Did Ned Blackborough go to India, seeking dreams at the feet of some
entranced immobile ascetic, hidden away even from the sunshine of the
world under the shade of the bo-tree? Did he go to Algiers and seek
for them in the desert among the pathless dunes, where every step is
covered by the eternally-restless, eternally-recurring wind-writing of
the sand ripples? Or remaining closer at hand did he, in some remote
Cornish village seek to hear the secret of dreams that is told
unceasingly in the roar and the hush of the sea? Or on the eternal
snows, which dominate all Europe in its hurry and its hunt for gold,
which look out with cold eyes on its civilisation, its culture, its
crime, did he find what he sought hemmed in by calm glaciers, frozen,
ice-bound?
The one would have served his purpose quite as well as another; that
being the putting in of time in a manner which did not offend his
sensibilities; for, as he told himself often, he was fast becoming a
crank.
The world, as it was, did not amuse him very much; it seemed to him
hopelessly vulgar, even in its highest ideals for individual success
and individual culture.
Wherever he went, and as to that none but himself knew, he returned as
usual, punctual to a day. It was early October therefore, when, a
little thinner, considerably browner, he found himself walking down
Accacia Road West, Blackborough, looking for No. 10, that being the
address where he was told the Cruttendens lived.
He was going to see if Aura was happy. Viewed from the outside this
appeared unlikely, for Accacia Road was not, so to speak,
exhilarating, though it was broad and open enough, with the usual
wide asphalt pavement at either side, and a rather new-looking
well-swept road, all too large apparently for the requirements of the
sparse-wheeled traffic, in the middle. Possibly the inhabitants of the
desirable residences, many of which were still to let, had
contemplated being carriage people and had failed of their intention.
As it was, it had a distinctly desolate air. At intervals of some
thirty feet upon the pavement stood little pollarded lime-trees, each
apparently glued to and supported by yard-wide gratings of cast iron,
encircled by the mystic legend "Blackborough Municipal Board." The
trees stood on their iron bases firmly, just as the green-shaving
ones in the boxes of Dutch toys do on their wooden roundels, and
Ned felt impelled by a desire to lift one up and set it down again
skew-fashion, just out of the straight line, so as to break the
interminable regularity which made him feel as if he must go on and on
to the very end. And where that might be only Heaven knew; beyond
mortal sight anyhow.
Then, mercifully, the very quaintness of that iron prison-window of a
grating, between root and leaf, drew his thoughts away at a tangent,
and he became immersed in an imaginary argument between them.
Between the white-feeling fibrelet, down in the darkness of Earth
mother's breast, the small sightless seeker supplying the leaves with
all things, and clamouring in return for the whisper of blue skies,
fresh breezes, singing birds, and the smoke-dimmed foliage which had
no tale to tell save of smuts, tradesmen's carts, electric trams, and
babies' perambulators.
It was the number on one of the gates, uniform in size, structure, and
colour--which occurred, like the gratings, at regular intervals--that
made him pause at last, and look curiously at the house beyond it.
Impossible!
It was frankly impossible that Aura, living there, could be happy;
although, no doubt, it was what is called by auctioneers a "most
superior and desirable family residence." Semi-detached, it had a
carriage sweep belonging to both houses, which trended away from a
gate with "No. 10, Fernlea" upon it, past one bow-window, one front
door, two bow windows, another front door, and a final bow-window to
the further gate with its "No. 11, Heatherdale." Which was
superfluous; the number or the name?
There was a butcher's trundle, with Hogg upon it in gold letters,
standing at one gate, a butcher's trundle with Slogg upon it at the
other; and as Ned Blackborough turned in, two butcher boys, each with
flat baskets on their blue linen arms, passed out from the little
narrow green lattice-work doors, which filled up the space between
Fernlea on the one side and Heatherdale on the other, and the high
garden walls which separated each couple of superior residences from
their neighbouring couples. The boys took no notice of each other,
being dignified rivals.
How could Aura be happy, thought Ned, in an environment where the only
possibility of differentiating yourself from your neighbour was by
employing Slogg instead of Hogg?
The door was opened to him by what is called a superior
house-parlourmaid, a young person of lofty manners, frizzed hair, and
much starch.
"Wot nyme?" she asked, superciliously.
"Lord Blackborough."
Sudden awe left her hardly any voice for the necessary announcement,
and she fled back precipitately to the kitchen. "Cookie!" she
exclaimed, sinking into a chair. "Did you ever! Lord Blackborough, 'im
as owns half the town an' is as rich as Crees' is--whoever Crees may
be!--is in the parlor--such a real gent to look at too. And that ain't
all. Missus called 'im 'Ned!' It's for all the world like that lovely
tale in the _Penny Cupid_ I was reading last night in bed, only he was
a h'earl." Her pert eyes grew tender; she sighed.
"Did she now," said Cookie, a lazy-looking, fat lump of a girl, much
of the same type. "Poor master! an' he, if you like, is a good-lookin'
fellar; but I always did say she wasn't no lady. She haven't any lace
on her underclothes--at least none to speak of."
Meanwhile, after her first glad incredulous cry of "Ned," Aura had
hastily thrust away her work and risen.
As she came forward, a world of welcome in her face, in her
outstretched hands, Ned Blackborough realised by his swift sense of
disappointment how much--despite his own asseverations to the
contrary--he had counted on unhappiness.
Truly women were kittle cattle. Truly it was ill prophesying for the
feminine sex!
She was happy, radiantly happy. Her face, if thinner, was infinitely
more vivid; if less beautiful in a way it was far more alive. It was
this which struck him--the vitality of it--its firm grip on life--its
almost exuberant power. It seemed to him as if two souls, two minds,
two hearts looked out at him from her eyes.
He was no fool. He understood the position in a moment; he knew that
love was worsted.
"So you are quite happy," he said, still holding her hand.
"Happy?" she echoed. "Oh, Ned! I have never been so happy in all my
life--everything seems so new, everything seems to go on and on for
ever, as if there was no end to interest and pleasure."
"I am glad," he said lamely, then added, "I shouldn't have
thought----"
She followed his eyes, which had wandered to an electric blue paper
covered with gigantic poppies of a deeper hue, with a frieze in which
positively Brobdingnagian flowers, presumably of the same species,
curled themselves in contortions terribly suggestive of a bad pain in
their insides.
"Yea! isn't it awful?" she admitted with a laugh; "but I have taken
all the furniture you see out of this room and stuffed it away in
another empty one for the present"--an odd shy smile showed on her
face, and seating herself on a stool once more she took up her work
again and recommenced tucking a piece of muslin with new-born skill;
for in the old days she had never touched a needle. "And it isn't
quite so bad here at the back where one can't see people. But I wish
my poor primroses would grow. I got them in a wood not so very far
away, but the cats won't give them a chance--they scratch them up at
night, poor things!" Her eyes were sorrowfully on the parallelogram of
grass, gravel, and smut-blackened stems below the flight of grimy
steps, which was described in the house-agent's list as a charming
garden. "If it happens again I shall take them back. It is never fair
to keep anything where it can't grow properly."
"Exactly so," he thought; but her face showed absolute
unconsciousness.
"What do you find to do with yourself?" he asked suddenly. He felt he
would go mad in a week.
"Do!"--she smiled. "Why, I never have half enough time! You see we
can't afford to keep experienced servants, as yet. This house is
really beyond our income, but my husband--Ted, I mean--was afraid I
should not thrive in the town. It is very good of him, isn't it? to go
to such expense for me."
"Very," assented Lord Blackborough, recognising Ted's phraseology and
feeling bored.
"So I have to do most of the cooking," she went on quite eagerly. "It
is rather fun, though Ted is quite awfully particular about his food.
But he says I am getting quite a--a _cordon bleue_--that's right,
isn't it?"
"Quite right," assented Ned gravely. He was beginning to wonder how he
should get away from this atmosphere of satisfaction.
"And then," she went on, and whether she smiled or was grave he could
not tell, for her face was bent over her work, "I have so much to
think of--you cannot know how much. Sometimes I feel as if, somehow,
the whole world was bound up in me."
For the life of him he could not help a thrill in answer to the thrill
of her voice. So he sat looking at her sewing garments for another
man's child, until his heart waxed hot, and he said--
"Has it never struck you, Aura, that all this is--just a little rough
on me?"
She looked up at him, her beautiful eyes, twin stars of mysterious
double life, brimming with swift tears.
"You--you shall be its godfather," she said softly.
He could have cursed, he could have laughed, he could have cried over
the pure ridiculousness of the reply; but the pure motherhood in her
eyes was too much for him.
"The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof." The phrase came
back to his memory, reproving his individualism, setting aside all
other claims as trivial.
"Well!" he said, rising as he spoke, "there is nothing more to be
said. So--having found you happy--I must be going."
"Going," she echoed incredulously. "Oh, no! You must stop and see Ted.
It is Saturday and he is always home by three. You might stop and come
with us to Chorley Hill; we go there every week because I like it. You
can see the Welsh mountains quite distinctly if it is clear."
Her eyes were clear anyhow. She was her old self again in her
eagerness; the girl free, unfettered in every way, who had tramped
those Welsh mountains with him so often. He could see her with the
wind blowing amongst her bronze, uncovered curls, billowing amongst
the folds of her white linen overall. Why did she wear black now? To
save the washing bills he expected. And she spent her life chiefly, no
doubt, in buying a herring and a half for three halfpence! She, who
had never seen a sixpence! A flood of annoyed pity swept through him
at the needlessness of the desecration, rousing his antagonism once
more.
"As it is just on three now," he replied, "I'll stop and see him
anyhow."
It might be wiser, he felt. It would be a thing got over, which, after
the abruptness of their last parting, was desirable; though, on the
whole, he was inclined to have done with it all, to congratulate Ted
on his success, and renounce all claim on a woman who had evidently
forgotten love in motherhood--and housekeeping.
He felt very bitter; though the question as to whether she could be
more content forced itself upon him rudely.
"There he is!" cried Aura joyfully, as in the jerry-built house the
grating noise of a latch-key in the front lock became distinctly
audible at the back. "I'll run and tell him you are here, and then I
can change my dress before we start."
It was on the whole a relief that they two--men who were
rivals--should meet without the cause of the rivalry being present
also. Though magnanimity was the only card to play. What else was
possible when you could distinctly hear the cause of rivalry being
kissed in the hall?
Ned Blackborough, therefore, was frankness itself. "How are you,
Ted? I won't say I'm glad, but I do find Aura very well, and very
happy--so--so that ends it, I suppose."
Ted, who was also looking the picture of health and happiness, flushed
up with pleasure, and gripped Lord Blackborough's hand effusively.
"Upon my soul, Ned," he cried, "you are just an awfully good sort--one
of the best fellows living; and I feel I've been a bit of a beast.
Only you don't know how the thought that we should have fallen out
over this thing has worried me. It is real good to have you back
again. And she is happy, isn't she?--bless her heart! though why she
should have kept you in this horrid bare room at the back, I can't
think. Come into the drawing-room, old man, it is something like. But
it isn't a bad house, is it? Far too expensive, of course, but----"
Afloat on finance, Ted's conscious virtue overflowed like a cold
douche on Ned's patience, which had almost succumbed under
explanations that, after all, he "was getting along, but that it was
safer--especially with expenses ahead--to have a wide margin," when
Aura reappeared. She was wearing the white coat and skirt, the brown
Tam-o'-Shanter in which she had gone to Plas Afon. Ned used often to
say that in his last incarnation he must either have been a woman or a
man milliner; now he recognised without effort, that not only had Aura
knotted the Mechlin scarf about her neck but that she also carried the
sables over her arm. So she also remembered.
The fact decided him in an instant. "Let me take those," he said
coolly. She looked conscious as she gave up the furs, and remarked
hurriedly, "We can walk there, Ted; but we might return by the
five-thirty train from Elsham."
"Then I'll wire for the motor to meet me there," replied Ned. "It is
only six miles to New Park and there is no object in my going round by
Blackborough again; besides there is always a wait at the junction."
It seemed to him an interminable time before they left the lingering
outskirts of the town behind them, and even when the last bow-window
and gable tailed down into the original four-square cottage, the
country about was still grime-clad, smut-bound. But Aura did not
appear to notice it. In her eyes sat eternal hope, eternal spring,
which finds the old world good.
Even when they sat finally on the sand-set bit of common, interspersed
with straggly heath and unkempt gorse which was all the nature that
Chorley Hill boasted, she did not seem to see the copious orange peel,
the screws of sandwich paper which, to Ned's fastidiousness made the
place horrible. Her eyes were on the distances where the Welsh hills
showed blue.
"How I would love to see Cwmfaernog again!" she said suddenly, "you
know, of course, the poor place had to be sold. Ted very nearly had to
pay----"
Lord Blackborough cut short her repetition. "But he didn't," he
remarked, "for I bought it."
"You bought it," she echoed incredulously; "Ted never told me that."
She glanced to her husband, who, flat on the sand with his hat over
his eyes, was apparently asleep in the sunshine. The attitude
discovered the fact that six months of happy married life--and, no
doubt, Aura's cooking--had made him perceptibly larger in the waist.
He was evidently following Mr. Hirsch's example, thought Ned; though
he might, like other folk, have grown leaner upon grief; for Ned,
happily, had not lost the faculty of mocking at his own troubles.
"I wonder why he never told me," said Aura, vaguely vexed, making
Ned--like the fool that he was, he told himself--instant in excuse.
"He didn't know, I expect; my agent bought it for me. Yes! there it is
with Martha and Adam--you know they are married?"
Aura laughed. "Yes! I had a letter from Martha saying she was
agreeably disappointed with her lot. That is what I am, too;" she
paused. "I should love to go there again. Will you take me some day?"
"Perhaps," he replied soberly, while his pulses bounded.
"May would be the best month for me," she said dreamily. "Besides
there are the wild hyacinths--they are like the floor of heaven!"
The floor of heaven! What vague memory was it that woke with those
words? A blue sea, a ripple on a boat's side----
Then Ted woke also, clamouring for tea. They had it at a little inn,
and were very merry; only after a time the conversation always seemed
to drift away towards something to eat, or something to buy. It is
always the herring or the penny which had to be paid for it. That was
Ted's fault. The sum of his life seemed to be made up of duodecimal
fractions.
"We shall have to foot it a bit if we are to catch the train," said
Ted gaily as they started; "hold on to me, Aura, it's a bit slippery
down the hill."
So with his arm tucked into hers, and Ned on the other side, they made
their way talking and laughing. Before long, however, the talk
resolved itself into an argument between the two men, Ted defending
the action of a certain company, Ned stigmatising it as a swindle.
"The short cut over the water-meadow, Aura," said Ted, interrupting
himself. "She is signalled, and it will save time." He drew back as he
spoke to let her cross the plank-bridge which spanned the ditch and to
clinch his point. "I maintain," he went on, "that the prospectus
was as fair as any prospectus can be, for one is bound to put on
rose-coloured spectacles in writing one, or the thing won't catch on.
Men who have money to invest ought to know----"
"Take care," cried Ned, who was watching Aura; but he was an instant
too late. There was a tiny piece of orange peel on the plank--the rest
of it lay amongst the water-cresses in the ditch--her foot slipped on
it, and she caught at the hand-railing to steady herself, so wrenching
herself round by a strong effort to avoid dropping feet foremost into
the mud.
It was quite a small affair, but the shock of it left her colourless,
half on, half off the plank.
"My dearest!" cried Ted in a fearful fuss, "you aren't----"
"Not a bit," she interrupted gaily, "Give me your hand up, please."
But there was a scared, frightened look in her eyes, and five minutes
afterwards, as they were hurrying on, she slackened speed.
"We haven't over much time, my dear," said Ted grudgingly.
She looked at him almost with reproach. "I suppose it is falling so,
so suddenly," she began.
"Ted," interrupted Lord Blackborough, "I believe I'd better take your
wife back in the motor. Sorry I can't take you, but it is only the
little De Dion. If you run for it you'll just get it. We shall be home
before you will, with that wait at the junction."
"You don't mind, do you, darling?" asked Ted, solicitously.
Five minutes afterwards he waved his handkerchief from the train at
them as they made their way leisurely across the water-meadow.
"You will be home in half an hour, and have a good rest," said Ned
consolingly, as those beautiful eyes with the eternal hope in them
looked into his with that vague dread growing to them.
"Yes," she said cheerfully, "it was only the start."
But ten minutes later in the car, she laid her hand suddenly on Ned's
as it held the steering gear.
"Oh, Ned!" she said, "I'm--I'm so afraid!" Her voice was an appeal,
and he bent hastily to kiss the hand which clung to his, as it would
have clung to any human being.
"Cheer up!" he said huskily, "Nothing's going to go wrong! I'll have
you home in no time; so let me steer straight, will you?"
The little car swept along at top speed. She sat still, her face drawn
and pale, her hands holding hard to the white folds of her dress.
Twelve miles at least, allowing for speed limits through the town, and
New Park close at hand; just in fact, round the corner. He made the
calculation rapidly, and began to sound the hooter.
"I shall take you in here," he said decisively, "and telephone to Ted.
Then when you've had a good rest you can go home."
The gates, set wide open at his signalling, slipped past in the
growing dusk, a rabbit or two showed nimble across the smooth surface
of the drive.
"It will be best, perhaps," said Aura, with a catch in her breath.
"Of course it will be best," he replied cheerfully, as he drew up in
the wide portico.
"The housekeeper, please!" he called, glad for once of the decorous
hurry of obedience. "Take Mrs. Cruttenden, if you please, Mrs. Adgers,
and let her rest for a little," he said to the dignified lady who
appeared as if by magic. Then, only waiting to add in a lower voice,
"and look after her; you understand," he was in the car again before
it had had time to run down, and was off over a short cut to St.
Helena's Hospital, which lay on the hill about three miles off.
Thence he returned in twenty minutes with Sister Ann, leaving Dr.
Ramsay to follow more leisurely.
Finally, having sent the car in charge of a _chauffeur_ to bring Ted
along, he sat in the library and smoked, feeling half derisive at the
irony of fate. If he had indeed been Aura's husband, and the father of
this coming child, what more could he have done?
Dr. Ramsay arrived cool and collected and went upstairs. Ted
arrived in a terrible state of fuss and also went upstairs. Then the
house reverted to its usual staid routine. The gong sounded at
dressing-time, and, clad in due decorum, Ned dined alone in the huge
red dining-room which looked like a big mouth ready to swallow him up.
The footman, overlooked by the butler, handed him the courses gravely,
the butler filled his glass with '98 Pomeroy. Ned had not asked for it
this time, but it was considered the proper thing with sudden and
serious illness in the house. And all the while he was thinking how
little life and death would affect him, if all these things could be
swept away, and he be indeed nothing more than Carlyle's forked radish
with a consciousness.
Then he smoked and read again till ten o'clock, when the footman,
overlooked by the butler, brought the whisky and water into the
library, and Dr. Ramsay came with it.
"I shall want help," he said, "but I don't want to alarm him--her
husband. She is as brave as possible, but he--so I thought you----"
"Whom do you want?" asked Ned, going to the telephone.
Dr. Ramsay named a London specialist, and Ned looked up quickly.
"As bad as that?" he asked.
"As bad as it can be, I'm afraid," replied the doctor.
After the specialist had been summoned and duly bribed, there was
nothing to do but sit and smoke again, since the memory of those
beautiful eyes with the eternal hope of the world's immortality in
them, haunted him beyond the cure of sleep. If he had been her
husband, could he have done more, could he have felt more?
The London man arrived about one o'clock, and Ned, after the slight
bustle of his coming and going upstairs, heard no more noise. The
house seemed to settle down into the usual silence of night.
What was going on upstairs? Would she pass into the Unseen? Would she
settle the question once and for all?
It was just as the red October sunrise was beginning to glow through
the trees of the park, that Ned, standing at the window to watch it,
heard the click of the door handle behind him, and turned to see the
London doctor, a tall man with eyeglasses and a stoop.
"Well!" he said eagerly. "How is she?"
"As well as can--ah--ah--be expected," said the specialist, who
appeared to be afflicted with a stammer, "after such a very
serious--ah--ah--operation as--ah--ah--was necessary to save
the--the--the interesting patient's life. But--ah--ah--D.V. it is
saved, and--and I need hardly say we--we have every reason to be
thankful, even though the future is, or may be--of course----"
Here Dr. Ramsay entered the room, and he turned to him. "I was just
preparing Mr. Cruttenden for the--ah--possibility----"
"This is Lord Blackborough, sir," interrupted Peter Ramsay
impatiently. "I told you I had given Mr. Cruttenden a sleeping draught
after the immediate danger to life was over. Mrs. Cruttenden was
brought to Lord Blackborough's house just after the accident. Now,
sir, if you are in a hurry they are ready to take you to the station."
"Just so--ah!" murmured the great man, a trifle confused. "Very
pleased to make your acquaintance, my lord. Thanks, Doctor--ah----"
"Ramsay," said the latter, carrying him off still blandly stuttering.
When Peter Ramsay returned he found Ned looking at the sunrise once
more. The whole sky was growing red, the daylight was outpaling the
lamp beside which Ned had watched for this dawn.
Suddenly he spoke. "Is it worth while, I wonder, saving
life--sometimes? Considering what motherhood means to some women, I
doubt it."
And then without another word he turned from the window, and sitting
down at the writing-table rested his head on his hand, and stared out
vacantly into the room, seeing nothing but those beautiful eyes, twin
stars of two souls.
Those eyes that were never to be satisfied! No, it was not worth it.
Then he glanced round at the doctor who stood professionally silent.
"I'll give you a piece of advice," he said, "and then we'll drop the
subject. If you have anything to say, tell her, not him. You will make
it easier for her, I expect, than he will."