For an instant as he left her she stood still, her lip quivering; then she called to him:
"Come back, please! I want to give you this."
She held out the bunch of winter heliotrope which had been fastened in her coat; its faint scent had been in the air as he had sat beside her holding her hand.
It was too much; the pa.s.sion he had held back, not unwillingly for so long, mastered him. "This is foolishness," he cried, striding towards her, "you do love me--why can you not say so--you might at least tell the truth."
Something in her face arrested him.
"The truth," she echoed, "I have told you the truth. I think I do love you, and I am sorry, and vexed, and angry." Her clear eyes were looking through his as if she could see into his innermost thought.
"But I will not marry you. I am afraid. Do you understand what that means to me? I am afraid of myself, and for you, for you deserve something better."
Suddenly she stooped, kissed the withering flowers she held, dropped them at his feet and was off like a mist wreath down the hill.
He did not attempt to follow her. He simply sat down again on the stone where he had been sitting before, and swore to G.o.d that sooner or later he would marry her.
And then he fell to thinking of how once or twice in his life before he had caught a glimpse, as he had just now caught one, of that "something better," beyond the Dream of Life.
Once, when he was a boy watching the trail of silvery bubbles left behind it in the brown stream by a water-rat as it swam. Once again as a young man, when he had paid half a crown for a penny bunch of violets, and something in their sweetness had made him add half a sovereign to their price and go on his way.
Then the present rea.s.serted itself. He could not possibly take this for his answer, he must wait till the shock of Gwen"s death had faded, until Aura became accustomed to the idea of her own love for him--for that she did love him he had little doubt. It was briefly her love which had frightened her, quaint compound as she was of nature and culture. He would leave her to think it out for two months. During that time he also would have time to make up his mind concerning many things. He was becoming dimly conscious that life was resolving itself into the spending of money in order to escape from the responsibilities of having money, into the fighting of money by money.
It would be rather interesting to let the fight go on while he raised no finger to protect his own personal rights; if indeed he had any, which he was beginning to doubt. He and Aura would be as happy--nay!
happier without money. Yes! in the one thing worth having, the one thing without which even life itself was not worth having, money had no purchasing power whatever.
"I am only just beginning to realise how I should hate to be rich."
Aura"s words came back to him. She need not fear. If she would only consent to marry him, he would chuck everything he possessed!--barring a modest competence of course!--after the sovereigns he had chucked that June morning into the little lochan at the gap.
He had never thought of the hidden money since that day. It had gone clean out of his head. Now, as he stood up to try and locate the exact dip on the hills where it lay, his own words came back to him.
"Neither I nor the world would suffer if I made ducks and drakes of these sovereign remedies."
He seemed to hear the soft _whit whitter_ of the skimming gold and to see the blank look on the faces around him.
There were other ways of getting rid of gold, however, than by chucking it into a pond. You had in this civilised world but to let your neighbour know that you had it in your pocket, and it was sure to go.
So, despite his refusal, with a light laugh he started down the hill.
CHAPTER XVII
Aura, however, felt bruised and broken, as with slower, heavier foot than usual she crossed the drawbridge, and choosing the back way, went through the cottage to the kitchen.
Her first look at that sanctuary of shiny saucepans showed her that something in the nature of a domestic cataclysm had occurred during her absence; for the kitchen-table was littered with cake-tins, and the materials for making cakes, a savoury smell telling of cakes rose from the oven, and Martha herself, with a hot flushed face, was beating viciously at the whites of eggs which were to go towards a further making of cakes. Now such activity was Martha"s invariable method of showing that she had what she called "a bit o" time" to herself; therefore her invariable habit when she found herself once more monarch of all she surveyed and so presumably rather pressed for time.
"Has Parkinson gone?" asked Aura swiftly.
"Yes! Miss H"Aura," replied Martha, pausing to make a dive into the oven and come up therefrom still more flushed and still more determined. "She"s gone. Bad barm won"t never bake "ouseholds as my mother used to say; and glad was I to be rid of her, for I shud a" put her past afore long, yes! I shud, and a" got "ung for it I s"ppose--it ain"t any good lookin" shocked, Miss H"Aura, for a body can"t "elp her feelin"s, and put her past I shud, for Bate, he began to pity her shet up alone! "If you says much more," says I, "it"s to the pigstyes she"ll go"--an" the only proper place for "er, Miss H"Aura, and me havin" to black my tongue tellin" master it was the sow as was squealin" so! But there! Them as "as no "eads takes it out in "earts, and Bate is that soft about wimmin, "tis all I can do to keep from kneadin" more flour to him as if he was a silly batch o" bread! But we"ll do all right without "er caps an" ap.r.o.ns; and _so I told Bate_."
Martha"s face, indeed, wore a determination which augured well for domestic comfort.
"But grandfather--" began Aura anxiously, "he ought not to be disturbed."
"Who"s a disturbing of the good gentleman?" snapped Martha, "Pore dear, "e"ll have "is shavin" water "ot in future. How they can stand, brazen, an" ask wages beats me! An" she talkin" o" the waste o"
water being a crime against the company--a water company, winter time, in Wales! Lord sakes!--if she run the cold off, as I bid her do; though "er pantry tap was spoutin" into the pail a good "arf hour while she was beguilin" Bate. No! Miss H"Aura! I wasn"t goin"
to lie for "er more"n I cud "elp, so I told master the stric"
truth-an"-no-one-a-penny-the-worse, as the sayin" is."
"What did you tell him?" asked Aura rather wearily, for even Martha was getting on her nerves.
"I told him as revivals havin" bin too much for her body _an_" soul she was stoppin" at the inn, where she is, Miss H"Aura, and if she screech there as she screeched here some one "ll be in Bedlam before mornin"--_an" so I told Bate_."
This was the invariable epilogue to all Martha"s diatribes.
"I suppose Mr. Cruttenden has returned?" asked Aura.
"As nice as nuts, an" is in with Master. I reely don"t know, now I come to think on it, what we shud a-done this last week without "im!
Not but what "is lordship----" she shot a quick glance at Aura--"Lord sakes! deary," she cried, "you do look weary-like. Go up to your bed, there"s a duck, an" have a lie down--one can"t never forget the face o" death till one"s asleep."
"Death, and his brother sleep!..."
The words were in Aura"s brain as she went upstairs, wondering why it was that now Ned was no longer beside her she felt far more disturbed, far more, in a way, ashamed about him, than she had done when he was beside her. Yes! even when he had been masterful and told her that it was all foolishness, that she knew she loved him.
The house seemed so familiarly quiet and peaceful that the turmoil of her mind became all unreal to her. Surely the least honest effort must suffice to bring back her old fearlessness of outlook.
Her birthday presents lay on the table, amongst them Ted"s Sh.e.l.ley, open, curiously enough, at the "Adonais." Her eye glanced at the verses, became fascinated; she stood reading until with a sigh of infinite satisfaction she closed the book over those words:
"The One remains, the Many change and pa.s.s!"
That was beautiful. That calmed the soul. Gwen"s dead face came back to her now without any terror in it. The Sting of Death was gone.
But Love--the love that Gwen had felt, of which she herself was not all unconscious, what of that?
Dimly, darkly, as in a gla.s.s, the girl saw that to be n.o.ble it must be the ant.i.thesis of Death--it must be Birth. But that was not the Love of the world. What had Mervyn, what had Gwen, thought of Birth?
Nothing. If anything they had hoped to evade it. They had tried to take the Pleasure without incurring the Pain. They had not thought of anything but themselves.
She pa.s.sed on to the window-sill and looked down once more on the "most beautiful thing in the most beautiful place in the world."
But what was that really?