A Sovereign Remedy Part 48

"Going," she echoed incredulously. "Oh, no! You must stop and see Ted.

It is Sat.u.r.day 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 was.h.i.+ng 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 succ.u.mbed 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, s.m.u.t-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 repet.i.tion. "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 suns.h.i.+ne. The att.i.tude 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.