A Sovereign Remedy Part 25

Her welcome disarmed rivalry, and gave both the young men a desire to fall at her feet and kiss the hem of her garment. But they repressed it.

"Of course we have both come!" replied Ned imperturbably. "Are we not the inseparable two-headed, four-armed, four-legged monster, Edward Cruttenden? don't interrupt me, Ted, I am coming to that by and by.

Only Miss--Miss--do you know I don't happen to know your surname. Is it Smith?"

She shook her head with a smile. "Graham--but every one calls me Aura."

"Miss Aura," went on Ned doubtfully.

She looked at him and her eyes twinkled.

"Put on the H, please, if you are going to speak like Martha. Only it sounds better without any prefix."

For some reason or other both the young men found themselves blushing and their hearts beating.

"Much nicer," a.s.sented Ted with fervour; but Ned made an elision.

"I was going to tell you that in addition to Edward Cruttenden I have--for my sins--to answer to another name--Lord Blackborough."

She stared and frowned.

"You mean," she said slowly, "that as they put it in the books you are Edward Cruttenden, Lord Blackborough?"

"Edward Cruttenden Gibbs, to be strictly according to Debrett," he answered meekly. "I had to take the name when I came into the t.i.tle three years ago."

A distinct look of disappointment showed on her face. "It is a very great pity," she said still more slowly; then she added more cheerfully. "However, I suppose it can't be helped. Only when I thought of you it was always as Ned and Ted." She glanced at the latter and smiled.

"So far as I am concerned there is no reason why you shouldn't continue----" he began.

"No reason at all," interrupted Ned with the first note of rivalry in his voice. "Let us remain Ned and Ted for--for this week at any rate."

"This week," she echoed, looking from one to the other, "I don't quite understand." Then suddenly, for the first time in her life she blushed. It was extremely uncomfortable, and she felt vaguely annoyed with both the young men. So she turned to them stiffly. "Will you come and see grandfather and have tea first, or go to your rooms--you know where they are."

There was a pause, broken accusingly by Ted. "Lord Blackborough--I mean Ned----"

"Thank you," put in Ned with a laugh, "I can do my own dirty work, if you please. The fact is"--he paused, still fighting shy of that dear name, "I mean I'm afraid I can't stop. If I had guessed, but--but I didn't!" He shrugged his shoulders. "It is so hard to predicate perfection. The fact is, my cousin is living at Plas Afon for a fortnight or so, and I must go back to her--after tea."

"Plas Afon," she echoed eagerly. "Oh! I hear that is such a lovely place. How lucky you are," then the personal aspect of the news made her frown a little. "Dear me!" she said, "what a pity! It spoils so much. Now I shall have to differentiate between you two. Will you come in to tea, Lord Blackborough and Mr. Cruttenden."

They followed her meekly, feeling vaguely ashamed of themselves.

CHAPTER XIII

"She is as straight as a yard o' pump water, an' won't never brush forty again," said Martha up to her elbows in flour, austerely, "but I wouldn't trust her for that neither. No! Not with Bate comin' into his dinner wantin' comfort. He have a trick o' blushin', Miss H'Aura, as sympathy might make a marryin' on--an' I won't have it in the 'ouse."

"But I thought," said Aura gravely, for she was accustomed by now to Martha's view of the new parlour-maid, "that Bate gave Parkinson no encouragement."

"Encouragement," echoed Martha bitterly, "no more he do. Why! he don't even wink at her. Give her the cold shoulder constant; but there!

she's o' that sort, Miss H'Aura, as don't mind whether a jint's 'ot or cold so long as it's man's meat. Besides, master 'ud need a woman folk to stand atwixt him and the fun'ral if there was a smash in the motor, for Bate ain't no manner of use when there's tears about--'es got such a feelin' 'eart. So, thanking 'is lordship all the same for the kind thought, I'd better stop at 'ome."

There was never any questioning Martha's decision; so Aura went back to the drawing-room doubtfully. It was a glorious day and Ned Blackborough had come over half-an-hour before, bearing both to herself and her grandfather notes of invitation from Mrs. Tressilian to come over to lunch and see the show place. The notes had evidently been all in order, for though her grandfather had declined brusquely for himself, he had looked at her as if he had just realised she was no longer a child, and asked her wistfully if she would like to go.

And she without a thought had told the truth--namely that she would love it. Then had come doubts. The last three days, filled up as they had been by the absolute adulation of the two young men had brought her a curious, innate, but till then dormant, sense that there were things which girls ought not to do. And having, much against her will, admitted this to herself, she became sternly scrupulous.

Ought she, or ought she not to go alone with Lord Blackborough in the motor? She knitted her brows over the problem, telling herself the while that she hated the world and every one in it. Then Lord Blackborough--he had an uncomfortable habit of reading her thoughts which she bitterly resented--had suggested Martha. And now Martha would not come. It was all such silly nonsense!

Ned Blackborough, watching her troubled face, felt that he could then and there have put his arms round her, kissed her even against her will and carried her right away from everything and everybody; from all conventionalities and princes and powers. She was a perpetual temptation to him to cast aside what few moorings he had. He was a man and she the one and only woman in the whole wide world; and he wanted her.

It was a headlong, purely emotional desire from which--curiously enough it struck him--pa.s.sion was almost entirely absent. In a way, despite his greater reserve, there was more of pa.s.sion in Ted's rational, straightforward, more normal love.

The very emotionality of Ned's feeling, however, carried with it content and certainty; for he felt that nothing in heaven or earth could dim the halo of flame and fire in which he stood beside her.

So he could afford to be magnanimous. "Then you had better take the fourth seat, Ted!" he said carelessly, looking to where the latter, his hands in his pockets, was glooming out of the window at the motor which could just be seen waiting through the bare branches across the drawbridge.

He had already had a casual invitation for himself and his cycle thrown at him, he felt, like a bone to a dog. But he had refused it.

Pleasant work, indeed, riding in the dusty wake of a rival who was abducting the girl you loved at the rate of five-and-twenty miles an hour in a Panhard.

From every point of view he had decided it would be wiser to stop at home, possess his soul in patience, and keep Aura's grandfather in a good humour. For the more he saw of Aura the more he realised that her choice was likely to follow the lead of her environment. He was very clear-sighted, very much in earnest. The unconventionality of the position irked him, and he heartily wished that he could quarrel with Ned, or even huff him--as people always did on these occasions. But that was out of the question; he was bound to be friendly and fight for the girl fairly. Yet, being what he was, a man with a natural gift for business, he could not help drawing up his prospectus, as it were, and counting up all his available a.s.sets. His love had nothing of Ned's impetuosity about it, so with all his real pa.s.sion for Aura he soon realised that it was wise not to show it too much.

It frightened her. The brotherly tack ensured quicker confidence. And, of course, Sylva.n.u.s Smith's liking for him was a great point in his favour. Regarding this, he did not feel in any way mean, for he himself liked the old fellow, and found his somewhat antiquated talk interesting.

But this later offer of Ned's was another thing; he looked round and accepted it heartily, feeling, however, as he often did when he looked at Ned's face, a trifle of a sneak; for he was fighting impulse with strategy, and he felt convinced that he was right in doing so.

He was, nevertheless, in danger of forgetting his role when Aura made her appearance dressed for her drive. She had a little conscious flush in her face, the result of having for the first time in her life tried on and rejected various articles of attire. So far as the dress and coat went, she had no choice. Her method of life made washing dresses a necessity; and for winter white was the only colour which would survive Martha's vigorous washing. So her serge, toned to a decided cream by those same efforts after cleanliness, was unalterable, and the furs she had found in the boxes of outworn apparel, which her grandfather had handed over to her on her sixteenth birthday, were also a permanent a.s.set. She had no notion of their worth--she supposed they were sable; she knew that when the darker longer hairs blew aside the inner fluff was exactly the bronze hue of her hair. It was her head-covering which troubled her. She tried a scarlet Tam-o'-Shanter but flung it aside. The contrast was too great. A white one followed suit. There was something wrong; she knew not what. Finally a bronze, brown-specked one made a faint curve come to her lips. It matched the fur, and somehow, her face. Then she lingered with a half-shamed look by the chest-of-drawers. Should she? Should she not? She might at any rate take something in case; so she stuffed a long, fine lace scarf into her m.u.f.f and ran hastily downstairs.

Her advent brought a sort of breathlessness to the two young men. Ned evaded it by saying prosaically, "You'll have to tie on your head with something, I expect."

"I have got something," replied Aura superbly, and out came the lace scarf. It was bewildering. All the more so when Mr. Sylva.n.u.s Smith, looking at her with that same wistful affection, said half to himself, "Your grandmother wore that, my dear, when she was married."

But there was no time for sentimentalities. Here was a young girl, instinct with vitality to her very finger tips, going out for her first ride on a motor, going out for her very first experience of the world.

"I have never been further than this before," she said, heaving a great sigh of content, as the car, turning almost at right angles, sped over a bridge and curved towards the further side of the estuary.

"Everything now is new! Everything! I've never even seen the hills this shape before. And how strange our side of the valley looks. Who would believe that was Cwmfairnog? I don't believe I belong to it a bit."

She pointed to a pale blue shadow among the shining hills showing where the little valley sank to restful, sheltered peace.

"I'm sure you don't," echoed Ned joyously. "Only I don't quite know where we belong to--unless it is everywhere."

The "we" smote on Ted's ears disagreeably as he leant over from the back between them, while the _chauffeur_, honest man, sat immovable in his corner as if he saw and heard nothing.

"You belong to us at present," he said laughing; "so take care you don't smash us up, Ned--we can't afford to lose her."

She laughed back at him carelessly. That was exactly what she felt.

She was having a splendid time with both of them.

It was a drive never to be forgotten. Down here by the sea the frost had slackened its hold, and in sheltered corners the gra.s.s was as green as at midsummer. A robin was singing its heart out on a bramble bough, where one pale flower showed rejoicing in the winter sunshine.

It looked colder in the sky than it was on earth, for overhead a great white cloud drifted like an iceberg through a sea of palest blue--a frozen-looking, chilly blue.