Yet she was not quite content as she changed her day-dress for the white cambric one she wore in the evening; after all, it was but putting it on an hour or so before her usual time, and the Mechlin lace about her throat was a concession which would please her grandfather.
"Aura!--my dearest, you look quite bridal," exclaimed Ted, as he came in to find her sitting by the firelight. "It seems too good to be true--but the rector will be here in half an hour." He knelt down beside her, and laid his head in her lap. "My dear, my dear!" he said almost with a sob. "I don't seem able to say anything but _that_, somehow," he added almost pathetically. Far away, dimly, he saw a vision of something better, unattainable, incompatible with his sensuous life. It was beautiful but--what would you? Man is but man; and he must have money wherewith to live.
"Then there is something which I must tell you--before," she said; "it is something which I think you ought to know. Ned asked me to marry him on New Year's Day--and I refused."
Ted's heart gave a great throb as it had done when Ned Blackborough had used much the same words nearly a month before.
"I--I am sorry for Ned," he said softly, "but I don't see----"
For answer she held out the telegram. "He sent me this to-day," she said, "and I wonder--if he is waiting."
"Waiting!" echoed Ted hotly. "Waiting for what? You say you refused him?"
"Yes! I told him I would not marry him--because I was afraid of loving him too much; that was the truth."
For one instant the whole room seemed to spin round with Ted; he had to steady himself by holding to the back of a chair.
"I don't understand what you mean," he said thickly.
"I don't think he did either," she replied with a lingering regret in her voice, "for he said he would ask me again in two months, as if that would alter anything."
Ted caught swiftly at the ray of light. "Then if he asked you again--you--you would refuse him?"
The firelight had died down so that he could not see the flush which surged into her face, but he could hear her voice as she replied, "Yes! I should refuse him--more than ever."
"Then," he said slowly after a pause, "I don't see why you need bother----"
"Oh! it was not that," she put in quickly. "I was only wondering--you see I know so little, and I have no mother--if he would expect me to wait."
The firelight flared up again, and he saw her with the lace about her throat. "Let him wait!" he exclaimed passionately; "he had his fair chance and I have mine. I am sorry, but one of us had to win. You can't help that, you poor little dear--that is fate."
He told himself it was indeed fate: he swore to himself that he would be the best husband ever woman had.
But for all that the ceremony damped even his joy. To begin with, Martha wept copiously in a corner, as she had wept ever since Ted had gone in to the kitchen and taken her away unceremoniously from her pastry-making as a witness. At first she had sunk into a chair, and steadfastly refused to budge (on the ground that she couldn't "'ave sech things going on in the 'ouse,") but after a time the importance of being in possession of a dead secret, and her perception that if his lordship was not going to come forward--and he seemed, indeed, inclined to play the back step--this was decidedly the next best thing for her darling, induced her to yield.
"And if you loves 'im and 'e loves you, there ain't no fear, same as there ain't no fear but what good barm and good flour'll make a good batch o' bread--no fear at all my deary dear," she had sobbed consolingly to Aura, who stood quite composed, but very white. Ted, strong and kindly, clasped her hand, and what soul was left over and above his bargain was in his eyes.
The rector, in biretta and cope, read the service unabridged, while Sylvanus Smith, propped comfortably in his arm-chair, averted his face from the sacerdotal symbols, even while he added an unctious "Amen" of his own to "let no man put asunder."
He even essayed a burst of hilarity as he kissed Mrs. Cruttenden, but Ted scarcely availed himself of his privileges. He only stood beside Aura, holding her hand, divided in his heart of hearts whether he should go or whether he should stay.
But in the end prudence triumphed and a sense of duty; for the last month of constant interruptions had not been favourable to business, and if Aura--if his wife--were ever to appear in that pink satin and diamonds, it behooved him to bestir himself.
So Adam Bate, coming in after milking the cows at eight o'clock, found the house silent, curiously silent, with Martha seated on a chair, her feet on the fender, her eyes on the fire.
He cast a glance at the table. It was bare, so after a while he coughed.
"Beant there no supper, Martha, woman?" he asked apologetically.
Martha rose in an instant, aflame.
"There's bin that, Adam Bate, a-goin' on in this 'ouse this day, as no one didn't want to 'ave no supper--not if they was Christian--but bein' a man--there's bread and cheese in the cupboard."
CHAPTER XXI
March had come in like a lion. Even in the village of Dinas, sheltered as it was, the east wind swept down the funnel of the valley and through the very houses, as only an east wind in Wales can sweep, bitter, absolutely unsparing of man or beast.
Alicia Edwards gathered her cross-over shawl closer to her as she stood in her father's shop and listened for the click of the telegraph instrument. It was almost the only amusement she had now, and any moment might bring the wire for which Adam Bate and the housekeeper at Cwmfaernog had been calling in vain these two days past.
It was becoming serious. They would have to bury the poor, dead gentleman after all, if some one did not come to help them to arrange--the other thing. For in this far away Welsh village, where every boy and girl had been educated up to the standard set by the most advanced progressivists of the day, the very idea of cremation was absolute damnation. It could be nothing else, since how could the Creator resurrect a body that did not exist? So half the village thought it only right that such an atheist as Mr. Sylvanus Smith had been in life should meet the fire without delay, and the other half, more mercifully inclined, explained the difficulty in getting hold of Mr. Cruttenden, the dead man's executor, as symptomatic of pity on the part of Providence.
Alicia Edwards, thinking over this, sighed. It was only one more case in which the teaching of school ran counter to the knowledge that was necessary in daily life. For what would her father, the elder, what would she herself say, if she was to allow even elementary science to interfere with her belief? The world was a very confusing place. There was but one certain thing in it for a woman, and that was love; but every one could not get love. She thought of her own struggle for it and her failure. Myfanwy had beaten her. She had reft Mervyn away even from his great vocation, and rumour had it that, after a little longer service in Williams and Edwards's shop, those two would be married and set up in a small business of their own. In face of this, what did all the rest matter? Despite all the talk in the village concerning Mervyn's sudden departure and Morris Pugh's equally sudden resignation of the pastorship of Dinas, she had held her tongue with fair discretion, only allowing a few mysterious surmises to leak out. To begin with, Myfanwy's last words had alarmed her, and then the offenders had passed altogether from her control. What would it matter to Mervyn, now employee in Williams and Edwards, if it was found out that he had ruined half the girls in Dinas?
Besides, something new and stern in her father's attitude towards her in regard to the revival made her suspect that he was not without his suspicions. The less said about morals the better, especially since the effect of those midnight meetings was already making itself felt in the immediate neighbourhood. For Isaac Edwards was relentless on this point. He had downright refused to let her go on with her sweet singing now that all her companions had died or disappeared; so having, of course, lost her post as pupil teacher, there was nothing for it but to stop at home and prepare, so her father said, for a normal college. The girl herself stiffened a sullen lip and looked down the lane which led to the minister's house now occupied by the Reverend Hwfa Williams; for he admired her. Of that there could be no question. The possibility of marrying him, indeed, had become quite a factor in her life, and she decided most points with a view to this possibility. Small wonder then if Alicia Edwards's amicability and her general desirability as a minister's wife had begun to strike Hwfa Williams himself, while even Isaac Edwards was beginning to waver in his insistance on Logarithms and the Science of Tuition.
"Put on your hat, Alicia," he said from his ledger, "and run down the road. It will warm you up before you have to go to the Bible class."
And Alicia went, nothing loth. It was better battling with the wind than watching for telegrams which never came, especially when there was the chance of coming back with the wind and with a man whose pale, heavy, dark-browed face was beginning to become to you, by diligent care and concentration, the handsomest in the world.
So she fought her ground steadily against the swirling clouds of dust.
Had she only gone up the hill over the short, springy grass and the broken brown bracken she would have enjoyed the wind, as Ned Blackborough was enjoying it on his way to Cwmfaernog. For it was the 1st of March, the day on which he had promised Aura he would return and ask her once more to marry him. He had come back from the East but the day before, and being, so to speak, made up of impulses, moods, fancies, in the indulgence of which he had of late sought his chief pleasures, he had determined to find his way to her, as he had found it that very first night, over the summit of Llwydd y Bryn, the "Eye of the World."
Such fancies hurt no one, but he was beginning to realise that in them lay all the salt of life. What was it to the world, absorbed conventionally in the sordid sleep which follows perforce on sordid money grubbing, if he found the highest rhythm of life in the quiver of the moonlit woods? Nothing. Let those see who had the eyes to see.
So when, a bit wearied with his climb, he sat down where he had carelessly put out his hand to catch the flying footsteps of day, it struck him now, thoughtfully, that, in truth, it was all a man's life, all he could do towards gaining happiness. He must just catch at the flying footsteps of something unseen. 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 aegean, now waiting ready for its mistress, for he was quite prepared to follow Aura into the wilderness if needs be. He had thought much concerning her and concerning himself during the last six weeks, and he had begun to recognise that in some ways she was right in shrinking from what she called love, as a desecration of herself and of him. The feeling, however, was due to the absolutely unnatural association in marriage of the MIND with the body. An association which was simply an attempt to find a mental fig-leaf for what either required none, or was beyond decent cover. One thing, however, seemed to him certain. Aura must both love him and also desire to marry him. Yes, she loved him, or thought she did, which to her was the same thing.
He sprang to his feet, that thought being enough to start him on any path, and, ere leaving the summit, cast one look round it, remembering gladly that it might be the last time he should see it.
All was as his recollection held it. Just a brown, peaty, stone-strewn rise, and beyond, on all sides, an immensity of sea and sky and land.
Only the placard on the shieling had been damaged by the winter storms. The ultimate 6d. was gone and "ginger beer" stood alone, vaunting itself free like the nectar of the gods.
Ginger beer! That was about what it came to for the million.
With an amused shrug of the shoulders he began the descent, every step of which was beautiful, every sight in which brought to him the feeling as if he trod on air, as if nothing in heaven or earth could trammel him again.
As he crossed the stream above the farm buildings, where on that night nine months ago they had stood and shouted, the whole steading struck him as looking forlorn and deserted, but, being sure of finding Martha in the kitchen, he went boldly through the cottage and passed through the door that was like a coal cellar's to the garden room. But this time there was no flash of blinding sunlight to dazzle him. It was almost dark, for the green sun-blinds on either side were drawn down; that, however, was surely a figure by the window.
"At last!" came Aura's voice, full of infinite relief. "I am so glad."
Swept away by the whole-heartedness of his welcome he went forward swiftly and had her in his arms, but his first touch was enough; she shrank back with a half-articulate cry of surprise and thrust him from her by force.