thronged; the late music-halls were belching out their crowds, the supper-rooms were preparing to close by turning out their guests. But the streets were not ready for bed.
What a crowd! Gaily dressed women of almost all types. Some painted, bedizened, unmistakable, others apeing them amused, uncertain, even faintly repelled. Men with every expression on their faces, from evil passion, through vulgarity, to contemptuous tolerance. Half-grown girls more outrageous than their elders, half-grown lads jostling, leering, raiding the pavement-walkers into the very street. The electric light danced and quivered, the moistened mud of a thousand footsteps sparkled and shone.
Where in all her midnight walks upon the hills had she seen a sight like to this?
As she stood, more than one offer of a drink fell on her ears; but she took no notice.
"If you ain't goin'," said a policeman familiarly, "you must move on. I can't 'ave you standin' doing nothin'."
So she quitted the shadow of the Crucifixion; but at the corner of the street also, it was still "move on," when she herself had failed to move on; so the next time the offer of a drink came she accepted it.
"Bully for you, my girl; come along," said the offerer, and they went across to a gin shop, the doors of which had never once been still; the flashing of their backwards and forward swing beating out the seconds with the regularity of a clock.
How bright it was! How full these last few minutes before twelve.
The offerer appraised his guest critically, "Sherry!" he ordered, "and the usual--now! my girl, drink it up sharp. The night's young for pleasure yet, but we shall have to turn out and find some other place."
Aura looked at him clearly; at the face, not bad in itself, but overlaid with sensuality.
"I am not going to drink," she said coldly. "I only came in to see--and I have seen."
She turned to go. Luckily for her, his torrent of obscene abuse was interrupted by a general exodus; for suddenly the Town Hall clock boomed, the church bells rang out, the old year passed, the new year began; began with shouts and curses and kisses and laughter. Some one struck up "Should Auld Acquaintance be Forgot," and a band of perfect strangers to each other, hand-clasped and feeling wildly at each end for further friendship, lurched across the street.
A Salvation lass, her face vivid with intent, clutched at Aura's arm. "Don't go with him, my girl--don't--he is the Devil--he is Sin incarnate--he is----"
"I am not going," answered Aura in a queer strained voice. "I am in school. I am learning. I want to see for myself."
"That was Eve's sin--you are lost--come--come with me."
The crowd jostled them apart, jostled Aura into the shadow of a narrow archway. More than one man's face looked into the shadow, spoke, then passed on with a jibe. The streets were beginning to empty; the crowd was dissolving into couples; men and women were hurrying away into the side streets. She must be going also.
"Hullo! you young devil! I have got you again, have I?" came a hoarse voice, and a hand clutched at her arm.
She wrenched it away, and looked for escape. Beside the low archway rose a flight of steps, above the steps a wider archway. A small door in it stood open. Scarcely thinking what she did, she sprang towards it, set aside a leathern curtain, and for the first time in her life found herself in a church. At least the man would not follow her here.
What a quaint little place! It was almost dark, but lights were burning, small twinkling lights set in the form of a star at the further end, and she went forward curiously. The chapel, for it was no more than that, was not quite empty. Here and there among the shadowy chairs some figure--generally two figures together--showed dimly.
It must be a Roman Catholic chapel, for that gracious woman's figure crowned with stars uplifted above the sanctuary doors with a child in her arms, must be the Blessed Mother.
Aura's heart leapt up to her. That she understood. And what was this at her gracious feet, beneath the five-pointed star of light?
That was the mother again kneeling in adoration before her new-born child, while the ox and the ass worshipped with wide, soft eyes, and the shepherds and the wise men thronged the door.
Aura knelt down before thecrêche, her eyes wide, soft as those of the beasts that perish. Here was peace. Here was perfection! No! not perfection, but the road to it. This was the solution of the horrors of human life outside, but beyond human life lay the life that was not human, the something better of her dreams.
A touch on her shoulder roused her. One of the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception, engaged in this rescue work, was beside her.
"Courage!" she said. "Courage! my sister! Our Blessed Lady will help you. Give up your sinful life."
Aura rose and looked at her simply. "I am not a bad woman," she said. "I--I don't think I ever could have been one. Now I know I couldn't." Then she flushed up. "I--I should like to give something," she continued, and thrusting her purse into the sister's hand, she turned and passed rapidly into the street again.
She had seen enough; she had learnt enough. Now to get home.
She would have taken one of the cabs, of which two or three still stood by the Cross, but she had no money. There were two pennies, it is true, in the pocket of her jacket, but the trams had ceased running for the night. There was nothing for it but to walk, and she had no idea of the way. Her two first experiences of asking it, one entailing immediate flight from insult, were not encouraging. So the clocks were chiming half-past three ere, utterly worn out, draggled beyond belief, she stood in the hall of her own house again, thankful to find from the darkness that Ted had not yet returned. He might be back any moment, however, so she must make haste and remove her garments. She flung them all soiled and stained with the grime of the city, on the top of Myfanwy Jones' creation, the beginning and the end together.
Then, as she stood in her white dressing-gown, she paused to listen. Was that a sound in Ted's study? Could he have come in already? come in without seeing how she was?
She went downstairs. There was a light beneath the door; she opened it.
The room seemed to her to be full of smoke, making all things in it unreal, almost fantastic. And was that her husband looming large, jovial, content through this new atmosphere? She shrank back from it.
"Hullo, little woman! Aura! I've such news for you. I've turned up trumps with a vengeance. I'm a hundred thousand pounds richer than I was yesterday. I found the telegram when I came home half an hour ago, and I've been dreaming ever since. Such dreams! You shall have the best time a woman ever had--frocks, jewels, everything--and by and by----"
"There may be no by and by," she said quickly. "Ted--oh Ted! be good to me."
"It is May," said Ned Blackborough in rather a strained voice, "and you promised to come to Cwmfaernog in May. You look as if you needed a holiday. Come!"
Yes, it was May. Four whole months had passed since Myfanwy Jones' dress had upset Aura's cosmogony, and she had fled to find some foothold in the slums of the city. She had found a faith there, and had spent four months in trying to put that faith into practice.
It had been up-hill work, but her courage had not wavered.
Her eyes were clear as she looked back at Ned, who had come in to find her, as she so often was nowadays, alone. For Ted's first great success had been but a preliminary to months of daily excitement spent in gaining, losing, gaining again, in the midst of which he seemed to have lost sight of the future altogether. And for the present he was too busy to care. Then underlying all things was his consciousness of youth. The outlook before him was long; he could not but see that chance might come into it. Why! in five years time he would be just reaching the age at which it was prudent for a business man to marry; for, of course, his marriage to poor dear Aura had been grossly imprudent, though, but for this one disappointment,--which naturally meant more to her than to him--it had turned out very well. If only she would have condescended to amuse herself like other girls--like Rosa Hirsch, for instance--they might have had a jolly time together in the various European capitals whither his business took him. But what was the use of taking her when the only places in which Aura was not shy and ill at ease were musty fusty old picture galleries and dreary botanical gardens. And "the Zoo," of course; she had always been at home in "the Zoo"; but then there was that beastly smell of smaller mammals all over the shop. So he had gone his way, kindly, quite affectionately, wholly without sympathy. To Aura it was rather a relief; it gave her time to rearrange her world.
She was looking a little weary over a pile of household accounts. There was no need nowadays for heartburnings as to expense; but none the less Ted expected a properly-balanced book, and the items were terribly numerous. It was the herring-and-a-half problem expressed in pounds instead of pence, and there was quite a wrinkle of thought between Aura's eyebrows, for she was no arithmetician.
To Ned that wrinkle was a tragedy; but then it is always a tragedy for a man to watch from a distance the woman he loves trying to reconstruct her life, and reconcile herself to the lack of what he knows he could give her; and the greater her success the greater--in a way--is the tragedy.
Ned had felt this every instant of those four months during which the memory of that pitiful protest, "Not you Ned. Ah! Ned, not you!" had come between him and even apology. When he had gone back that evening to fling himself into a chair and gloom over the fire for a few minutes, he had told himself he was a fool. He had told himself so hundreds of times since that evening, until there had grown up in him the conviction that this sort of thing could not possibly last for ever. Why should it? Why should three human beings be sacrificed? And in heaven's name to what? Not to a marriage of either soul or body. They all needed something which they had not got. Ted needed, or would need, a wife and children. These might be his if Aura were taken away. She needed the old, free, natural life. This Ned could give her in that island on the southern seas. And how much more? Ye gods! how much more of love--true love, and tenderness and truth! As for his own needs, they were simple, being summed up in that one word--Aura. He needed her every instant of the day and night. He could not be content without her. Love had left his body; it had invaded his mind; it had not yet touched his soul. The personal element was still too strong for him, so by degrees he had brought himself to believe that perhaps the best way out of theimpassefor all the three actors in the tragedy would be for him to beguile her away--if he could.
"You know you promised me last year," he reiterated.
"Yes! I promised," she said sadly, and he knew where her thoughts had fled. He used to see her so often in his dreams, wandering through great drifts of purple iris, the flower which brings the messages of the gods, leading a little child by the hand. She was there now, and a sudden dread came over him again lest nothing short of that would ever make her really happy. But the next moment he had roused himself. "I should love to go, of course," she went on. "Fancy seeing Cwmfaernog and the floor of heaven! Only I can't, can I? till Ted returns, and that may be----"
"Never, perhaps!" interrupted Ned sarcastically. "He hasn't been much at home lately, has he?"
She flushed up hastily. "Why should he be? he is not like you--you are an idle man; besides----" she paused, her pride refusing to justify her husband even to Ned. "It may not be for a fortnight," she went on coldly, "he never can tell. And by that time the hyacinths will be over, and it would be no good. So--so it is no use thinking of it."
But her very readiness in the self-defence of this refusal to blame her husband, decided him. If that went on much longer, the tragedy would become permanent. A sudden weariness of the whole foolish muddle seized on him. He was not going to have Aura spend her days in saintliness and martyrdom, growing more and more dignified and gracious, more and more motherly in the look of brimming affection she never failed to give to him--to him her lover!
It was beyond bearing. He would break down the prison walls at all costs. He was tired to death himself of civilisation; they would go into the wilderness and be happy.
"I will ask Mrs. Ramsay to come with us," he said, knowing that he had not the slightest intention of so doing; but if he was to take the law into his own hands, he would require a few days to mature his plans.
"She can't come," he said two days afterwards; "she isn't quite up to it."
Aura looked for a moment as if she were back in the iris fields. "I'm sorry," she began.
"But," went on Ned coolly, "I believe I could take you there and back by the four-cylinder Panhard in a day--if you don't mind starting rather early. Do come. I--I want a holiday too--badly."
He looked like it.
"Poor Ned," she said softly, for she had begun to realise her responsibilities towards him also. That was the worst of life; the great hidden tie between all creatures could so seldom be felt or seen until some wound stripped the quivering flesh, and left the ligaments bare. "Yes! I will come," she said after a pause, making up her mind that there, standing on the floor of heaven, she would try and make him understand that she was worth no man's passionate love. "When shall we go?"
Something seemed to rise in his throat and choke him. "The first fine day. Shall we say to-morrow? But we must start at five; and breakfast by the way."
"At five!" she echoed joyously, looking more like herself than she had done for months. "Oh Ned! how jolly! I haven't been up at five for ages and ages. It disturbs Ted so--and then," she hurried on--"the servants loathe it. They hate you to know how late they are."
She was ready waiting for him, with quite a colour in her cheeks when he drove up. It was a delicious morning, cool, clear, full of shafted lights and shadows from the rising sun. Aura tilted back her head triumphantly and gazed up at the little white fleecy clouds that were drifting steadily overhead before the westerly breeze.
"I'm not going to look at anything grimy to-day," she said with a laugh; "and even Blackborough can't soil those! They are too gladly far away. Do you know that often when I've nothing else to comfort me, I lie on my back in the garden and dream they are just feathers out of a great, soft pillow where I am finding rest!"
He felt a pang for her innocent self-betrayal, but he retorted gravely, "That is your fault for not being contented with a good civilised wire-mattress."
She laughed out loud. "How nice of you to talk nonsense! It is exactly like old times; exactly!" she cried. "Ned! do you think we were made to forget? I don't."
"Some things," he said soberly, "are best forgotten."
"Not many," she replied cheerfully. "Sometimes, Ned, I seem to get at the meaning of so much by remembering, and then I see how all these little lives of ours work into one big whole; and then--and then." She was silent, her eyes still upon the clouds.
"If her Majesty will deign to look upon this poor world," said Ned Blackborough after quite a long while, "she will see primroses."
They were beyond the grime. The skies were blue, the trees, the grass were green, and far away the distant hills showed purple through the blossoming apple orchards.
What need was there for more?
Not once, not twice, but many times that day, as the car sped almost noiselessly through lanes and past homesteads and fields where the lambs lay white like little clouds dropped from heaven, Ned told himself joyfully that this was but the beginning of an end which would never come.
"Why are you putting on your goggles?" she asked, as, by the low road round the coast--for the straight hilly pitch over the head of the valley was too bad for the motor--they came within measurable distance of Dinas.
"There are a lot of slate spiculæ on the road," he replied coolly, "and one got into my eye once. You had better put on a veil too. I brought one on purpose."
"You think of everything, Ned," she replied gaily. "I never knew any one like you."
Except Guy Fawkes, or some arch traitor of that sort, he felt with a pang; but one had to take precautions, and if you set yourself up as aDeus ex machineto get people out of a muddle--why, some mud was likely to stick.
So, disguised out of all recognition, they swept through the village of Dinas, and, passing the staring schoolhouse, took the turn towards Cwmfaernog.
The villagers looked after them with slack curiosity, for Dinas was, as it had always been, immersed in its own trivialities. The revival had passed away, leaving its traces physical and mental no doubt, but ceasing to bring any new interest into life. At the present moment, however, the village had an absorbing interest of its own; for in two days time the Reverend Hwfa Williams was to marry Alicia Edwards, and all the other young women in the place were in that curious state of mingled spitefulness and vicarious nervous excitability which a wedding so often provokes in the feminine sex.
"They will not find any one at Cwmfaernog, whatever," said Isaac Edwards at his door, "for Martha Bate and her husband went for a jaunt the day before yesterday. It is only old Evans from the shepherd's hut that is to milk the cows and feed the cocks."
Meanwhile the motor sped on, curving round the rocks.
"There is no more slate here, anyhow," cried Aura joyfully, tearing off her veil. "Oh Ned! look, look! The floor of heaven? Ah! do stop and let us look."
He did not answer. The engine slowed, quivered, sunk to silence. Now, at last, he understood. Now he knew what he had seen in the boat so long ago, when the swift southern storm was sweeping up unseen behind him. This was the blue mist which had enveloped him and held him. A blue mist hiding the earth, hiding even every green thing from sight as it lay in wreaths in the hollows or crept up and up and up, leaving itself in clouds to cover all things until it met the sky.
The floor of heaven indeed!
Not quite so blue perhaps as that distant roof of heaven over which the heat of the day had spread a faintly violet haze; but still--the floor of heaven!
No other words expressed it. Here, surely the angels of God might tread with unsoiled feet.
"Does not everything of earth seem to fall away," came Aura's voice all hushed and quiet, "and leave one ... free at last!"
She was out of the car standing, her sandalled feet just touching the carpet of hyacinths, her hands stretched out towards them, her face full of absolute undimmed joy. "See!" she continued, "the dear things grow on to our very path--we won't hurt them, will we? Let us walk on to the house and see Martha, then I will take you through a path in the woods to the best place of all." She paused and looked at him curiously. "Ned--what is it? Something is wrong! What is it?"
"There is nothing wrong," he answered quietly, "and I may as well tell you here as elsewhere. Martha is not at the house."
She paled a very little. "She is not there," she echoed; "why?"
"Because I sent her away."
"You sent her away?"
"Yes! because I wanted to be alone with you--and--we are alone--alone with nothing but our love between us--for you do love me? Aura!" he cried, his quiet giving way as he seized her hands and drew her towards him. "Why should we go back to all the grime--to the dull, useless, foolish life? Come with me! No one wants us, no one will miss us, not even Ted! It has all been a mistake from the beginning. There is but one way to set things straight--to leave him free to do as he chooses--come----"
"My poor Ned!"
She stood unresisting before him, with all the motherhood that was in her, looking at him through eyes that brimmed over with tears, and her voice, full of an overwhelming pity, smote on his ears, a knell to all his hopes. He knew it, he felt it to be so even as he listened. He let her hands fall with a sense of impotence to hold her.
"It is my fault, dear," she said softly, "I ought to have told you--I ought to have made you understand. Ned! I am worth no man's love. I shall never----"
He interrupted her with an angry impatient laugh. "But I do understand. It is you who cannot understand that love lives untrammelled by such trivialities. Aura! were I your husband now, you would be a thousand times more dear--the tie between us would be a thousand times more strong----"
"Hush!" she said, with a world of mysterious solemnity in her voice. "If that is true, Ned; if love really can live untrammelled by the body, why should it not live untrammelled by the mind? You want to see me, to hear me, to--to touch me--perhaps! But Ned! There is something that is beyond all this--that is beyond everything--beyond you and me, and yet it is you and I--that is ours now----" Suddenly her tone rose swift and sharp--"Come, Ned! let us forget the rest----isthisnot enough?"
He looked around him and, even amid such transcendental beauty as was there, shook his head. "I cannot live on air, Aura," he said bitterly. "No man can."
Her face melted into gentle smiles. "There is the lunch-basket," she said.
He turned aside almost with a curse. "It is easy to laugh," he began.
"Is it so easy?" she asked, and once again her voice brought to him that sense of infinite pity, infinite denial. "Then let us laugh, Ned, while we can. Come, let us lose ourselves. Oh Ned! give me one day unspotted by the world, untouched by trivialities, just this one day!"
And as she took his hand, the glamour, not of this world, but of that which lies hidden beyond it, above it, claimed possession of his soul. The blue mist closed in on them. They stood on the floor of heaven with the sky above them.