"It is May," said Ned Blackborough in rather a strained voice, "and
you promised to come to Cwmfaernog in May. You look as if you needed a
holiday. Come!"
Yes, it was May. Four whole months had passed since Myfanwy Jones'
dress had upset Aura's cosmogony, and she had fled to find some
foothold in the slums of the city. She had found a faith there, and
had spent four months in trying to put that faith into practice.
It had been up-hill work, but her courage had not wavered.
Her eyes were clear as she looked back at Ned, who had come in to find
her, as she so often was nowadays, alone. For Ted's first great
success had been but a preliminary to months of daily excitement spent
in gaining, losing, gaining again, in the midst of which he seemed to
have lost sight of the future altogether. And for the present he was
too busy to care. Then underlying all things was his consciousness of
youth. The outlook before him was long; he could not but see that
chance might come into it. Why! in five years time he would be just
reaching the age at which it was prudent for a business man to marry;
for, of course, his marriage to poor dear Aura had been grossly
imprudent, though, but for this one disappointment,--which naturally
meant more to her than to him--it had turned out very well. If only
she would have condescended to amuse herself like other girls--like
Rosa Hirsch, for instance--they might have had a jolly time together
in the various European capitals whither his business took him. But
what was the use of taking her when the only places in which Aura was
not shy and ill at ease were musty fusty old picture galleries and
dreary botanical gardens. And "the Zoo," of course; she had always
been at home in "the Zoo"; but then there was that beastly smell of
smaller mammals all over the shop. So he had gone his way, kindly,
quite affectionately, wholly without sympathy. To Aura it was rather a
relief; it gave her time to rearrange her world.
She was looking a little weary over a pile of household accounts.
There was no need nowadays for heartburnings as to expense; but none
the less Ted expected a properly-balanced book, and the items were
terribly numerous. It was the herring-and-a-half problem expressed in
pounds instead of pence, and there was quite a wrinkle of thought
between Aura's eyebrows, for she was no arithmetician.
To Ned that wrinkle was a tragedy; but then it is always a tragedy for
a man to watch from a distance the woman he loves trying to
reconstruct her life, and reconcile herself to the lack of what he
knows he could give her; and the greater her success the greater--in a
way--is the tragedy.
Ned had felt this every instant of those four months during which the
memory of that pitiful protest, "Not you Ned. Ah! Ned, not you!" had
come between him and even apology. When he had gone back that evening
to fling himself into a chair and gloom over the fire for a few
minutes, he had told himself he was a fool. He had told himself so
hundreds of times since that evening, until there had grown up in him
the conviction that this sort of thing could not possibly last for
ever. Why should it? Why should three human beings be sacrificed? And
in heaven's name to what? Not to a marriage of either soul or body.
They all needed something which they had not got. Ted needed, or would
need, a wife and children. These might be his if Aura were taken away.
She needed the old, free, natural life. This Ned could give her in
that island on the southern seas. And how much more? Ye gods! how much
more of love--true love, and tenderness and truth! As for his own
needs, they were simple, being summed up in that one word--Aura. He
needed her every instant of the day and night. He could not be content
without her. Love had left his body; it had invaded his mind; it had
not yet touched his soul. The personal element was still too strong
for him, so by degrees he had brought himself to believe that perhaps
the best way out of the _impasse_ for all the three actors in the
tragedy would be for him to beguile her away--if he could.
"You know you promised me last year," he reiterated.
"Yes! I promised," she said sadly, and he knew where her thoughts had
fled. He used to see her so often in his dreams, wandering through
great drifts of purple iris, the flower which brings the messages of
the gods, leading a little child by the hand. She was there now, and a
sudden dread came over him again lest nothing short of that would ever
make her really happy. But the next moment he had roused himself. "I
should love to go, of course," she went on. "Fancy seeing Cwmfaernog
and the floor of heaven! Only I can't, can I? till Ted returns, and
that may be----"
"Never, perhaps!" interrupted Ned sarcastically. "He hasn't been much
at home lately, has he?"
She flushed up hastily. "Why should he be? he is not like you--you are
an idle man; besides----" she paused, her pride refusing to justify
her husband even to Ned. "It may not be for a fortnight," she went on
coldly, "he never can tell. And by that time the hyacinths will be
over, and it would be no good. So--so it is no use thinking of it."
But her very readiness in the self-defence of this refusal to blame
her husband, decided him. If that went on much longer, the tragedy
would become permanent. A sudden weariness of the whole foolish muddle
seized on him. He was not going to have Aura spend her days in
saintliness and martyrdom, growing more and more dignified and
gracious, more and more motherly in the look of brimming affection she
never failed to give to him--to him her lover!
It was beyond bearing. He would break down the prison walls at all
costs. He was tired to death himself of civilisation; they would go
into the wilderness and be happy.
"I will ask Mrs. Ramsay to come with us," he said, knowing that he had
not the slightest intention of so doing; but if he was to take the law
into his own hands, he would require a few days to mature his plans.
"She can't come," he said two days afterwards; "she isn't quite up to
it."
Aura looked for a moment as if she were back in the iris fields. "I'm
sorry," she began.
"But," went on Ned coolly, "I believe I could take you there and back
by the four-cylinder Panhard in a day--if you don't mind starting
rather early. Do come. I--I want a holiday too--badly."
He looked like it.
"Poor Ned," she said softly, for she had begun to realise her
responsibilities towards him also. That was the worst of life; the
great hidden tie between all creatures could so seldom be felt or seen
until some wound stripped the quivering flesh, and left the ligaments
bare. "Yes! I will come," she said after a pause, making up her mind
that there, standing on the floor of heaven, she would try and make
him understand that she was worth no man's passionate love. "When
shall we go?"
Something seemed to rise in his throat and choke him. "The first fine
day. Shall we say to-morrow? But we must start at five; and breakfast
by the way."
"At five!" she echoed joyously, looking more like herself than she had
done for months. "Oh Ned! how jolly! I haven't been up at five for
ages and ages. It disturbs Ted so--and then," she hurried on--"the
servants loathe it. They hate you to know how late they are."
She was ready waiting for him, with quite a colour in her cheeks when
he drove up. It was a delicious morning, cool, clear, full of shafted
lights and shadows from the rising sun. Aura tilted back her head
triumphantly and gazed up at the little white fleecy clouds that were
drifting steadily overhead before the westerly breeze.
"I'm not going to look at anything grimy to-day," she said with a
laugh; "and even Blackborough can't soil those! They are too gladly
far away. Do you know that often when I've nothing else to comfort me,
I lie on my back in the garden and dream they are just feathers out of
a great, soft pillow where I am finding rest!"
He felt a pang for her innocent self-betrayal, but he retorted
gravely, "That is your fault for not being contented with a good
civilised wire-mattress."
She laughed out loud. "How nice of you to talk nonsense! It is exactly
like old times; exactly!" she cried. "Ned! do you think we were made
to forget? I don't."
"Some things," he said soberly, "are best forgotten."
"Not many," she replied cheerfully. "Sometimes, Ned, I seem to get at
the meaning of so much by remembering, and then I see how all these
little lives of ours work into one big whole; and then--and then." She
was silent, her eyes still upon the clouds.
"If her Majesty will deign to look upon this poor world," said Ned
Blackborough after quite a long while, "she will see primroses."
They were beyond the grime. The skies were blue, the trees, the grass
were green, and far away the distant hills showed purple through the
blossoming apple orchards.
What need was there for more?
Not once, not twice, but many times that day, as the car sped almost
noiselessly through lanes and past homesteads and fields where the
lambs lay white like little clouds dropped from heaven, Ned told
himself joyfully that this was but the beginning of an end which would
never come.
"Why are you putting on your goggles?" she asked, as, by the low road
round the coast--for the straight hilly pitch over the head of the
valley was too bad for the motor--they came within measurable distance
of Dinas.
"There are a lot of slate spiculae on the road," he replied coolly,
"and one got into my eye once. You had better put on a veil too. I
brought one on purpose."
"You think of everything, Ned," she replied gaily. "I never knew any
one like you."
Except Guy Fawkes, or some arch traitor of that sort, he felt with a
pang; but one had to take precautions, and if you set yourself up as a
_Deus ex machine_ to get people out of a muddle--why, some mud was
likely to stick.
So, disguised out of all recognition, they swept through the village
of Dinas, and, passing the staring schoolhouse, took the turn towards
Cwmfaernog.
The villagers looked after them with slack curiosity, for Dinas was,
as it had always been, immersed in its own trivialities. The revival
had passed away, leaving its traces physical and mental no doubt, but
ceasing to bring any new interest into life. At the present moment,
however, the village had an absorbing interest of its own; for in two
days time the Reverend Hwfa Williams was to marry Alicia Edwards, and
all the other young women in the place were in that curious state of
mingled spitefulness and vicarious nervous excitability which a
wedding so often provokes in the feminine sex.
"They will not find any one at Cwmfaernog, whatever," said Isaac
Edwards at his door, "for Martha Bate and her husband went for a jaunt
the day before yesterday. It is only old Evans from the shepherd's hut
that is to milk the cows and feed the cocks."
Meanwhile the motor sped on, curving round the rocks.
"There is no more slate here, anyhow," cried Aura joyfully, tearing
off her veil. "Oh Ned! look, look! The floor of heaven? Ah! do stop
and let us look."
He did not answer. The engine slowed, quivered, sunk to silence. Now,
at last, he understood. Now he knew what he had seen in the boat so
long ago, when the swift southern storm was sweeping up unseen behind
him. This was the blue mist which had enveloped him and held him. A
blue mist hiding the earth, hiding even every green thing from sight
as it lay in wreaths in the hollows or crept up and up and up, leaving
itself in clouds to cover all things until it met the sky.
The floor of heaven indeed!
Not quite so blue perhaps as that distant roof of heaven over which
the heat of the day had spread a faintly violet haze; but still--the
floor of heaven!
No other words expressed it. Here, surely the angels of God might
tread with unsoiled feet.
"Does not everything of earth seem to fall away," came Aura's voice
all hushed and quiet, "and leave one ... free at last!"
She was out of the car standing, her sandalled feet just touching the
carpet of hyacinths, her hands stretched out towards them, her face
full of absolute undimmed joy. "See!" she continued, "the dear things
grow on to our very path--we won't hurt them, will we? Let us walk on
to the house and see Martha, then I will take you through a path in
the woods to the best place of all." She paused and looked at him
curiously. "Ned--what is it? Something is wrong! What is it?"
"There is nothing wrong," he answered quietly, "and I may as well tell
you here as elsewhere. Martha is not at the house."
She paled a very little. "She is not there," she echoed; "why?"
"Because I sent her away."
"You sent her away?"
"Yes! because I wanted to be alone with you--and--we are alone--alone
with nothing but our love between us--for you do love me? Aura!" he
cried, his quiet giving way as he seized her hands and drew her
towards him. "Why should we go back to all the grime--to the dull,
useless, foolish life? Come with me! No one wants us, no one will miss
us, not even Ted! It has all been a mistake from the beginning. There
is but one way to set things straight--to leave him free to do as he
chooses--come----"
"My poor Ned!"
She stood unresisting before him, with all the motherhood that was in
her, looking at him through eyes that brimmed over with tears, and her
voice, full of an overwhelming pity, smote on his ears, a knell to all
his hopes. He knew it, he felt it to be so even as he listened. He let
her hands fall with a sense of impotence to hold her.
"It is my fault, dear," she said softly, "I ought to have told you--I
ought to have made you understand. Ned! I am worth no man's love. I
shall never----"
He interrupted her with an angry impatient laugh. "But I do
understand. It is you who cannot understand that love lives
untrammelled by such trivialities. Aura! were I your husband now, you
would be a thousand times more dear--the tie between us would be a
thousand times more strong----"
"Hush!" she said, with a world of mysterious solemnity in her voice.
"If that is true, Ned; if love really can live untrammelled by the
body, why should it not live untrammelled by the mind? You want to see
me, to hear me, to--to touch me--perhaps! But Ned! There is something
that is beyond all this--that is beyond everything--beyond you and me,
and yet it is you and I--that is ours now----" Suddenly her tone rose
swift and sharp--"Come, Ned! let us forget the rest----is _this_ not
enough?"
He looked around him and, even amid such transcendental beauty as was
there, shook his head. "I cannot live on air, Aura," he said bitterly.
"No man can."
Her face melted into gentle smiles. "There is the lunch-basket," she
said.
He turned aside almost with a curse. "It is easy to laugh," he began.
"Is it so easy?" she asked, and once again her voice brought to him
that sense of infinite pity, infinite denial. "Then let us laugh, Ned,
while we can. Come, let us lose ourselves. Oh Ned! give me one day
unspotted by the world, untouched by trivialities, just this one day!"
And as she took his hand, the glamour, not of this world, but of that
which lies hidden beyond it, above it, claimed possession of his soul.
The blue mist closed in on them. They stood on the floor of heaven
with the sky above them.
* * * * *
Down in the hollows with the silken fans of the half-opened
beech-leaves overhead, a saffron-coloured azalea dropping its gold
upon the blue, the pink campion struggling for a place amongst the
blossoms, a tuft of white poet's-narcissus looking up from the pool of
water into which a scarce-seen runlet dripped and dropped. What
colour! What almost unimaginable beauty.
* * * * *
Out in the open, in a cup in the hills where the carpet of heaven-blue
hyacinths dwarfed into closer growth showed like a shadowy cloud
against the clearer blue of the sky. What dreamfulness! What peace!
* * * * *
Away on the springing heather on the mountain-top, with half Wales
spread before you, and the westering sun obscured by just such a
shadowy cloud, sending a great sloping corona of light rays to nestle
in the dimples of the hills, and shine in shafted reflections on the
distant sea.
What visions of unending space, of ceaseless life!
* * * * *
"Is it not time?" she said at last as they sat in the sheep-shelter.
The sun was beginning to sink in the west calmly, serenely. The light
shone round them, purest gold. Down in the valley, the blue hyacinth
mist grew darker, colder.
"Yes! It is time," he said quietly.
"It has been quite perfect," she said again.
"Almost perfect," he assented; after all he was but human, and
humanity does not live by sight alone. It craves to touch also.
The motor was awaiting them where they had left it.
She laid her hand on his for a second ere he started it.
"Say it has been quite perfect, Ned," she pleaded.
He looked at her and smiled. "I will not say it--you can say it for
me."
She was silent for a moment and then she spoke.
"It has been quite perfect!"
The motor sped on, the mist wreaths of the hyacinths grew dulled by
young green sprouting ferns, and the rocks closed in for the swift
turn by the school. The children were already out, and a group of them
were playing on the road. They scattered, leaving it clear. And then,
suddenly, from the shadow of the parapet-wall a little toddling child,
escaping from the hand of its wide-eyed curiosity-struck elder,
lurched out into the open.
"Oh Ned! Take care--the child--the child!"
Aura stood up, and in Ned's sudden swerve inwards, an overhanging root
from the high rocky bank above struck her full upon the temple.
The child, shrieking more from joyous excitement than fear, lurched
back with outstretched arms to the shadow; but Aura sank back, her
head resting on Ned's shoulder.
"My God! Aura!" he cried. There was no answer. He did not stop the
car, but sweeping it round the open space by the school, raced back to
Cwmfaernog. There, he knew, all was ready for her reception, there
everything would be to hand. As he sped through the misty blue cloud
once more, he saw nothing of it. His eyes were on her whitening face.
Dear God! How limp she felt, as he lifted her in his arms and carried
her across the drawbridge, and so through the garden to the house. A
scent of violets and primroses, of lilies of the valley, of all things
sweet assailed him as he entered the door that was only latched. He
had brought the flowers when he had come down secretly to see that all
things were prepared. He had brought them _for her!_ And the table set
out with flowers and fruit--that was _for her_ also.
He stumbled up the stairs with his heavy burden to her room. He had
not entered that. He had only climbed once more to her window-sill to
set it abloom with white and purple iris--the messengers of the gods.
How they mocked him now with their tale of immortality. His mind went
back to many a Kashmir grave which he had seen, long and narrow like
the sill set as thick with irises, high upon the hills, low amongst
the dales.
But she could not be dead!
Yet her head lay on the pillow just as it had touched it, her arm
slipping from his support sank, till it could sink no more.
"Aura!" he muttered faintly "Aura!"
He knelt and laid his ear to her heart--oh! sweetest resting--place in
all the world!
There was no sound, no beat. Yes! she was dead!
He turned his face round into the soft pillow of her breast and
whispered "Aura." It seemed to him as on that midsummer night when he
had first met her, as if all the world were wailing "Aura! Aura!"
How long he knelt there he scarcely knew; a faint sense of sound in
the house roused him to the remembrance that something must be done.
He must call for help. But if he did that, every one must know that
she was here with him alone. The world would judge, and what would
that judgment reck of her spotlessness or his forbearance? No! that
must not be, if he could compass otherwise.
His mind, almost unhinged by the terrible shock, chased possibility
through a thousand impossibilities, the least grotesque of these being
a grave of his own digging amongst the hyacinths; his subsequent
flight being easy, since he had made all arrangements for a sudden
disappearance.
Was that a noise below--a faint creak on the stairs? The possibility
troubled him. He crossed to the door, and opened it to find himself
confronted by Ted Cruttenden, his face distorted by passion.
"You scoundrel!" he cried. "You--you infernal scoundrel--where is
Aura--my wife?"
His very vehemence, his very lack of self restraint, brought back Ned
Blackborough's wandering wits. He closed the door behind him, and
stood with his back to it.
"She is--not there," he said slowly. "Ted! listen for one moment. I
brought her here----"
"Do you think I don't know that, you damned villain," burst out
Ted--"when I came home this morning and found you had taken her--there
was some cock-and-bull story the servants had about not sitting up for
her, and a latch-key and all that rot--do you think I was fool enough
not to understand--I've never really trusted you. And now--and
now--let me pass in, I say, or there'll be murder done."
"Listen one moment----" the voice was inexorable. "You never trusted me. I
know that. Have you not trusted her? Are you fool enough to have lived
day and night with her, to have lain with your head upon her
breast--and not known--No! it is impossible. You know what she is--you
must--you do know it----"
Even to Ted Cruttenden's mad jealousy, memory could bring no fuel to
feed the flame; his very anger sank for the moment to self-pity.
"I come home," he muttered, "I find her gone. I follow. I have walked
over the hill to----"
"To--spy upon us----" interrupted Ned sternly, "go on."
"To spy upon you if you will," cried Ted, his passion rising
again--"and I find you here, in her room----"
Ned opened the door behind him quietly. "Because she is dead," he
said, and leaning against the lintel, his head upon his arm, waited.
"Dead!"
The whisper reached him from within full almost of fear; and there was
a long empty silence.
"You will not say I killed her, I suppose," said Ned bitterly at last.
"It was an accident. We were going back--back to you----" The very
wonder of that fact stayed speech; but he knew he must go on. "I am
quite ready to let you shoot me, by and by, but at present--I--I want
you to think of her--of yourself. I don't count. I need count any
more. But we must be quick about it. As I stand before--before
Something that is mightier than I, I swear to you that I have done you
no harm. We won't go into the other question as to what harm you have
done me. And for her--you know. But--but even if we had, what use is
there now, in making a fuss in letting the world know that you have
found her there--with me. Not a soul knows I am here. You can take my
place, as you have taken it before. I can go, as I have gone before."
From within, where Ted Cruttenden stood beside the bed, vaguely
remorseful at his own lack of anything save anger, horror, regret, no
answer came.
"Ted," went on Lord Blackborough, "you must decide. I can go the way
you came, and you can call for help. It must be done at once. I'll
tell you how it happened so that you may know. We got here about noon.
We didn't go into the house. We were--we were in the woods and on the
hills----" his voice failed a little, then grew monotonous. "She said
it was time to go, and I--I was a fool! I said so too. Just at the
corner by the school, a child, a little child, ran in front of the
car. She--she called out--and rose. There was a root--oh! Curse the
damned thing--it struck her as I swerved. It has left a little blue
mark--you can see it on her temple if you look. She never spoke. I
brought her back. She was dead."
"You say you didn't kill her," burst out Ted, his voice now full of
crude anger, grief, hate, "but you did. You brought her here."
"Is there any use in recriminations," asked Ned wearily, "you have to
decide. And, after all, she--she was no wife for you--you are young
yet----" Ted listening, cursed him for repeating the inward thought
that had forced itself into his mind. "You have all the world before
you--and----" for an instant the voice hesitated as if ashamed,
uncertain, then went on. "I had made out a deed of gift to you of a
hundred and fifty thousand pounds. It is about all I have left, and
the works and all that must go to the heir, you know. You see I meant
to disappear, and I meant to take your wife,--so this was just
payment. It can be just payment still. I shall not trouble you again.
But--but you must decide at once."
He stood waiting for a moment or two, his head resting as before upon
his upraised arm upon the lintel; then he heard a step, and lifted his
eyes to check what he knew all too well would come from Ted's lips.
Did he not know it? Was it not the answer of the world where
everything even honour had its price? And was it not far better, far
wiser? Was it not what he himself desired?
"You will find the motor by the bridge," he said quietly. "You had
better call some one from the village first, and then the doctor. The
children will give evidence, some of them were quite big, and no one
at New Park knows anything. Good-bye? I shan't see you again."
When Ted had gone, he closed the door, went downstairs, gathered up
the tell-tale flowers and fruits which he had brought, climbed to the
window-sill and removed the iris, so, putting them all into a basket,
went back to the woods.
Before the car returned with its first consignment of help, the
misty-blue wreaths of the hyacinths, darkening with the dusk, had
hidden him.