A Sovereign Remedy Part 7

Her laugh was infectious.

"And so Martha shares the--the family dislike to gold," suggested Ned slyly.

Mr. Sylva.n.u.s Smith rose to the fly at once. "We do not dislike it, sir; gold has undoubtedly its appointed place in the world, but it happens to be in its wrong place. So I disregard it, and pay all my bills by cheque."

"Martha makes out the lists for the Army and Navy, you know,"

explained Aura quickly. "It's rather fun unpacking the boxes when they come."

"There is no doubt," continued Mr. Smith, in a tone of voice which suggested an effort to be strictly original, "that as now administered, money is the root of all evil. Our h.o.a.rded millions instead of, as they should, bringing equality--comfortable, contented equality--to the world, separate man from his fellow man by a purely artificial distinction; they bring about cla.s.s antagonism, and are a premium on inept idleness."

"Hear, hear!" said Ted. "I quite agree with you, sir. If these millions were equitably divided----"

"They would be a premium on idle inept.i.tude instead," laughed Ned lightly. "If you gave a loafer the same wage as a working man, I for one would loaf. It is the better part. If any one were to offer me a golden sovereign at the present moment, Miss Aura----"

She arrested the teapot in the middle of pouring out his second cup, and glanced up at him in smiling horror.

"And I never gave back the one in c.o.c.katua's bread and milk tin! Dear me, what should I have done if you had gone away and left it? I'll remember it after tea."

But after tea found them still laughing, still talking, still sitting silent awhile listening to the song of a thrush which, as the day drew down to dusk, sat on the bent branch of the old yew to sing as surely never thrush sang before.

So the moon climbed into the sky and the flowers faded into the ghosts of flowers, each holding just a hint of the hues it had worn by day.

"What a pity it is to go to bed at all," said Aura suddenly, leaning over her grandfather's chair and laying her cheek on his thick, white hair; "for we seem to have so much to say to each other, don't we?"

He winced slightly; since for once he had forgotten the absorption of his later years, and had let himself be as he would have been but for the tragedy which he had fled into the wilderness to hide. For he had seen his wife starve to death, and his daughter sell herself for bread, while he, struck down by rheumatic fever, had waited for the tardy decision of a Law Court. The verdict had come too late for either; too late for anything but decent burial for a poor, young mother, and flight, if possible, from himself. But, though he forgot sometimes, the tragedy of seeing his wife die before his helplessness, it remained always to blur his outlook, to make him what he was, a half-crazy visionary.

And to-night he had forgotten. He had laughed at trivialities, and told trivial stories of the thousand-year-old yew tree, and the Druidical legends connected with the summer solstice--the real midsummer night, though St. John's Day came later.

But now remembrance came back, and he rose. "We have talked too much,"

he said almost captiously, "and these gentlemen have to leave at dawn.

We wish them good luck, don't we? Come, Aurelia, my child."

So they had said good-bye; but five minutes afterwards, as the two young men sat silently finis.h.i.+ng their pipes, they saw her returning over the lawn, holding the sovereign in her raised right hand.

It seemed to them as if the whole world came with her as, rising to their feet instinctively, they waited beside the cool, dark pool, full of the black shadows of the yew tree, full also of marvellous moonlit depths going down and down into more and more light.

The air was heavy with the flower fragrance of the garden, the round moon, large, soft, mild, hung in the velvety sky, not a breath stirred in earth or heaven, her very footstep on the turf was silent.

"Which of you gave it me?" she asked. "You are so much alike, at first, that I forget."

They were silent, uncertain what to claim, what not to claim.

She smiled. "Is it a puzzle? You want me to find out; but really, I expect it came from you both."

"Yes, from us both," a.s.sented Ned.

Her eyes were on Ted's face, which was good indeed to look upon, but she turned swiftly to Ned.

"Ah! It was you, of course. Yes, it was you," she said, holding out the coin. He took it without a word.

"It seems a shame to go to bed this heavenly night, but you have to be up so early." There was regret in her voice.

"Why should we?" said Ned impulsively. "Let us roam the hills, I have done it before now, alone."

She stood looking at them both, her face mysteriously bright.

"And you?" she asked of Ted.

He laughed. "I feel like it to-night, anyhow."

"Ah," she said, nodding her head, "you are a wise man. Good-night and pleasant dreams."

They watched her pa.s.s in her white raiment across the lawn, taking the glamour of the night with her, and leaving them with an ordinary moon s.h.i.+ning on an ordinary garden.

Then Ted gave a short laugh and flung himself on the turf again, resuming his pipe.

"What's the matter?" asked Ned imperturbably.

"Nothing. I was only thinking of all the ga.s.sing you let out yesterday concerning money. Why, it means--everything! Hang that sovereign to your watch-chain, man, and then you can tell her a romantic tale when----"

A "_whitt whitt, whitter_," followed by a sudden sob among the shadows and lights of the pool, told of one more duck-and-drake----

"As if that made any difference," he continued sardonically. "You have plenty more of them."

"So far as I'm concerned, it makes some difference," retorted Ned with spirit. "That particular coin won't be put to baser uses."

There was a pause, broken only by Ned's vain effort to get his cheroot to draw. Suddenly he flung it aside, edged himself out of the shadow into the light and faced his namesake.

"Look here, Cruttenden," he said, "I've got something to explain to you, because--well--because I want this thing to be fair and square between us. The fact is, that though my name is Edward Cruttenden all right, I have the misfortune to have been for the last two years, most unexpectedly, Lord Blackborough."

"Lord Blackborough!" echoed Ted slowly. "Why--why, you're--you're my master--that is to say, I'm one of your clerks--and--and you're the richest man in the midlands."

"I believe I was, a year ago; but money doesn't stick by me. I wasn't brought up to it. Yes, I became Lord Blackborough against my will, by the death of my uncle, a cripple, who inherited the barony--bought by screws chiefly--from the original purchaser, who had a fit on hearing that his only son had shot himself over a woman. A squalid story, and the distinction between us is, as you see, a purely artificial one----"

"I quite agree with your lords.h.i.+p," interrupted Ted.

"My dear fellow," replied Lord Blackborough, "you will oblige me by not being a garden a.s.s. The fact is, we have a considerable likeness to each other outside, in which you have distinctly the advantage.

You're taller, broader; briefly, the better looking. As to the inside, we differ somewhat, but there again you have the qualities which make for wealth, and I haven't. I can see myself a poor man in my old age.

Then we tumbled off our cycles together in an equal way. In a still more equal way we have tumbled into--let us say, this Garden of Eden.

Now, why shouldn't we remain in it on equal terms?"

"Because it is impossible. You are Lord Blackborough, and I am your clerk."

"But why should we not remain the brothers Cruttenden? In this remote----"

"Impossible," repeated Ted angrily.

"Anyhow, let us think over it. We agreed, didn't we, to spend our holiday together. Well, let us talk it over, and if it is feasible, come back----"