Читать книгу A Sovereign Remedy - Flora Annie Webster Steel - Страница 8

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Aurelia in a blessed white frock, looking like a Botticelli angel, was in the garden talking to old Adam. She received their half-hearted apologies for return with a fine superiority.

"Of course," she said, "we all knew you were coming. Martha was unkind enough to kill a beautiful white chicken for you, and there is raspberry tart, and curds and cream. Oh yes! and I made a sponge-cake for tea. So you ought to have enough I'm sure. Now, before we go in, I do want to find my Ourisia coccinea, and Adam has mislaid it. Now, Adam, do think! and please don't say the underground mice have eaten the label, for I'm sure they haven't--it would be a miracle, you know, if they did."

Here she turned to her companions with shining eyes.

"You see, Adam believes in boggles and miracles, and all sorts of queer things, though he isn't Welsh. And to-day there was a miracle in church."

"A miracle," echoed Ned, flushing slightly and wondering more.

She nodded. "Yes! The organ that hasn't sounded a note for ever so long, played of itself, or rather Griffiths Morgan, the sexton, says he was awoke by the Archangel Gabriel."

"Nonsense," interrupted Ned with spirit, "it--it couldn't have been----"

"That is what Adam says," replied Aurelia smiling. "Adam! tell the story yourself."

"'Twain't much story, Miss Aura," put in the old gardener, "but 'twas how as this. Rector he bin preechin' of the roarin', rushin' wynd, an' as he coombed down the chauntrey steps, as might be the Pope o' Rome with that there brass platter, it let loose quite suddint. A wynd, indeed, a rushin' and roarin', an' heavenly notes all a-dyin' away to twanks like the last Trump. Folks were greatly put about, even passon himself didn't know what to make on't till Griffiths Morgan, as sleeps on the beller's 'andle through being accustomed to it as a lad, said he was woke and bid blow by the Archangel Gabriel. Whereupon passon give it 'im for sleepin', and says as he must a' laid on the notes somehow; but I says, says I, that nothin' but true miracle 'ud ever make the broken-wynded old orgin' give out sech a rare 'ollerin'."

"But there's no such thing as a miracle, Adam," declared the girl, and the next moment was on her knees peering into an aster patch. "Why, there it is," she cried, "Oh! Adam, how could you?"

Adam stooped over the border in simulated astonishment.

"Why, drat my garters" (this was his most extreme form of words). "So be it. Well, miss, 'tis true miracle how that pr'anniel stuff comes up, libel or no. 'Tis the Lord's doings, as don't call 'em by name, see you."

"But Adam did," said Ned, relieved as the necessity for confessing that he was not the Archangel Gabriel vanished before this change of venue.

"What Adam?" asked Aura. "Oh! I suppose you mean the one in the Bible, only grandfather doesn't believe in it, you know. It couldn't, anyhow, be this one," she continued, her eyes shining with laughter once more as they moved across the lawn, leaving Adam shaking his head over the Ourisia coccinea, "for when he digs my borders he begins by collecting all the tallies into a heap; then he puts them back again at regular intervals in a row. It's very funny, you know, but terribly confusing. Each spring I have to rack my brains to think what each dear thing means as it peeps up. Of course, that is interesting in itself, but"--here her eyes grew clearer, lighter as she looked up for sympathy--"it is rather sad to make mistakes. I don't like dreaming a campanula is white when it is blue, blue when it is white."

"I think one is as beautiful as the other," laughed Ted.

"Yes!"--then her eyes sought Ned's--"but it is hard, always, to lose what one has learnt to expect."

He smiled back at her but said nothing.

So as they strolled over the grass, she, every now and again giving them a glimpse of the secluded busy life she led (for she and her grandfather never went into the village except, perhaps, to judge at some competition concert) the bell rang, and crossing to the verandah they found Mr. Sylvanus Smith less crippled as the day went on, but urbane and talkative as ever, while Martha, with her little bob curtsey, was waiting to take off the covers.

And they feasted like kings on the chicken and raspberry tart; and the weak rough cider which Martha made, and Mr. Smith drank for his rheumatism, seemed to get into their heads with the Wine of Life, as they sat and talked and watched Aurelia against the background of flower and fruit.

"Oh! cupbearer! save the Wine of Life, what gifts canst thou bring?" quoted Ned suddenly under his breath.

"A fine poet Hâfiz--a very fine poet," remarked Sylvanus Smith, who appeared to have read and remembered most things, "but he lacks the true human spirit. He fuddles himself into content with mystic unrealities, and misses the great individual claim of each soul to freedom and equality. So unlike Byron."

"Very," assented Ned dryly.

Still the conversation did not languish, and when dinner was over they adjourned to another large room opposite the library, which was also empty of all things save a grand piano, an arm-chair, and a music rest. Here Ned settled himself down to accompany Ted and Aura as they sang, and finally, with apologies, for not being so much at home on the piano as on the organ, persuaded Mr. Sylvanus Smith, who turned out to be a passed musician, into trying a Brahms sonata for piano and violin. And here Martha coming to announce tea found them still happily busy over the great piles of music that were ranged along the wall.

It was when Ned lingered to close the piano that Aura lingered also watching him quietly; but she made him start and blush violently by saying with a smile, "You were the Archangel Gabriel, weren't you?"

Taken aback as he was, his eyes met hers with a reflection of their confidence. "I was. But how did you find out?"

"I don't know," she said, a faint trouble coming into her face, "that is the worst of it. It was when we were running through the Messiah, something in your mind touched mine, I think. It happens sometimes, doesn't it?--and--and it isn't altogether pleasant."

She drew herself away from him instinctively, but he followed her.

"Why?" he asked.

She flashed round on him. "Because I dislike being touched."

There was a silence; finally he asked curiously, "Ought I to tell Adam?"

"Why should you? He loves miracles, and it will give him something to talk about, besides"--here she laughed--"it was a miracle, you know, to make the old organ sound at all."

"Perhaps," replied Ned, relieved of the necessity for confessing one of the many sudden impulses which were always getting him into trouble.

They found Martha by the tea-table looking very rakish and young in a coat and skirt and a sailor hat, which, however, did not prevent her from, as usual, masking her supremacy by subserviency. The gentlemen's rooms were quite ready for them, and as she was going through the village could she leave any message with the smith?

"Thanks, no!" replied Ted curtly, for he had noticed Aura's confidence with Ned, and had--he scarcely had time to think why--resented it; "but, I think, Cruttenden, that if we do avail ourselves of Mr. Smith's kindly offered hospitality, we must start at dawn, picking up our bicycles by the way."

"As you please, Ted," replied Ned carelessly. "But thanks all the same, Martha. I hope there will be no more miracles in church."

"Thank you, sir," retorted Martha cheerfully, "but I don't 'old with church nor yet with chapel neither. As I keep tellin' of Adam, they makes people think too much of their sins. An' 'is is but what we cooks call second stock at that, sir; for takin' 'im, fine an' wet, Adam do 'is work like a real Briton--yes! he really do----"

With which testimonial to Adam's worth she bobbed another curtsey, and was off for her panacea for all ills, a "spin on her bike."

"I suppose," said Ted after a pause, in a somewhat awed voice, "that Adam is Martha's husband."

Aura bubbled over with quick mirth. "Martha's husband! Oh dear, no! Why, she is always at me 'not to incline to no man, no; not if his 'air be 'ung round with gold'; and just think of Adam's little cropped head!"

Her laugh was infectious.

"And so Martha shares the--the family dislike to gold," suggested Ned slyly.

Mr. Sylvanus Smith rose to the fly at once. "We do not dislike it, sir; gold has undoubtedly its appointed place in the world, but it happens to be in its wrong place. So I disregard it, and pay all my bills by cheque."

"Martha makes out the lists for the Army and Navy, you know," explained Aura quickly. "It's rather fun unpacking the boxes when they come."

"There is no doubt," continued Mr. Smith, in a tone of voice which suggested an effort to be strictly original, "that as now administered, money is the root of all evil. Our hoarded millions instead of, as they should, bringing equality--comfortable, contented equality--to the world, separate man from his fellow man by a purely artificial distinction; they bring about class antagonism, and are a premium on inept idleness."

"Hear, hear!" said Ted. "I quite agree with you, sir. If these millions were equitably divided----"

"They would be a premium on idle ineptitude instead," laughed Ned lightly. "If you gave a loafer the same wage as a working man, I for one would loaf. It is the better part. If any one were to offer me a golden sovereign at the present moment, Miss Aura----"

She arrested the teapot in the middle of pouring out his second cup, and glanced up at him in smiling horror.

"And I never gave back the one in Cockatua's bread and milk tin! Dear me, what should I have done if you had gone away and left it? I'll remember it after tea."

But after tea found them still laughing, still talking, still sitting silent awhile listening to the song of a thrush which, as the day drew down to dusk, sat on the bent branch of the old yew to sing as surely never thrush sang before.

So the moon climbed into the sky and the flowers faded into the ghosts of flowers, each holding just a hint of the hues it had worn by day.

"What a pity it is to go to bed at all," said Aura suddenly, leaning over her grandfather's chair and laying her cheek on his thick, white hair; "for we seem to have so much to say to each other, don't we?"

He winced slightly; since for once he had forgotten the absorption of his later years, and had let himself be as he would have been but for the tragedy which he had fled into the wilderness to hide. For he had seen his wife starve to death, and his daughter sell herself for bread, while he, struck down by rheumatic fever, had waited for the tardy decision of a Law Court. The verdict had come too late for either; too late for anything but decent burial for a poor, young mother, and flight, if possible, from himself. But, though he forgot sometimes, the tragedy of seeing his wife die before his helplessness, it remained always to blur his outlook, to make him what he was, a half-crazy visionary.

And to-night he had forgotten. He had laughed at trivialities, and told trivial stories of the thousand-year-old yew tree, and the Druidical legends connected with the summer solstice--the real midsummer night, though St. John's Day came later.

But now remembrance came back, and he rose. "We have talked too much," he said almost captiously, "and these gentlemen have to leave at dawn. We wish them good luck, don't we? Come, Aurelia, my child."

So they had said good-bye; but five minutes afterwards, as the two young men sat silently finishing their pipes, they saw her returning over the lawn, holding the sovereign in her raised right hand.

It seemed to them as if the whole world came with her as, rising to their feet instinctively, they waited beside the cool, dark pool, full of the black shadows of the yew tree, full also of marvellous moonlit depths going down and down into more and more light.

The air was heavy with the flower fragrance of the garden, the round moon, large, soft, mild, hung in the velvety sky, not a breath stirred in earth or heaven, her very footstep on the turf was silent.

"Which of you gave it me?" she asked. "You are so much alike, at first, that I forget."

They were silent, uncertain what to claim, what not to claim.

She smiled. "Is it a puzzle? You want me to find out; but really, I expect it came from you both."

"Yes, from us both," assented Ned.

Her eyes were on Ted's face, which was good indeed to look upon, but she turned swiftly to Ned.

"Ah! It was you, of course. Yes, it was you," she said, holding out the coin. He took it without a word.

"It seems a shame to go to bed this heavenly night, but you have to be up so early." There was regret in her voice.

"Why should we?" said Ned impulsively. "Let us roam the hills, I have done it before now, alone."

She stood looking at them both, her face mysteriously bright.

"And you?" she asked of Ted.

He laughed. "I feel like it to-night, anyhow."

"Ah," she said, nodding her head, "you are a wise man. Good-night and pleasant dreams."

They watched her pass in her white raiment across the lawn, taking the glamour of the night with her, and leaving them with an ordinary moon shining on an ordinary garden.

Then Ted gave a short laugh and flung himself on the turf again, resuming his pipe.

"What's the matter?" asked Ned imperturbably.

"Nothing. I was only thinking of all the gassing you let out yesterday concerning money. Why, it means--everything! Hang that sovereign to your watch-chain, man, and then you can tell her a romantic tale when----"

A "whitt whitt, whitter," followed by a sudden sob among the shadows and lights of the pool, told of one more duck-and-drake----

"As if that made any difference," he continued sardonically. "You have plenty more of them."

"So far as I'm concerned, it makes some difference," retorted Ned with spirit. "That particular coin won't be put to baser uses."

There was a pause, broken only by Ned's vain effort to get his cheroot to draw. Suddenly he flung it aside, edged himself out of the shadow into the light and faced his namesake.

"Look here, Cruttenden," he said, "I've got something to explain to you, because--well--because I want this thing to be fair and square between us. The fact is, that though my name is Edward Cruttenden all right, I have the misfortune to have been for the last two years, most unexpectedly, Lord Blackborough."

"Lord Blackborough!" echoed Ted slowly. "Why--why, you're--you're my master--that is to say, I'm one of your clerks--and--and you're the richest man in the midlands."

"I believe I was, a year ago; but money doesn't stick by me. I wasn't brought up to it. Yes, I became Lord Blackborough against my will, by the death of my uncle, a cripple, who inherited the barony--bought by screws chiefly--from the original purchaser, who had a fit on hearing that his only son had shot himself over a woman. A squalid story, and the distinction between us is, as you see, a purely artificial one----"

"I quite agree with your lordship," interrupted Ted.

"My dear fellow," replied Lord Blackborough, "you will oblige me by not being a garden ass. The fact is, we have a considerable likeness to each other outside, in which you have distinctly the advantage. You're taller, broader; briefly, the better looking. As to the inside, we differ somewhat, but there again you have the qualities which make for wealth, and I haven't. I can see myself a poor man in my old age. Then we tumbled off our cycles together in an equal way. In a still more equal way we have tumbled into--let us say, this Garden of Eden. Now, why shouldn't we remain in it on equal terms?"

"Because it is impossible. You are Lord Blackborough, and I am your clerk."

"But why should we not remain the brothers Cruttenden? In this remote----"

"Impossible," repeated Ted angrily.

"Anyhow, let us think over it. We agreed, didn't we, to spend our holiday together. Well, let us talk it over, and if it is feasible, come back----"

Ted laughed bitterly. "A clerk hasn't so much holiday as a lord. I've had my week, while you----"

"Yes, of course; don't, please, go off at a tangent like our host. We have got to work this thing out somehow, for, unless we do--well--I won't come back alone, so you would always have that between you and your night's rest. Do you understand?"

Ted nodded sulkily. He had liked his companion before he knew he was a lord, and now all the Englishman's love for one, that strange modern inversion which grants quality to title, instead of as in the beginning granting title to quality, was mixed up in the thought of future friendship with one who would, who could be such a friend.

"Of course, I could buy you off, or turn you out. Now, don't fume. I won't interfere with your personal liberty if I can help it. I really am in deadly earnest. It seems to me we have been given a lead over--that there is something behind all this. However, that is neither here nor there, so far as you are concerned." He sat for a moment thinking.

"When can you get your next holiday?" he asked abruptly.

"I believe I could get a week at Christmas," admitted Ted grudgingly.

Lord Blackborough sprang to his feet like a schoolboy, and laughed. "How will Eden look under snow? Jolly, I expect----"

"You don't mean----" began Ted, rising also.

"Yes, I do. I mean that, so far as I'm concerned, we shall say good-bye to it--till Christmas--at dawn--the dawn which will so soon be coming. Good Heavens!" he added, his eyes on the horizon of the hills, his voice softening infinitely, "why am I going to bed? Who knows? Perchance to dream. Good-night."

Ted could hear him going on with the quotation as he strolled over to the house. Thereinafter there was a light in one of the upper windows, and then darkness.

He himself sat for a while thinking over the queer chances of the last few days. It was like a novel; not like real life. That hundred pounds, for instance, lying out on the hillside ready for any one who chose to take it. There had been plenty of chances of a hundred pounds even in his life, had he felt any immediate necessity for them, but he had not. His life on the whole had been pleasant enough. Fond of football, cricket, cycling, rowing, he had not thought much of the delights of money-getting. But now? A hundred pounds well laid out, for instance on that investment about which his old school friend, a clerk on the Stock Exchange, had written him only last week, might well be a thousand by Christmas.

It held him fast that hundred pounds, thinking what could be done with it by Christmas.

It might win him Aurelia. For if in other ways equality could be kept up, why shouldn't he have a fair chance? He was the better looking--if that counted for anything. Then he had another advantage. Though he was long past much of the old man's antiquated Socialism, he was keen on more modern ideas, a Radical of the most forward type politically, whereas Lord Blackborough--what was Lord Blackborough? Well, he was a very good fellow anyhow.

Yes, he was a good fellow, though he was right in saying money didn't stick to him. How could it, when he left it, so to speak, lying about.

Ted knocked out the ashes of his pipe, and, after a space, another light showed in one of the upper windows. Then it went out, and the window eye was shut.

But what of the eyes within. Were they shut or open?

Who knows?

Were their owners asleep or awake, conscious that they had reached a crossing of the ways--that one path led up to the rugged mountain--tops, the other into the smooth valleys.

Who knows?

The moon shone softly behind a haze of midnight coolness, rising from the earth to blur the clear circle of her heavenly rim.

There was a breathlessness in the very stillness of the night, that was broken only by the distant wailing of the lambs new-separate from their mothers.

Hark! What was it they were calling? Faint and far away, what was it?

"Aura! Aura! Aura!"

Up in the corries, setting the tall brackens a-quiver, high on the birch woods hidden in their silver, higher still among the tumbled rocks of the "Eye of the World," what was that passing?

Was it, white and dim, a wandering sheep looming large upon the moonlit mountainside as it sought to answer the cry, or, this midsummer night when the spirits wander, was it a restless wraith seeking it knew not what?

Or was it Aura herself, free and fearless among the hills?

"Aura! Aura! Aura!"

The faint, far--distant call sounded from the valley, from the corries, from the birch woods, from the rocks.

The shadows lay so still, so soft, yet that one surely moved--moved upwards.

"Aura! Aura! Aura!" Was it Aura, or only the echoing sound of the calling lambs?

Still, soft, equable, serene, oh, misty mountain moonlight what didst thou hold?

And in the garden across the lawn, where the girl's feet had lain, was that curved shadow, a snake making its way to the black and white shadow of the Druid's yew tree?

Oh, misty moonlight of the valley what didst thou hold, as the faint, far--away cry echoed between the hills, and up into high heaven?

Did they meet and hold converse face to face upon the mountain-top, those wandering lights and shadows on the mountainsides? or did they wander, searching for something, until dawn, and find nothing?

* * * * *

Dawn at any rate came soon, as Ned had said it would.

The moonlight changed swiftly to sunlight, the heifer lowed for her bull-calf, a sleepy chaffinch chirruped his challenge to the coming day, and Ted Cruttenden coming into the verandah from the library saw Ned entering it from the music room, while at the hall door between them stood Aurelia, blushing at being caught so early.

She was in a loose, white overall, girded in at the waist with a leathern girdle, and her bare feet were shod in sandals.

"Good-morning," she said, without any trace of the blush in her voice. "See what I have found under the old yew tree. Grandfather's chair had torn the turf, and there it was. Do you think it can be the snake-ring grandfather told us about?"

The flat, bead-like stone she held out was no larger than a sixpence, but it had a hole through its greenish, semi-opaque lustre.

"I think it must be," said Ted, passing it on to Ned. "You will have 'all the wealth of the world.' Wasn't that what it is supposed to bring?"

"But I don't want money," she said.

"The wealth of the world is not all money," smiled Ned, handing the stone back to her. "There is love."

She laughed merrily. "I don't want that either. No! not if 'is 'air be 'ung round with gold."

They waved a good-bye to her from the turn of the draw-bridge.

"Till Christmas," said Ned cheerfully.

"Till Christmas," replied Ted cheerfully.

They found the village early astir. Miss Myfanwy Jones's holiday having come to an end, she was starting for Williams and Edwards with a pile of empty dress and bonnet boxes, which Alicia Edwards, the Reverend Morris Pugh, and the Adonis Mervyn were packing into the village shandrydan.

"It is most kind of you gentlemen to be up so early," said Myfanwy, dispensing her smiles impartially. "It is no use asking you, Mr. Morris," she said, throwing a little flavouring of regret into her voice, "you are too busy and too good; but if Mr. Mervyn comes up to town I trust he will call on me."

Mervyn, whose front lock looked exactly as if it had just left a curling-pin's care, nodded at her approvingly.

"That would be jolly fun," he said. "I have to go up for an examination in September."

"Good-bye, then, till September. Good-bye, Alicia." As she kissed the latter she whispered, "That will be a guinea to your account for the hat."

"You said a pound," protested Alicia.

"That was for cash, child. And what is a shilling? But two sixpences; and you shall pay when you are married, see you."