The glimpse afforded by the open hall-door showed them that Ted's surmise had been correct. They were on an island, for to the right of the garden a stream, after dashing over some rocks, disappeared behind the high wall enclosing the orchard which filled up the end of the valley, while, as they passed on through the book room, a lawn lay before them sloping down to a deep, still pool, a pool shadowed by surely the biggest yew-tree they had ever seen. Its great arms spread themselves out, and, bowed to earth by their own weight, found a fresh foothold for another upward spring, until the one tree seemed a grove.
Here in a sunny square formed by the joining of house and steading walls, they found a breakfast-table, and beside it, in an arm-chair, an old man with a thin face and Florentine-cut, silver-white hair.
"Excuse my rising, gentlemen," he said in a high, suave voice, his nervous hands gripping the chair-arms in rather a helpless fashion, "but I am somewhat--more or less--of a cripple at times--I suffer from rheumatism, and last night's rain----"
"Might have made us rheumatic also but for your kindness," began Ned politely.
"Not at all! Not at all--Martha does all that sort of thing well--an excellent creature--really an excellent creature, but alas! quite devoid of intelligence," said their host, and his large, restless, pale blue eyes which, from the smallness of his other features, dominated his face, took on a remonstrant expression that was curiously obstinate yet weak. "Yes!" he continued, "absolutely devoid of brains. One of those hewers of wood and drawers of water by desire and determination who stand so--so infernally--in the way of true socialistic development. But, by the way I am forgetting to introduce myself. I am Sylvanus Smith, President--but stay----! Aurelia, my child, fetch the Syllabus of the Socialistic Congress from my writing-table; that will be the best introduction. And here comes Martha with, I presume, breakfast. We generally have a parlourmaid, but"--the remonstrant expression came to his face again--"Martha is somewhat hard on maids. She--she doesn't believe in perfect freedom of soul and body, so the last left yesterday in--in a flame of fire! The young men of the village----"
Ned laughed. "We know about that, sir; we were taken last night for 'lazy good-for-nothin' Welsh libertynes.'"
Mr. Sylvanus Smith appeared shocked. "I really must speak to Martha,"
he said in an undertone, adding aloud, "Well, Martha, what have you there?"
The question was provoked by the setting down of a silver dish among the fruits, nuts, and other vegetarian diets on the table, and there was a certain tremulous authority in it.
The subservience of Martha's bob was phenomenal.
"Bacin an' eggs, sir, an' there's more ter follow if required."
The authority dissolved into an ill--assured cough.
"As a rule," remarked Mr. Smith helplessly, "we do not allow meat----"
"But lor! sir," put in Martha, beaming, "wasn't it jest a Providence as me and Adam had left that bit o' beefsteak pie, seeing that strawberries an' sech like are but cold comforts to stummicks as has bin drenched through by storm."
There could be no reply but acquiescence to this proposition, so the strangers began on the bacon and eggs. Mr. Sylvanus Smith breakfasted off some patent food, and Aurelia ate strawberries and brown bread, and drank milk; they seemed to have got into her complexion and hair--at least so thought Ned.
The clematis wreaths, the great bosses of the scarlet geraniums hung round them, the great yew-tree shot out fingers of shadow claiming the lawn and actually touching one of the jewelled flower-beds, while behind these, tall larkspurs and lychnis, their feet hidden in a wilderness of bright blossom, rose up against the rows of peas and raspberries in the kitchen garden, and the green of young apples in the orchard.
Against this paradise of flower and fruit they saw Aurelia, like any Eve, beautiful, healthful, gracious, smiling; and they lost both their hearts and their heads promptly--for the time being, at any rate.
They looked at her by stealth in the long silences which were perforce the fate of Mr. Sylvanus Smith's guests, for he could talk, and talk as he wrote well, of the future of Socialism, and the happiness of the many, oblivious altogether of the happiness or unhappiness, of the few that was being worked out in his immediate neighbourhood. That did not trouble him in the least.
Whether from happiness or unhappiness, past, present, or to come, the two young men were singularly silent as, after being piloted by Adam through the rhododendrons and across the drawbridge, they left the island paradise behind them.
"That was a beautiful garden," said Ted.
"Very," remarked Ned.
Then they were silent again; but they thought persistently of Aurelia, of her beauty, her unworldliness, her curious frank dignity, and the shrewd common-sense she had shown in every word she uttered.
The road to the village led through a wood at first; a wood--as such Welsh mountain woods are at Midsummer--all lush with fern and bramble and great drifts of foxglove envious of each other's height, and holding their heads higher upon the narrowing clefts, until some very ordinary spike, gaining a vantage of rock, out-tops the rest, and so lords it over all.
Then, after a while, the wooded slopes closed in to rock. Here the divided streams rejoined each other with a quick babble of recognition, and, as if out of sheer good spirits, gave a gladsome leap or two ere settling down to race hand in hand through a ravine but a few feet below the curving road.
Finally a precipitous bluff blocked the view, but round this at a sharp turn Ted paused.
"Hullo!" he said. "Why, here we are again!"
They were at the bridge by the cross-roads where they had parted with Dr. Ramsay the day before. On the bare hillside stood the school, deserted this Sunday morning; below them lay the village. Over yonder was hidden the hundred pounds of floating deposit--(Ted's eyes sought this out immediately.) Over there, still shrugging that high shoulder of his in the sunshine, was Llwggd-y-Brydd disclaiming--so Ned thought--all responsibility for their last night's adventure. A real Midsummer Eve's dream, indeed! And to-night?--Midsummer night--would the adventure continue?
"It was two o'clock, was it, he said, for dinner?" asked Ted irrelevantly. He knew the hour perfectly, but he wanted to discuss the question.
"Two o'clock if the cycles couldn't be got," corrected Ned gravely.
"Of course," replied Ted impatiently, "and we will go and ask----"
Ned suddenly burst out laughing. "Why the deuce should we ask? You'd rather dine and so would I. That's simplicity itself; besides, we can go to church or chapel and confess the sin of omission meanwhile--if you like."
Ted looked at him with gloomy virtue. "Of course we must ask--at any rate I shall," he replied haughtily. He felt in his way exactly as his companion did, that is, as if every atom of life in him had been stirred to its depths; but conventional morality and solid fact meant more to him than they did to Ned.
The smith, mercifully, was kind. It had been too late to finish repairs on Saturday; they must wait over till Monday.
So, in a blissful state of relief, they sat on the bridge parapet again and watched the country folk come in to chapel.
"The Calvinists take the cake in dress," remarked Ned. "Half the big drapery shops in Blackborough belong to them, I'm told, and they give a percentage to their assistants. So I expect Miss--what's her name?--Jones is responsible for half the hats here. Ye gods! what a superstructure for one soul!" As he spoke he watched a carrotty-haired girl with a brick-red burnt face, who wore, both inside and outside a leghorn hat, a wreath of crushed roses shaded from beetroot to carrots.
"Myfanwy," said Ted lightly, "is equal to the burden. Here she comes with the parson, and Miss Alicia has the beauty-boy Mervyn. How happy could both be with either--I wonder how they grow those curls."
He spoke with lazy scorn; but by and by the sound of part-singing instinct with swing and go roused him, for he had sung in a choir all his life, and, after vainly trying to persuade Ned to accompany him, he went off to listen, leaving the latter stretched out full length on the parapet watching for invisible trout.
After a time, however, the old churchyard in its turn attracted Ned's lazy interest, and he strolled off to examine the tombstones. They stood cheek by jowl, and to judge by the dates on many, must represent a perfect battlefield of dead, if all the parish came thither to rest.
Some lettering over a low round arch of a sunk door in the church arrested him. Fourteen hundred and fifty-two! No wonder the place looked ruinous, and that he had to step down into the porch! Here his eye took in various framed regulations in red and black, signed "Gawain Meredith, Rector." Evidently the Reverend Gawain was high. And was that a smell of incense?
He set aside the curtain, and stood under the organ-loft. Here surprise held him motionless. Everything was so new, so gilded, so flawless. There was a blaze of red and white on the altar, before which a tall figure in red and white attended by two acolytes, knelt reading the ante-communion service. From them, scattered sparsely over regulation oak benches, was a surpliced choir, four boys on either side coming down, as it were, to meet a huge brass lectern and a red embroidered faldstool.
But the congregation? Six or seven may be in dark corners, or rather since some one must play the organ, eight! No! for the celebrant, after giving out a hymn, strode to a harmonium close to the pulpit, and thereinafter, upborne by his strong baritone, a long-drawn sacramental chant wavered in the aisles, and died away in the rafters of the roof.
What then of the organ? Ned turned, crept up the stair without waking an old man--the bell-ringer no doubt--who was asleep in his long-accustomed seat beside the blow-handle, and found himself before the usual red-curtain screen. Seating himself on the organ stool he looked out, unseen, on the church below.
It was quaint. There was the Reverend Gawain in the pulpit giving out his text, "There came a mighty rushing wind," and looking out over his church as if it had been full instead of empty.
There were some, said the preacher, who expected signs and wonders direct from the Almighty, but the great rushing mighty wind was the teaching of the Church which had begun on Whit Sunday and would go on throughout the year. It was a mighty voice, indeed, sounding in the ears of all his parishioners, even those who were absent. And it spoke through him, their priest, responsible to the Church for the soul of every man, woman, and child, in the parish of Dinas. Seven minutes, by Ned's watch, of unbounded authority, of absolute priesthood, of the Middle Ages. Ned, watching the dignity of the Reverend Gawain Meredith's denial of the passage of Time became admiring. And he was such a fine figure of a man. The old type, chief, medicine man, Druid, Archbishop--Archangel if you will--always the same, in all ages.
Ned wandered off into thoughts such as men of his type have had since the beginning of time, and was roused from them by seeing the priest, holding a huge sacrificial brass platter, awaiting the sheepish sidesman at the chancel steps.
By all that was holy!--one penny--only one, the sidesman's own; but its poverty was covered the next instant by the Rector's sovereign.
Well done to the Rector!
What an imagination, what a magnificent make-believe. Something in Ned's innermost soul leapt up to meet this escape from deadly reality.
It deserved a recognition. Yes! as the man couldn't play himself out of church, _he_ would--the organ was there!
In sudden impulse he laid an awakening hand on the drowsy sexton.
"Blow!" he whispered strenuously, "Blow, I tell you, for all you're worth."
The man, half--asleep, obeyed; Ned opened the keyboard, and not knowing his instrument put on full diapason. Thus, when the last Amen had echoed out from the Rector, for the choir appeared to be dummies, and the cope and the brass platter began to follow the little white surplices, the whole procession paused in amazement, as, with many a note dumb, many a dissonance overborne by the full burst of sound, Handel's "Lift up your heads, oh! ye gates," crashed into every corner of the old church. Crashed for the first two bars, then, the pressure on leaky bellows yielding, wavered and sank.
Ned, realising his failure, was down the loft stairs, through the graves, and over the back of the churchyard wall, where he lay convulsed with inextinguishable laughter at his own mad prank, before curiosity followed the amazement in the church as the last breath of air escaped in a long-drawn pipe from a stuck note in the treble.