A Sovereign Remedy Part 60

Aura! Aura! Aura!

Yes! she had been right. Love like his needed nothing. It could exist--nay! grow to greater strength without trivialities. They were beyond the Shadow of the Night now; nothing could touch them again.

They would go on and on....

That night he slept a little under the stars, and in his dreams he saw her walking amid the drifts of iris leading a little child by the hand. Her face was sad, and as he tried to comfort her, his eyes opened; and lo! it was dawn once more.

A primrose dawn, with little faint, far grey clouds just flecking the wide waste of gold.

"It was quite perfect."

Her words came back to him. She was wrong. The part could not be perfect, and what were they, their griefs, their joys, their loves, but part of the great whole.

His mind was beginning to wander a little, and in the high noon tide he slept to dream that he saw the little child alone. Her head was crowned with iris flowers, her feet were among them, her eyes were violet and white as they were. They looked into his. "Mother says you have no right," came her childish voice. "I am the immortality of the race. Die and forget her. Die and forget all things."

When he awoke, a raven, perched on a rock hard by, cawed hoa.r.s.ely, and flapped lazily away to watch from a greater distance.

A few drops of water trickled from the rock close beside him. He had hollowed out a little cup for it with his hand and drank of it from time to time. Now he poured some of it on his head which had begun to ache. What use was there in prolonging the agony? The sooner it was over the better. He searched in his pockets for any sc.r.a.p of paper which might betray him, and, tearing them up, dug them toilfully into the ground, almost amusing himself in restoring the spot to perfect h.o.m.ogeneity with its surroundings.

His gold signet ring he flung away into the little pool, which, collecting the surface drainage of the very summit, brimmed up below the rock to overflow in a tiny stream. He tried to make a duck and drake of it as his last contribution to the sovereign remedy, but he failed, and he smiled at his failure.

He was becoming very much detached, even from himself, and the one thing to which he clung was the memory of his love.

Aura! Aura! Aura!

He must find her somewhere; and she seemed so close! Sometimes he wondered if she were not there, in his eyes, in his heart.

"Aura," he murmured to himself; "Aura!"

That night he slept dreamlessly. And when he opened his eyes, lo!

there was a Sea of Light. The great s.h.i.+ning arch of the sky seemed to him the golden gate; the open door lay behind him. He was on the other side. He had found himself and her as they had been always, not as a part but as the whole.

"_Tad ek am_," he thought, realising with a rush that He was All Things, and that All Things were in Him. So, as he lay gazing, the round sun rose gloriously, and he sank into unconsciousness.

When he awoke it was to find himself in a work-house infirmary; a long, bare room set in a straight row with beds. Some hive of atoms must have found him on the mountain-top and brought him to die here.

Well! it could not be for long. There was a black screen folded up, ready for use, at the foot of the bed. He knew what that meant; but nothing seemed to matter now that he had pa.s.sed the open door to lose and find Himself.

"Only those who lose can find." His mind, blurred, confused, lingered over this certainty.

"He is conscious," said a voice beside him, and a face, dark, curiously eager, bent over him. It was Morris Pugh's. Walking over the hills that morning on his way to Caeron, the county town, he had come upon Ned Blackborough, had summoned help, and brought him to the infirmary. And now, although having seen him but once in his life, he had failed to recognise the light-hearted maker of ducks-and-drakes in the worn, unconscious man, so close to death, he longed with all the eagerness that was in him, that, ere he had to leave him to death, he might have the chance of saying some word for the Master. For these eighteen months of hard, practical work in the slums of London while they had sobered Morris Pugh, had left him still ardent.

"Hullo!" said Ned weakly. "I've seen you before somewhere--haven't I?"

He paused, and some one gave him another spoonful of stimulant. He wondered vaguely why he took it, since death must come; but it was as well to please people--if you could. "I remember now," he went on, as if he were recalling it from very far away. "It was when we hid the hundred pounds. You were the parson who said, 'Money was the root of all evil.'" He gave a ghost of a smile, then looked into the dark eyes curiously. "I suppose you took it?"

Morris Pugh flushed at the very memory of that never-to-be-forgotten search for G.o.d's providence on the mountain-top.

"So it was you who made the ducks and drakes--I remember," he said slowly. "No! I did not take it; but--but I looked for it, and it was gone."

"Gone," echoed Ned, and lay thinking.

"Then it must have been Ted who took it," he murmured, going back into the past. "He must have gone that midsummer night--why, yes! of course----" Then suddenly his dulled mind grasped the whole sequence of events. "He--and Hirsch--that is how he got Aura--my money--d.a.m.n him!"

"Hus.h.!.+" came Morris Pugh's voice sternly. "You stand too close to the judgment yourself for curses----"

"I--I will say bless him, if that suits you better," murmured Ned wearily. "And if you don't mind--I prefer to stand alone."

"No man can stand alone before the judgment seat of G.o.d," pleaded Morris Pugh earnestly. "I do not know what your life has been, but the best of us need an advocate; and there is One."

"My life?" echoed Ned dreamily. "I want to forget my life--not to talk about it--if you would go--and leave me." Then he opened his eyes again. "Did you bring me here?"

"Yes! I brought you--I found you unconscious. But there is One who will bring you safe into the fold."

"I wonder if you would--be kind enough to let me--die alone."

"Alone!" echoed Morris Pugh. "You can never be alone. And even for this world, would you not like us to call your friends--to let them know?"

"I--I have my friends," he answered; "I want--nothing."

So after whispering about him regretfully, they left him for a while, and he lay staring at a ray of sunlight which slanted through the window at the further end of the ward, and fell, in a golden glory, upon an empty bed. If it had only fallen upon his!

Gold! Yes! everything was gold in this world. How people fought for it, selling their souls, their bodies for it! yet how little it meant.

A hideous mockery, indeed, was this Christian greed of gold. And yet money meant much--Ted--d.a.m.n him!

"Mate," came a voice from the next bed, where a tramp, hollow-eyed, unshaven, who was recovering from an attack of pneumonia, had lain listening, coughing. "'Tain't no business o' mine in a way, but there ain't no good your lyin' an' d.a.m.nin' a man as ain't done you no 'arm.

'Tain't in a way fair on you for me ter let you go to 'ell over a lie.

It's the rumm'est start as I sh'ud be 'ere, but--ye see, Ted--'ooever 'e may be--didn't take that 'undred--I took it."

"You!" he said faintly.

"Me!" echoed the tramp. "It's--it's the rumm'est start; but--you see I was on the lay atwixt Blackborough an' Liverpool.

Outer-work-an'-emigration lay it 'twas, an' not a bad one in the summer time, for them Welsh is generous. I was asleep in the gorse close by when you two come by an' smashed. Then you begun s.h.i.+eing the s.h.i.+ners about, an' I waited thinkin' to get some of 'em out after you'd gone. An' I did too, what with bein' able to dive. But there!

The 'ole thing wasn't much worth; not more than one good drunk, an'

then it was over. But don't you go a-lyin' an' d.a.m.nin' the wrong fellar. It was me, not 'im; so curse me an' welcome if it do you any good."

He rolled over on his pillow, and said no more.

Ned lay still, and smiled inwardly. His mind was clouding fast. He felt vaguely glad that Ted had not taken the money. But, then, how could he have taken it, seeing that it had never existed? They had all thought of it, and relied on it, and gone to look for it; and there was nothing. It never had been anything but a dream.

The gold sun-ray had crept down the ward. It lay now closer to him. If he could only die in the sunlight! That was the only gold worth having.

How the atoms danced in it! unceasing, endless. He felt their vibration in himself, but beyond the dancer lay sightlessness, and touchlessness, and soundlessness.

Faint voices came to him from around his bed.

"There is time yet! Repent and be saved. Put your trust in Him! Keep your eyes fixed on Him--remember that you are bought with a price."