Flora Annie Webster Steel

“ As if it were not frankly impossible in this England of ours to dissociate one man from another by breed--we're hopeless mongrels, kin to each other all round. Birth counts for nothing; so let's quit it--Upbringing?"
Ted interrupted shortly--"I--I never knew my father, and my mother died when I was born."
"So did mine," said Ned softly.
There was a pause in which the luring wail of a circling plover who deemed the intruders too near her nest, became insistent, and seemed to fill the mountain solitude with a sense of motherhood, until, once more, the musical, critical laugh struck in on it. ”

“ 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?" ”

“ Oddly enough, the disturbing element was the hundred pounds which Ned Blackborough had hidden in the cleft of the rocks. The last two months had been one long temptation to go and take it at all costs--take it and say nothing. And yet his soul revolted from the very idea. The constant conflict, however, had forced him into clearer thought, and he had shrunk back in horror from much that he saw in himself and others. The greed of gold! How it riddled all human life; it even touched the next, for it was the mainspring of religion. Money! Money! ”

“ That was the truth, and behind that truth what a record of ignorance, ineptitude, greed of gain. Nothing for nothing, not even patriotism, was the modern motto; a cheap loaf and a disintegrated empire--caveat emptor even in the face of war.
"You can't believe it all, Ned," went on Sir Geoffrey, speaking now with less passion but more eagerness, as if his memories brimmed over, "until you've been through with it. I meant it all to be above board, but it wasn't. The jobbery was awful. Every man just clamouring for money. A gentleman oughtn't to touch a thing like that--it's pitch, Ned. ”

“ Ned was after him without a moment's consideration; life seemed so small a thing to him that he could not stop to think of it; but Ted Cruttenden sprang forward, also, to hold him back. The Fates did that, however, for as he would have plunged into the burning house, the upper hinge of one of the wide hall doors gave way, and as it swung inwards with a crash, just touched Ned's forearm, and snapped it like a bulrush.
As he staggered, Ted had hold of him. "You can't," he said. "He knows every turn, and may do it yet if the stairs stand. It's madness for you. ”

“ Ever since the day when death had so nearly overtaken him while he was studying life in a black drop of water, he had been haunted at times by that feeling of sightlessness, touchlessness, soundlessness which had come to him then.
It came to him now on the top of Llwydd y Bryn, though before his bodily eyes lay half the principality of Wales, spread out as if it were a map. Surpassingly beautiful too. In its way as beautiful as that island in the Ægean, now waiting ready for its mistress, for he was quite prepared to follow Aura into the wilderness if needs be. ”

“ We risk life every day for what we call love or money, but we are in a blue funk about the truth, because the truth is that neither love nor money--you know, don't you, that I am awfully, hideously rich?"
"Ted told me you were the richest man in England."
"The devil he did!" laughed Ned. "I beg your pardon, but that wasn't in the bond. Anyhow I'm beginning to feel as if I could with pleasure sell all that I have, and follow--something else."
"But you have no right," began Aura, "you can't shirk your responsibilities."
"Et tu, Brute," he murmured pathetically, "My dear creature! ”

“ 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. ”

“ Except for Aura.
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. ”

“ 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--damn him!"
"Hush!" 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. ”

“ It was not more than six hours ago that Aura had looked at Ned's iris, had sat in the dawn with Gwen's head in her lap, yet it seemed to the girl who had never seen death before, who had never before realised what Love meant, as if whole æons had passed over her head. In truth they had; for Love and Death make up Life, since Birth comes to us without remembrance. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Helen held her breath for a moment, then it exhaled in a little childless sigh.
"That is true, Ned," she said quietly, "but when a woman knows what Love is, she cannot give herself without it. And Love comes but once to a woman; at any rate it will only come once to me."
"I wonder," said Ned reflectively, "what womanhood would be like if one were to pound down every one who possessed it in a mortar and fashioned them afresh. ”

“ Ned Blackborough was silent for a moment; then said, "Perhaps."
"Oh! hang it all!" broke in Ted. "If you are not satisfied, you needn't feel bound in any way. In fact, I have been thinking a lot, and I have come to the conclusion that your plan isn't quite fair on her. I think she ought to know; and I'd much rather she had her fair choice. You see, neither she nor her grandfather really care for money."
Ned Blackborough smiled. "I see," he said grimly. "On the whole, I believe you are right." Then he thought for a moment or two. "So be it! Each for himself, and the devil take the hindmost! ”

“ And there, as he peered through the curtain, was Myfanwy, sure enough, beckoning to him to come down. A sight sufficient to bring combativeness to any young blood, even without those two hours of blessed rest in sleep.
"Mervyn," she said, when five minutes after, their lips met in a long kiss; "I have come for you. See how I love you, to do this thing which might ruin any poor girl's reputation. You have done wrong, my poor boy, very wrong; but so have many of the others who are so saintly. And why should you stay to be prayed over by them--by Alicia Edwards too! ”

“ 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!" ”

“ Ned felt outraged at her indecent haste; and at the back of Ted's brain lay an instant regret concerning the three shillings; he would then only have been responsible for one and sixpence instead of ten shillings.
Suddenly she held the coin up to the window, laughed--a rippling laugh like running water--and handed it back again. "Thanks for letting me see it; I hadn't seen one before, but, as grandfather says, it blocks the sunlight just like a penny!"
"You--you hadn't seen a sovereign!" said Ned feebly.
She shook her head. "We don't have money in this house. Grandfather doesn't hold with it." ”

“ There was a wide interval of shadowy light from the windows between the young man as, having found mental and bodily foothold, he stood coatless, defiant, as if prepared to fight Fate, and Mr. Hirsch decently robed for dinner, and with, as ever, the large white flower of a blameless life in his button-hole. Through the open window the mellow pipe of a blackbird, full of the glad song of wood and dale, forced its way insistently. The memory of it lingered with Ted always. In after years that joyous invitation to the wilds always seemed to sound in his ears whenever a question of choice arose. ”

“ Green stood with the papers in his hand for a second then he flung them on the table.
"You fling our own money to us as if we were dogs!" he began hotly.
"Dogs!" echoed Ned Blackborough in the same tone. "I would far liefer give it to the dogs than to you--you men who will have the handling of it. It is you who starved those poor children, not I. Their fathers could keep them in comfort for five-and-twenty shillings a week; you made them stand for out six-and-twenty--as if it mattered--as if money, physical comfort, even freedom, counted for anything in a man's search for happiness. ”

“ Aura bubbled over with quick mirth. "Martha's husband! Oh dear, no! Why, she is always at me 'not to incline to no man, no; not if his 'air be 'ung round with gold'; and just think of Adam's little cropped head!"
Her laugh was infectious.
"And so Martha shares the--the family dislike to gold," suggested Ned slyly.
Mr. Sylvanus 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." ”

“ Aura had said "Perhaps," and after he had gone had lain and cried softly to herself. There is nothing in the wide world so sacred to a woman as her grief for the child which has died to save her life. It is grief of the most inward type, unknown, unrecognised by others, which lasts through the years and grows no slighter than it was when in the dim, between life and death, she first learns that her child has paid the ransom for her.
In a way, therefore, the doubt, which by degrees grew into a certainty, that Fate had denied motherhood to her, had at first almost brought her comfort. ”

“ Ned laughed derisively and shrugged his shoulders.
"You won't understand what I mean, but there is a general election due next year. The men have had other employment offered them; if they won't accept it, that is their own fault."
"But I don't understand your objection----" began Ted.
"Don't you?" interrupted Lord Blackborough. "I think that must be because you don't know good slate from bad."
They had passed on by this time into that most desolate of all places on God's earth, a valley of unworked slate quarries, a valley desecrated by man's needs, yet needed not by man. ”

“ Here's a basket one of mine; and will you pour out tea?"
Yet it was pleasant enough sitting there by the fire in the growing dusk, and Ned's heart gave a great throb as he thought of Aura in her blue smock walking unconcernedly over the priceless pile carpets as if they had been Kidderminster. And she would be right. When she was there all other things sank into insignificance.
"It's terribly big," said Helen. "You ought to marry, Ned."
"I suppose I ought," he replied solemnly, but his thoughts were simply running riot over the suggestion; "it is too big for one." ”

“ Come now with me to Blackborough, the waggonette is waiting up the road at the bridge; we can catch the three o'clock mail at Llanilo. If you come, Mervyn, I will marry you in three days at the registrar's office."
"But," he gasped, half-drunk with her kisses, half-stunned by his remembrances.
She stamped her foot. "You must decide. I cannot stop here all night, some one may come. Oh! Mervyn! Mervyn! do you not feel that you were not made for this narrow life? You--you are no worse than others, and you have brains. You can make money if you will in the world, but not here." ”

“ But there was no tea ready when Ned, whose ill humour had passed with his solitary walk, arrived.
"Thank Heaven!" cried Ted, who met him at the door. "Will you, like a good fellow, fetch the doctor; he lives beyond the hill? Mr. Smith is ill, as he was before. You can take the motor, can't you, from Dinas?"
"No need; Ramsay will be there. I'll be back in no time," was the reply.
So while Ted helped Martha with his experience and comforted Aura as best he could, thereinafter remaining to give Peter Ramsay a hand in getting the old man to bed, Ned kicked his heels in the drawing-room. ”

“ Aura went downstairs to show herself to her husband, with a queer new feeling of power tingling in every vein. Why at two-and-twenty should she hold herself derelict? A ship need not always steer straight to the pole.
Ted had been extremely busy and rather irritable ever since she had returned; not irritable with her--he never was that--but distrait and careless. In a way it had been a relief, since it had given her time to try and adjust herself to her new outlook. ”

“ Sylvanus Smith less crippled as the day went on, but urbane and talkative as ever, while Martha, with her little bob curtsey, was waiting to take off the covers.
And they feasted like kings on the chicken and raspberry tart; and the weak rough cider which Martha made, and Mr. Smith drank for his rheumatism, seemed to get into their heads with the Wine of Life, as they sat and talked and watched Aurelia against the background of flower and fruit.
"Oh! cupbearer! save the Wine of Life, what gifts canst thou bring?" quoted Ned suddenly under his breath. ”