And then he saw a vision of a blue smock held confidingly by a little toddling child, and something in him seemed to rise up and choke him, so that he had to get up, and walk away from his cousin"s curious eyes. So to change the subject he began hurriedly--
"I didn"t tell you, did I, about that old man I met in the desert--right away from everybody? I don"t believe he was real, but he was a wonder. If you talked Herbert Spencer with him he replied with Nietzsche. There wasn"t anything he didn"t seem to know, and that he hadn"t dismissed as not worth knowing. And yet he knew nothing. If you hurled an example at him he was floored. It was all pure thought. He never did anything else but think. You see he was one of their holiest men, and he had sat in the same place for fifty years."
"You have been back to India, Ned," she exclaimed, "you know you have; and I sent all my letters to Algiers."
He came over to her and sat on the arm of her chair, as he used to do when he was a boy.
"They were forwarded--at intervals," he remarked coolly. "Have you never, Nell, wanted to run away for a bit and find yourself naked, out in the open?" And then, airily, he began to hum that graceless ditty of young subalterns at Pekin when the Emba.s.sy had been relieved and the Summer Palace occupied, and the allied army amused itself with burlesques on the vanished foe:
""Fancy me, in this frosty weather.
Posing as Venus among the heather; Fancy me in the altogether, At my time of life!""
"Really, Ned!" exclaimed Helen, unable to repress her smiles, "You are the most ridiculous boy. But if I am to see the domain it is time I began. I must be back by five o"clock."
They were but just in time when he set her down at the hospital and sought out Dr. Ramsay.
He found him writing for dear life, his face positively aglow with vitality and fire.
"Smashing "em up?" asked Ned, after the first welcome was over and he had lit a cigarette.
Peter Ramsay shifted the papers a trifle shamefacedly. "Yes!" he replied; "it isn"t a bit of good, of course; but it relieves my feelings and hurts theirs."
"How did it come about?"
"Didn"t Mrs. Tressilian tell you? Well, I suppose I have been a bit of a fool--and yet, I don"t see quite what else I could have done. I tell you, Blackborough, there isn"t a spot in England on which you can tread firmly without crushing a vested interest. Take, for instance, that pint of beer business. I suppose you know that every one in this hospital is ent.i.tled to one pint of beer a day--typhoid fever patients, dying patients--the whole stock, lock, and barrel of nurses, doctors, porters, and such like. If the beer isn"t drunk it"s at any rate paid for. Think of the vested interests that means. So when I suggested retrenchments, and took the trouble to lay the German and even the Scotch figures before the governors--it costs a third less at least to run a patient in Scotland--there was the devil and all to pay; and--and some one made disparaging remarks about porridge, and so, of course, there was a row...."
"Then about the operation." Peter Ramsay got up and began to walk about the room, and his voice became more argumentative. "You see, it was done, and the man died. Well, I wrote an account of it for the medical paper at Vienna, and some one got hold of it and translated it--well! not quite fairly. You see, it was a question whether a certain lesion--but that"s a technical detail--I hadn"t approved at the time, and I said so; and they made out I a.s.serted the man had been killed through incompetence. All I meant was that it wasn"t a fair test of the feasibility of the operation, and it wasn"t. I tried to smooth them over, but, as I said at the time, one must tell the truth sometimes."
Ned Blackborough interrupted with a sudden laugh. "Did that smooth them over?"
"Not in the least," replied Peter Ramsay quite seriously, "and they wouldn"t have it either that the translator was a fool and did not know German. So I resigned. There is never any good in trying to work with people who aren"t satisfied."
"None," a.s.sented Ned succinctly, "And what are you going to do?"
"Go back to Pagenheim if nothing else turns up. One can live on _wurst_ over there and no one thinks the--the worse of you, as they do here. My time isn"t up till February, but I"ve offered to go at once if they like."
"New Park is at your disposal."
"You"re awfully kind. If I go--perhaps. But something may crop up."
As Ned Blackborough drove round to keep his appointment with Ted Cruttenden at his office, he told himself joyously that anything might crop up. These next few weeks had been to him for long so full of possibilities, that the whole world seemed to him capable of launching out into incredible action, of kicking over the traces even of conventional chance.
His greeting of Ted Cruttenden rather took the latter aback, for he had been carefully preparing for the interview.
"How are you? Will the 11.50 suit you on the 24th?--it suits me."
Ted coughed and looked a little embarra.s.sed, for the inward conviction that, to be quite fair, the invitation to Cwmfairnog ought not to have been accepted came back with the first glance at Ned"s--at his friend"s face. Still it was no use shirking the subject, so he buckled himself up for his task.
"It will suit all right," he replied boldly, "You had better write for a room at the inn. I--I am going to Cwmfairnog."
"Cwmfairnog?" echoed Ned incredulously.
"Yes--I"m going to stay with--with Sylva.n.u.s Smith." For all his boldness he had hesitated, and Ned Blackborough fastened on the pause.
"Why didn"t you say with Aura?" There was a trace of scorn in his voice, which Ted resented hotly.
"Because the old man asked me when he came up here. I know it doesn"t sound quite fair, Lord Blackborough, but one can"t help luck. He felt ill, and I happened to be there, and I had to look after him. Then he asked me to come and stop; and so of course I accepted. You would have done the same if you had been me."
Ned Blackborough was silent for a moment; then said, "Perhaps."
"Oh! hang it all!" broke in Ted. "If you are not satisfied, you needn"t feel bound in any way. In fact, I have been thinking a lot, and I have come to the conclusion that your plan isn"t quite fair on her. I think she ought to know; and I"d much rather she had her fair choice. You see, neither she nor her grandfather really care for money."
Ned Blackborough smiled. "I see," he said grimly. "On the whole, I believe you are right." Then he thought for a moment or two. "So be it! Each for himself, and the devil take the hindmost! But we will stick to time and place. And if you want a day or two"s extra leave I----"
Ted blushed a little this time. "I--I--am not employed by the firm any longer, Lord Blackborough," he said hurriedly; "You have been away--besides, a clerk on a hundred and fifty would hardly come to your ears. But the fact is that--that Mr. Hirsch offered me three hundred."
Ned Blackborough"s face took on an expression of amus.e.m.e.nt. "I begin to understand. So you are on the high road to opulence! Now I wonder why he did that?--you shall tell me in the train--11.50--for I must be off, as I"ve some business to get through before closing-time."
The business appeared to amuse him also, for the expression did not fade from his face as he drove to the Public Library, hunted up a book on Wales, then drove to a house-agent"s and gave an order, and finally stopped at those general _entrepreneurs_, Williams and Edwards, and gave another. Myfanwy Jones, catching sight of him on his way to the senior partner"s office, volunteered a remark to the buyer in her department that she knew that fellow, had seen him down at her father"s, and was crushed by the reply: "Him! Why, he is Lord Blackborough--the richest peer in England."
She brazened it out by saying "Get along"; but as a matter of fact Ned was repeating much the same information in the office. "I am Lord Blackborough," he was saying, "you need spare no expense. Only see that everything is well done."
The words had a marvellous dynamic power, setting telegraphic wires and express vans and confidential clerks in motion. The result being that when Ned and Ted, who had travelled down third cla.s.s together in very friendly fashion got out at the station nearest to Dinas there were two very smart motors cars awaiting them.
"If you will excuse me for a moment," said Lord Blackborough to his companion, "I"ll just see my cousin, Mrs. Tressilian--you remember her of course--off for Plas Afon. I"ve taken it for three weeks and Ramsay and some other people are coming down, so we ought to have a good time. Then I can take you round in the Panhard to Cwmfairnog. It will only make a difference of a mile or two, for Plas Afon, is just the other side of Dinas, you know."
Ted waiting on the platform while Helen, another lady, and a maid were stowed away in the covered car, began to realise that Ned was not going to forgo a single advantage. It was to be check and counter-check on both sides. It had been quick work, and to get hold of Plas Afon--the show place of the neighbourhood--must have needed money indeed! Some day he would be able to do that sort of thing if he chose. But he would not choose. He would never be such a reckless devil as Blackborough. Yet he could not help admiring the go and fire of the fellow!
"So you are going to play the prince over me," he said when they had settled comfortably down under a priceless fox-skin rug and Ned was sending the motor up the hill full speed.
Lord Blackborough laughed. "Not at all! I had to check your move somehow. I couldn"t go--as you go--to Mahomet, so I had to try and induce Mahomet to come to me. You will decline my invitations, no doubt, but I shall have done my best. Personally," he added. "I would much rather have stuck to the old plan. Anyhow we won"t defile Cwmfairnog with the smell of petrol. We"ll leave the motor at the bridge--you can send for your things afterwards--and walk up. Ye G.o.ds!
How beautiful this country is in winter."
It was, indeed. The hills lay so still, so soft beneath the pale-blue wintry sky, the distant ones greyly transparent, the near ones showing rounded, red-brown bracken-covered lights against rounded, misty, violet shadows. The very frost rime on each leaf, each blade of gra.s.s, looked soft, and the gold of the slanting sunlight seemed to warm the very icicles which drooped from the high moss-covered, fern-clad banks showing where some trickle of water dropped from the hillside above.
But it was up the wooded ravines where the bare branches of the oak scrub followed each curving contour that the ineffable hues of blent shadows and shine showed to their fullest. They were valleys of perfect rest, deep blue in their depths, jasper, jewelled with crystals on their heights.
The footsteps of the two echoed sharply among the rocks. Their shadows, blent into one, preceded them. Yet the thought of both went further ahead still. There were no flowers now, but the brambles dead-green and russet and gold, still thrust out withered fruit-branches across their path. The leafless trees gave clearer vision now. They could see across the stream. There was the garden, the lawn, and on it, by heaven, reaching down red holly-berries from an old tree was a figure in white--Aura herself!
Ned gave a view holloa. She turned round, waved one hand, then dropping her berries waved both.
The thought of the long round by the rhododendrons and the drawbridge was too much for them. The parapet was low, the stream lower still. In a moment they were over it, and racing to meet her like a couple of schoolboys.
She laughed to see them, holding out both hands.
"What a hurry you are in," she cried. "So you have both come.
Grandfather said you wouldn"t, but Martha and I thought it wiser to get the two rooms ready--and I was right!"