A Sovereign Remedy Part 8

Ted laughed bitterly. "A clerk hasn't so much holiday as a lord. I've had my week, while you----"

"Yes, of course; don't, please, go off at a tangent like our host. We have got to work this thing out somehow, for, unless we do--well--I won't come back alone, so you would always have that between you and your night's rest. Do you understand?"

Ted nodded sulkily. He had liked his companion before he knew he was a lord, and now all the Englishman's love for one, that strange modern inversion which grants quality to t.i.tle, instead of as in the beginning granting t.i.tle to quality, was mixed up in the thought of future friendship with one who would, who _could_ be such a friend.

"Of course, I could buy you off, or turn you out. Now, don't fume. I won't interfere with your personal liberty if I can help it. I really am in deadly earnest. It seems to me we have been given a lead over--that there is something behind all this. However, that is neither here nor there, so far as you are concerned." He sat for a moment thinking.

"When can you get your next holiday?" he asked abruptly.

"I believe I could get a week at Christmas," admitted Ted grudgingly.

Lord Blackborough sprang to his feet like a schoolboy, and laughed.

"How will Eden look under snow? Jolly, I expect----"

"You don't mean----" began Ted, rising also.

"Yes, I do. I mean that, so far as I'm concerned, we shall say good-bye to it--till Christmas--at dawn--the dawn which will so soon be coming. Good Heavens!" he added, his eyes on the horizon of the hills, his voice softening infinitely, "why _am_ I going to bed? Who knows? Perchance to dream. Good-night."

Ted could hear him going on with the quotation as he strolled over to the house. Thereinafter there was a light in one of the upper windows, and then darkness.

He himself sat for a while thinking over the queer chances of the last few days. It was like a novel; not like real life. That hundred pounds, for instance, lying out on the hillside ready for any one who chose to take it. There had been plenty of chances of a hundred pounds even in his life, had he felt any immediate necessity for them, but he had not. His life on the whole had been pleasant enough. Fond of football, cricket, cycling, rowing, he had not thought much of the delights of money-getting. But now? A hundred pounds well laid out, for instance on that investment about which his old school friend, a clerk on the Stock Exchange, had written him only last week, might well be a thousand by Christmas.

It held him fast that hundred pounds, thinking what could be done with it by Christmas.

It might win him Aurelia. For if in other ways equality could be kept up, why shouldn't he have a fair chance? He was the better looking--if that counted for anything. Then he had another advantage. Though he was long past much of the old man's antiquated Socialism, he was keen on more modern ideas, a Radical of the most forward type politically, whereas Lord Blackborough--what was Lord Blackborough? Well, he was a very good fellow anyhow.

Yes, he was a good fellow, though he was right in saying money didn't stick to him. How could it, when he left it, so to speak, lying about.

Ted knocked out the ashes of his pipe, and, after a s.p.a.ce, another light showed in one of the upper windows. Then it went out, and the window eye was shut.

But what of the eyes within. Were they shut or open?

Who knows?

Were their owners asleep or awake, conscious that they had reached a crossing of the ways--that one path led up to the rugged mountain--tops, the other into the smooth valleys.

Who knows?

The moon shone softly behind a haze of midnight coolness, rising from the earth to blur the clear circle of her heavenly rim.

There was a breathlessness in the very stillness of the night, that was broken only by the distant wailing of the lambs new-separate from their mothers.

Hark! What was it they were calling? Faint and far away, what was it?

"_Aura! Aura! Aura!_"

Up in the corries, setting the tall brackens a-quiver, high on the birch woods hidden in their silver, higher still among the tumbled rocks of the "Eye of the World," what was that pa.s.sing?

Was it, white and dim, a wandering sheep looming large upon the moonlit mountainside as it sought to answer the cry, or, this midsummer night when the spirits wander, was it a restless wraith seeking it knew not what?

Or was it Aura herself, free and fearless among the hills?

"_Aura! Aura! Aura!_"

The faint, far--distant call sounded from the valley, from the corries, from the birch woods, from the rocks.

The shadows lay so still, so soft, yet that one surely moved--moved upwards.

"_Aura! Aura! Aura!_" Was it Aura, or only the echoing sound of the calling lambs?

Still, soft, equable, serene, oh, misty mountain moonlight what didst thou hold?

And in the garden across the lawn, where the girl's feet had lain, was that curved shadow, a snake making its way to the black and white shadow of the Druid's yew tree?

Oh, misty moonlight of the valley what didst thou hold, as the faint, far--away cry echoed between the hills, and up into high heaven?

Did they meet and hold converse face to face upon the mountain-top, those wandering lights and shadows on the mountainsides? or did they wander, searching for something, until dawn, and find nothing?

Dawn at any rate came soon, as Ned had said it would.

The moonlight changed swiftly to sunlight, the heifer lowed for her bull-calf, a sleepy chaffinch chirruped his challenge to the coming day, and Ted Cruttenden coming into the verandah from the library saw Ned entering it from the music room, while at the hall door between them stood Aurelia, blushing at being caught so early.

She was in a loose, white overall, girded in at the waist with a leathern girdle, and her bare feet were shod in sandals.

"Good-morning," she said, without any trace of the blush in her voice.

"See what I have found under the old yew tree. Grandfather's chair had torn the turf, and there it was. Do you think it can be the snake-ring grandfather told us about?"

The flat, bead-like stone she held out was no larger than a sixpence, but it had a hole through its greenish, semi-opaque l.u.s.tre.

"I think it must be," said Ted, pa.s.sing it on to Ned. "You will have 'all the wealth of the world.' Wasn't that what it is supposed to bring?"

"But I don't want money," she said.

"The wealth of the world is not all money," smiled Ned, handing the stone back to her. "There is love."

She laughed merrily. "I don't want that either. No! not if 'is 'air be 'ung round with gold."

They waved a good-bye to her from the turn of the draw-bridge.

"Till Christmas," said Ned cheerfully.

"Till Christmas," replied Ted cheerfully.

They found the village early astir. Miss Myfanwy Jones's holiday having come to an end, she was starting for Williams and Edwards with a pile of empty dress and bonnet boxes, which Alicia Edwards, the Reverend Morris Pugh, and the Adonis Mervyn were packing into the village shandrydan.