It was not more than six hours ago that Aura had looked at Ned's iris,
had sat in the dawn with Gwen's head in her lap, yet it seemed to the
girl who had never seen death before, who had never before realised
what Love meant, as if whole aeons had passed over her head. In truth
they had; for Love and Death make up Life, since Birth comes to us
without remembrance.
The morning had passed by in dizzy haste. There had been much to do,
and do quickly, so that her grandfather should not be disturbed by
even knowing of the tragedy. This was the more easy of compass, seeing
that since his last seizure he had not been coming downstairs till
late. So, ere he appeared, there had been time for folk to come and
go, time even for old Adam to rake over the gravel disturbed by so
many feet. There was no trace, in fact, of what had happened when Aura
passed by the spot on her way to the hills. Parkinson's persistent
hysterics had been the most troublesome factor in the problem of
concealment, but Martha had at last, losing patience, locked her away
in one of the cottage bedrooms, and left her there with the callous
remark, "She'll come round by herself, and if she don't, 'oo cares?"
Who, indeed, did care about anything? Martha and Adam went about
their work as usual; her grandfather knew nothing; even Ted was away.
Aura felt terribly lonely for the first time in her life; the more so
because it seemed to her as if part of her very self had rebelled
against that other self which, for one-and-twenty years, had lived
such a frank, clear life. For all those years she had carried no
burden; but now Love and Death claimed to come with her. She could not
separate them even in her thoughts. One seemed to her destruction of
the body, the other destruction of the mind.
So when leisure became hers at last she took up the thread of life
where it had been broken by the intrusion into it of Gwen's death, and
started to climb the hills, as she would have done at dawn. It was her
natural instinct always. Other girls might shut themselves up in their
rooms to think, might sit with their feet on the fender and dream. She
had to go out, to feel the fresh breeze on her face, before her mind
would work at all.
As she sat on the rocky sheep shelter, whither her feet had taken her
almost unconsciously, since it was her favourite outlook, the winter
sun beat down on her fiercely, warming her through to the heart. She
could feel her very veins pulsing; their rhythm seemed almost to sing
in her ears.
How warm it was! but in the shadows behind the big boulders--ay! and
in the tiny shade of each blade of grass, each twig of bracken, the
frost still lingered white, for the air was freeezing.
Sunshine and frost! Fire and ice!
That was exactly what she felt like herself! She was half fire, half
ice; for a fierce virginity of mind fought desperately against the
intrusion of that glad new impulse of self-surrender she had felt when
she saw Ned's iris.
That, she supposed, was Love; but what was that sort of love worth if
it brought death with it to--to herself--to her mind?
She felt indescribably smirched and stained. As she glanced at the
fresh white serge skirt she was wearing she seemed to see on it still
that crimson blood. It was horrible! It would be there always for her,
scarlet as sin, no matter how white as wool it seemed to others.
Poor Gwen! That was the end of it all. She had, no doubt, yielded to
Love. Had she had any terror of it at first? Had she also felt the
degradation of it?
So, as she sat, more dreaming than thinking, a voice called her. She
started to her feet, remembering in a flash that other man's voice
which had called "Gwen" in that very place--the man whom she had
called coward--whom she had smitten with the lily she held.
It was not an opportune moment for Ned Blackborough, who, having come
over to Cwmfaernog with congratulations, had, after hearing from
Martha of the tragedy, followed the girl straight to her favourite
outlook with the sort of instinctive knowledge of what she would do,
which he had always seemed to possess. At the present moment this was
in itself an offence to Aura. What right had he to pry into her mind?
"What is wrong?" he asked, checked in his quick sympathy by the
expression on her face. Another offence, since what right had he to
know anything was wrong.
"Nothing," she answered curtly; "only I came here for quiet and it
seems as if I am not to have it!"
He stared at her for a second; then, with a shrug of the shoulders,
turned to go, thereby bringing to her a pang of remorse; since when
had he not been courteous, not been kind?
His quick return, therefore, and the reckless obstinacy which showed
on his face relieved her.
"A cat may look at a king, Miss Graham," he said coolly. "I came to
say I was sorry. I am. And as I fail to see that your birthday has any
monopoly over New Year's Day, I will wish you many happy returns of
the latter. May your temper never grow worse."
She had to smile. The sudden outburst of truth was so like Ned when
anything occurred to ruffle or disarrange the smooth covering of
convention.
"Thank you," she replied quite frankly, feeling curiously at her ease;
"I did not mean to be rude, but----"
"I know," he said simply, and paused. And she knew so well that he
knew, that, though her lip quivered for a second she said no more.
There was no need to say more.
It was so curious to have him sitting there beside her. Now that he
had come all the trouble had gone; she was once more absolutely at her
ease.
"And thanks also for the iris," she said after a pause, feeling glad
to escape from the tragedies of life. "It is jolly; but I wish you
hadn't dug the poor thing up."
"I did not dig it up," he replied coolly.
"You didn't--then how----"
"I wired to Covent Garden for another, and it came down in charge of
such a superior person that I almost had to ask him to dine; so 'the
most beautiful thing in the most beautiful place in the world' remains
beside the sphinx as----" he paused.
"As what?" she asked.
He had come half-prepared to speak of his love, and there was about
her face to-day a curious half-forlorn puzzled look which made him
feel inclined to take her in his arms and kiss it away--"As a
remembrance of you, naturally," he replied.
She sat down on the nearest stone feeling just a little dizzy, and
clasping her hands across her knees stared out at the pale blue misty
valley, and the pale blue winter sky beyond.
"But why should you want something to remember me by?" she said
slowly. "I shall always remember you without anything."
Her freedom from conventional cloakings in speech was at all times a
trifle disconcerting, and he felt inclined to reply "That is very kind
of you," or make some other banal remark of the sort which might bring
convention back. Then he cursed himself for a low beast, and followed
her unconsciousness as closely as he could.
"Perhaps I wanted to remember the exact words you said," he suggested.
"But you do remember them," she answered aggrievedly; "that is what I
complain of. You remember every little thing I say--and it is most
uncomfortable. I cannot think why you should."
He took his fate in his hand. "Can't you--I can----. It is because I
happen to love you."
She sat still for a second, then turned and looked at him with
narrowing eyes. "I don't see what that has to do with it! You knew
what I was thinking about the very first time we met, and you could
not possibly have been in love with me then."
Her seriousness made him laugh outright. It was the most delicious
piece of comedy to be sitting there talking of his love as if it did
not belong to him, while his pulses--stay! were they bounding, or had
they quieted down to a curious content?
"I am not so sure," he replied gravely. "There is such a thing, you
are doubtless aware, as love at first sight."
"Not for sensible people, and I think we are sensible," she argued
grudgingly. "I know, at any rate, that I was not in love with you for
a long time afterwards."
The whole world seemed to spin round with Ned....
"Then you are--oh! my dear, my dear!" ...
"Please don't!" she cried, hastily drawing back from his outstretched
hands; "I hate being touched. Besides that has nothing to do with what
I want to find out. Why, from the very beginning, did you always
understand? That can have nothing to do with love ... not, at least,
with love like Gwen's"--the last sentence came thoughtfully in a lower
key.
"But our love will be different, dear," he said almost solemnly. "If
you will marry me, Aura, I will try to understand to the very end--so
help me God."
She smiled at him brilliantly. "And you would--you couldn't help it!
But that is no reason why we should marry. It seems to me we have
mixed things up somehow. No! that is no reason at all."
"Perhaps not," he admitted, following her thought. "Then marry me for
some other reason, my dear."
She shook her head. "There is only one reason for marriage," she said,
with a wisdom born of the untrammelled teaching of Nature, "and if I
were to marry you--I should be afraid--yes, Ned! I will tell you the
truth because you are certain to understand--I should be afraid of
loving you too much. I--I don't want to love like that."
He sat bewildered, his passion dying at the hands of truth. Then he
muttered, half to himself, feeling with a rush of shame how far he was
from her, how little he really understood her innocence of evil,
"Heaven knows why you should--I am a miserable beast--but----. Oh! I
hope to God you would, my dear--I hope to God you would!"
"Why?" she asked calmly, and he had no answer ready. So he harked back
after a while to a lower level.
"That is the most original reason for refusing a man I ever heard," he
said whimsically. "Have you any others of the same sort?"
She responded instantly to his mood. "Plenty!" she replied cheerfully.
"To begin with, you are far too rich. I am only just beginning to
realise how I should hate to have money--besides it is wrong, you
know."
"I don't know," he said dryly; "but it is quite easy to divest oneself
of money. I never find the slightest difficulty in getting rid of
it--so don't let that stand in your way."
It was her turn to laugh--a soft, little laugh with a hint of reproof
in it.
"I don't expect you do. Ted is always saying you are reckless. Then
there is grandfather; you know he doesn't like you half so much as he
likes Ted----"
"The deuce he doesn't!" assented Ned, his sudden pang of jealousy
softened by his sense of the comic; "but you are surely not going to
marry Ted in order to please your grandfather?"
She looked at him disapprovingly, "I might marry some one worse; Ted
is a dear."
He felt exasperated. "Yes! he is an uncommonly good fellow; but--you
don't happen to love him. And you do--at least I think you do"--he
felt that certainty might overpower his self-control--"love me."
She took no notice of this, but went on argumentatively.
"Then I don't think I like marriage in your rank of life. With a poor
man, and lots of work and trouble and children, it would be very
interesting; but--look at Lady Smith-Biggs! I don't know what Sir
Joseph is like, of course, but she looks as if she led a dull life."
"Very!" assented Ned, back to smiles once more. "But I wouldn't, if I
were you, take Lady Smith-Biggs' as a test case; there are plenty of
marriages----" he paused, feeling it would be difficult with Aura's
standard to adduce many examples; but then he was prepared to chuck
everything, and go forth with sandal shoon into the wilderness if need
be. Yes! she was right. It was hardly marriage that he wanted after
all.
So for a time they sat and looked out over the pale blue mists behind
which the hills loomed large, seeming to lose themselves in the pale
blue sky.
"There must be something better," said the girl at last. "Oh, Ned!
there is something better!"
"Better than love," he echoed; "perhaps than some loves; not better
than mine!"
"Don't people always say that? Perhaps _he_ said it to Gwen----"
"Child!" he said swiftly, "don't think of that--that was not love."
"And it was not marriage either," she replied softly; "but what you
mean has nothing to do with what is called love, with what is called
marriage--that is what I mean too."
He shook his head. "That is too fine for me, Aura! I want you. I am
not satisfied without you."
He was so close to her that he could lay his hand on hers.
"S--sh!" she said swiftly, laying her other hand on his so as to
detain it. "Listen!"
Just below them, in a sheltered corrie, grew a great holly-tree
covered with berries that glowed scarlet against the distant blue. On
its topmost twig, with flaming breast yellowed by the exceeding
brilliance of those blood-red berries, a robin had settled itself to
sing. And it sang.
Of what? Of the berries beneath its feet? Of its distant mate? Or out
of the gladness of its heart of life because of the Beginning it did
not remember, of the End it did not know?
Who can say? but it sang. And as it sang those two sat hand in hand,
forgetful even of what humanity calls love. Forgetful of all things
except that they also were dreaming the Dream of Life.
"Did I not say so?" she cried exultantly when the song had ceased.
"Did I not tell you there was something better? You had forgotten me
and I had forgotten you, yet we were happy."
"Because we were hand-clasped," he answered swiftly, "because I
touched you, and you touched me."
She drew her hands away and a flush came to her face.
"But don't you feel afraid--as I do? Don't you want to keep what you
love apart--to keep it safe--even from yourself?"
Did he not? Was it not only this which kept him back from taking her
in his arms and kissing her to the knowledge of what a man's love must
be.
"Yes!" he said unsteadily, constrained to truth by hers. "But there is
a love which does not stain. I'll give it you--if I can."
She looked at him with a vain regret in her eyes. "You couldn't if we
were married, and I couldn't anyhow. Ah no, Ned! It would spoil it
all."
"Spoil what?" he asked roughly, for he began to feel himself worsted
for the time.
"The something better," she replied gaily, "let us wait for that. I
really don't want to marry you, Ned. I should hate it. I knew that
when I saw your iris."
"Then I wish I hadn't climbed up to put it on your window-sill and
wricked my bad arm into the bargain," he said sullenly.
Her face grew grave. "Did you climb up; that was very wrong."
"Was it?" he replied shrugging his shoulders; "but I'm afraid I'm a
very wrong person altogether. At the present moment I feel inclined
to--to--but what is the use--you wouldn't understand. Aura! for the
last time, will you marry me?"
"No, Ned, I won't."
"Then that ends it," he said recklessly. "So good-bye."
She paled a little.
"Must you go?"
"One of us must," he replied, caught in fresh hope, "unless you change
your mind."
"That is impossible--but you will come back, won't you?"
He looked at her full of impatience, yet full of tenderness.
"I believe I ought to say that I won't, but----" Then he held out his
hand, "I understand--apart from everything else in the world--what
this love of ours--" her hand trembled in his for a second, "means to
us--both. I will go away for--yes! for two months, and give you time
to think. Then I will come back. Good-bye, my dear. I can only say it
once more--I love you."
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 passion 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 God 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 reasserted 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.