Vaguely she felt choky over the last words. It did seem so hard to be left all alone in the wide world to face these dark problems.
"It--it is not a usual subject for discussion, even between parent and child, Aura," he replied; "but if you ask me--yes. I am extremely anxious for you to marry."
"Why?" The question came swiftly.
Mr. Sylva.n.u.s Smith put down his pen finally, and turned his feet to the fire. He thought for a moment of quite a variety of reasons.
Because it was the natural end of woman; ... but for years past he had laboured in vain to convince the world that marriage was slavery.
Because he wished her to be happy?... but so many marriages were unhappy. Because he would have liked to see grandchildren about him?... but in his innermost heart he knew that a few months of life was all for which he had any right to look.
He decided finally on the real reason.
"Because--because when I die, my child, and that cannot be far off----"
"Grandfather, don"t!"
Her voice became poignant with fond reproof.
He heaved a sigh, and honestly felt himself heroic.
"My dear," he said grandly, "there is no use in deceiving ourselves--I may live--but on the other hand," he waved his pretty white hand gracefully. The conversation was beginning to interest him, and though he had acquiesced in Ted Cruttenden"s desire to let the question stand over for the present, he felt there could be no harm in diagnosing Aura"s att.i.tude. "The fact is, my dear, that when I die you will be very badly off, in fact, it is a source of the very greatest anxiety to me, Aura, you will have nothing--I mean no money--and unless you are married--happily married--I do not see how you can earn your own livelihood."
"Then I should earn it by being married!" she asked.
"Well! hardly so; but--it would be a great weight off my mind, Aura.
So--if you have the chance----"
She stood still for a moment or two, then once more seating herself on the floor, this time at his feet, she turned her face to the fire. "I have the chance," she said at last in a clear voice, "Lord Blackborough asked me to marry him to-day. I refused--but----" Her face was still hidden, but a curious expectancy came to her whole att.i.tude. She seemed on the alert.
Sylva.n.u.s Smith who had sat up prepared to curse, sank back in his chair to bless with a sigh of relief. "You refused him! Thank G.o.d! My dear child, you--you caused me the most painful alarm; though I might have trusted your good sense to see that it would have been--a--a most unsuitable marriage."
The alertness had gone. "Would it?" she said indifferently, "Yes! I suppose it would." She said no more, though all unconsciously the iron was entering her heart, the young glad animal heart which clamoured for pleasure. Still, what her grandfather had called her good sense had shown her this unsuitability at once, though his grounds for his opinion were most likely very different from hers. At the same time it was her decision. She had made it of her own free will. There was no coercion about it. She had made it, and it was as well that others endorsed her action.
So she essayed a smile and turned towards him. "Then I don"t think I have any other chance of getting married just at present, grandfather," she said lightly, "but if anybody "comes along----"" She paused, joking on the subject being a trifle beyond her.
The old man sat looking at her with real affection overlaid by the quaint sense of magnanimity which pursued him in every relation of life, the result no doubt of his unquestioning acceptance of himself as philanthropic benefactor to the race. Should he or should he not tell her what he had just heard from Ted?
Something in the slackness of her att.i.tude as she sat crouched by the fire, something of weariness in the young face which, as a rule, was so buoyant with the _joie de vivre_, made him decide on telling her.
There could be no harm in finding out how she was prepared to receive the suggestion. He drew his chair closer.
"But there you are mistaken surely. Has it never occurred to you that--that perhaps--Mr. Cruttenden----"
"Ted!" echoed Aura. "No! Grandfather, it is you who are mistaken. Ted and I have always been the best of friends--the very best of friends!
but he has never--Oh! I can a.s.sure you he has never been the least-- never the least like Ned--I mean Lord Blackborough."
"Perhaps that stands to his credit," remarked the old man chillily.
"Love is not shown--by--by love-making. But I am sure of what I say, my dear, because--Ted as you call him--though in my young days--but we will let that pa.s.s for the present--told me himself that the dearest wish of his heart----"
At this moment the door opened and Ted himself, light-hearted, free, eager to have what he could of Aura"s company, came in.
"I"ve finished," he cried, "so now for something better----" he paused, conscious that the air was full of something more important at any rate. Was it better, or was it worse?
Mr. Sylva.n.u.s Smith essayed a discreet innocence by a warning cough to Aura, and a hasty return to his papers; but the girl was too much in earnest for silence. Her nerves, overstrung by the strain of the long day, during which almost everything to be learnt in life seemed to have been crowded into a few hours, vibrated to this new possibility.
She rose instantly, and advancing a step or two stood facing the young man with a new recklessness in her expression. "Ted," she said, and there was a note of appeal in her voice, "Grandfather has been telling me something I can"t believe. Is it true that you also want to marry me?"
For an instant surprised out of balance, overwhelmed by the utter unconventionality of the question the young man hesitated. Yes or no seemed to him equally out of keeping. Then his pa.s.sion for her came to the rescue, and something told him that the question would never have been asked if the girl had not staked herself, body and soul, on the answer.
He strode across the room and took her by her outstretched hands.
"I have wanted it, Aura," he said, and his voice vibrated as the whole world seemed to him to be vibrating, "ever since I saw you first--do you remember--" he was drawing her closer to him unresisting, though in her eyes there was a certain expectant dread, "you were standing--surely you remember--" his voice grew softer--"in the garden room--standing in the sunlight with the flowers behind you--and the c.o.c.katoo----" the sentence ended in the first kiss which had ever fallen on Aura"s lips.
She did not shrink. On the contrary, she gave a little sigh of satisfaction, and looked gratefully at Ted.
"Yes, I remember," she said softly, "and ever since then you have been so good to me."
"Then you will marry me, Aura," he said--"you will really marry me?"
"If it makes you happy--if you really mean it, and--" she turned to her grandfather--"does it make you happy too?"
He was busy with his pocket handkerchief, and blew his nose ere he replied. "My happiness is a.s.sured if--if you--" He said no more, for his memory was clear, and there are some things which do not grow dim with years, and one of them is the remembrance of love.
"I am quite happy," she said gravely, "and I think I shall always be happy with Ted."
Whereupon Ted kissed her again, and tried to realise that he was in the seventh heaven of delight; as he was indeed, though he felt rather rushed as he thought of the night mail to Paris.
"We have hardly time to get engaged decently and in order," he said joyfully. "You will have to wait for your ring, my darling."
"My ring?" she echoed inquiringly, whereupon Ted laughed still more joyfully at her entrancing ignorance of the world and its ways; but Sylva.n.u.s Smith, who had been looking into the fire, roused himself to touch a ring which he always wore on his little finger. "I have one here," he said dreamily; "it holds her mother"s hair."
"My mother"s!" cried Aura gladly, "Oh! may I have it, grandfather?"
Ted looked with distaste at the little mourning ring; just a plait of bronze brown hair like Aura"s set in a plain gold rim as a background to "In Memoriam" in black enamel letters.
"It is rather grisly," he whispered fondly as he slipped it on to the girl"s finger, "but it will do to--to keep the place warm! By and by it shall be diamonds."
She shook her head. "I shall like this best," she said, "it will remind me of----" And then she lifted her finger to her lips and kissed the little ring. It would be hers always to remind her of Love and Death, and Birth that came between the two.
CHAPTER XVIII
Poor Gwen"s death had caused quite a pleasurable excitement in the village.
There can be no question that to all save the immediate few whose natural emotions are involved, most deaths bring a quicker tide of life to the living.
It has been said, indeed, that funerals are often the preludes to marriage. Be that as it may, Gwen, despite her gift of grace, had lived all her short life on such a different plane from the rest of the village girls that, except in the little shepherd"s cottage amid the hills, few real tears were shed over her dramatic death.
And it was so dramatic! To die in full song--to shed her life-blood in trying to bring the glad news to other souls. Surely that must avail!