Aura stood up, and in Ned's sudden swerve inwards, an overhanging root from the high rocky bank above struck her full upon the temple.
The child, shrieking more from joyous excitement than fear, lurched back with outstretched arms to the shadow; but Aura sank back, her head resting on Ned's shoulder.
"My God! Aura!" he cried. There was no answer. He did not stop the car, but sweeping it round the open space by the school, raced back to Cwmfaernog. There, he knew, all was ready for her reception, there everything would be to hand. As he sped through the misty blue cloud once more, he saw nothing of it. His eyes were on her whitening face.
Dear God! How limp she felt, as he lifted her in his arms and carried her across the drawbridge, and so through the garden to the house. A scent of violets and primroses, of lilies of the valley, of all things sweet assailed him as he entered the door that was only latched. He had brought the flowers when he had come down secretly to see that all things were prepared. He had brought them _for her!_ And the table set out with flowers and fruit--that was _for her_ also.
He stumbled up the stairs with his heavy burden to her room. He had not entered that. He had only climbed once more to her window-sill to set it abloom with white and purple iris--the messengers of the gods.
How they mocked him now with their tale of immortality. His mind went back to many a Kashmir grave which he had seen, long and narrow like the sill set as thick with irises, high upon the hills, low amongst the dales.
But she could not be dead!
Yet her head lay on the pillow just as it had touched it, her arm slipping from his support sank, till it could sink no more.
"Aura!" he muttered faintly "Aura!"
He knelt and laid his ear to her heart--oh! sweetest resting--place in all the world!
There was no sound, no beat. Yes! she was dead!
He turned his face round into the soft pillow of her breast and whispered "Aura." It seemed to him as on that midsummer night when he had first met her, as if all the world were wailing "Aura! Aura!"
How long he knelt there he scarcely knew; a faint sense of sound in the house roused him to the remembrance that something must be done.
He must call for help. But if he did that, every one must know that she was here with him alone. The world would judge, and what would that judgment reck of her spotlessness or his forbearance? No! that must not be, if he could compass otherwise.
His mind, almost unhinged by the terrible shock, chased possibility through a thousand impossibilities, the least grotesque of these being a grave of his own digging amongst the hyacinths; his subsequent flight being easy, since he had made all arrangements for a sudden disappearance.
Was that a noise below--a faint creak on the stairs? The possibility troubled him. He crossed to the door, and opened it to find himself confronted by Ted Cruttenden, his face distorted by passion.
"You scoundrel!" he cried. "You--you infernal scoundrel--where is Aura--my wife?"
His very vehemence, his very lack of self restraint, brought back Ned Blackborough's wandering wits. He closed the door behind him, and stood with his back to it.
"She is--not there," he said slowly. "Ted! listen for one moment. I brought her here----"
"Do you think I don't know that, you damned villain," burst out Ted--"when I came home this morning and found you had taken her--there was some cock-and-bull story the servants had about not sitting up for her, and a latch-key and all that rot--do you think I was fool enough not to understand--I've never really trusted you. And now--and now--let me pass in, I say, or there'll be murder done."
"Listen one moment----" the voice was inexorable. "You never trusted me. I know that. Have you not trusted her? Are you fool enough to have lived day and night with her, to have lain with your head upon her breast--and not known--No! it is impossible. You know what she is--you must--you do know it----"
Even to Ted Cruttenden's mad jealousy, memory could bring no fuel to feed the flame; his very anger sank for the moment to self-pity.
"I come home," he muttered, "I find her gone. I follow. I have walked over the hill to----"
"To--spy upon us----" interrupted Ned sternly, "go on."
"To spy upon you if you will," cried Ted, his passion rising again--"and I find you here, in her room----"
Ned opened the door behind him quietly. "Because she is dead," he said, and leaning against the lintel, his head upon his arm, waited.
"Dead!"
The whisper reached him from within full almost of fear; and there was a long empty silence.
"You will not say I killed her, I suppose," said Ned bitterly at last.
"It was an accident. We were going back--back to you----" The very wonder of that fact stayed speech; but he knew he must go on. "I am quite ready to let you shoot me, by and by, but at present--I--I want you to think of her--of yourself. I don't count. I need count any more. But we must be quick about it. As I stand before--before Something that is mightier than I, I swear to you that I have done you no harm. We won't go into the other question as to what harm you have done me. And for her--you know. But--but even if we had, what use is there now, in making a fuss in letting the world know that you have found her there--with me. Not a soul knows I am here. You can take my place, as you have taken it before. I can go, as I have gone before."
From within, where Ted Cruttenden stood beside the bed, vaguely remorseful at his own lack of anything save anger, horror, regret, no answer came.
"Ted," went on Lord Blackborough, "you must decide. I can go the way you came, and you can call for help. It must be done at once. I'll tell you how it happened so that you may know. We got here about noon.
We didn't go into the house. We were--we were in the woods and on the hills----" his voice failed a little, then grew monotonous. "She said it was time to go, and I--I was a fool! I said so too. Just at the corner by the school, a child, a little child, ran in front of the car. She--she called out--and rose. There was a root--oh! Curse the damned thing--it struck her as I swerved. It has left a little blue mark--you can see it on her temple if you look. She never spoke. I brought her back. She was dead."
"You say you didn't kill her," burst out Ted, his voice now full of crude anger, grief, hate, "but you did. You brought her here."
"Is there any use in recriminations," asked Ned wearily, "you have to decide. And, after all, she--she was no wife for you--you are young yet----" Ted listening, cursed him for repeating the inward thought that had forced itself into his mind. "You have all the world before you--and----" for an instant the voice hesitated as if ashamed, uncertain, then went on. "I had made out a deed of gift to you of a hundred and fifty thousand pounds. It is about all I have left, and the works and all that must go to the heir, you know. You see I meant to disappear, and I meant to take your wife,--so this was just payment. It can be just payment still. I shall not trouble you again.
But--but you must decide at once."
He stood waiting for a moment or two, his head resting as before upon his upraised arm upon the lintel; then he heard a step, and lifted his eyes to check what he knew all too well would come from Ted's lips.
Did he not know it? Was it not the answer of the world where everything even honour had its price? And was it not far better, far wiser? Was it not what he himself desired?
"You will find the motor by the bridge," he said quietly. "You had better call some one from the village first, and then the doctor. The children will give evidence, some of them were quite big, and no one at New Park knows anything. Good-bye? I shan't see you again."
When Ted had gone, he closed the door, went downstairs, gathered up the tell-tale flowers and fruits which he had brought, climbed to the window-sill and removed the iris, so, putting them all into a basket, went back to the woods.
Before the car returned with its first consignment of help, the misty-blue wreaths of the hyacinths, darkening with the dusk, had hidden him.
CHAPTER XXVIII
He roused himself, for the night was passing. The last twinkling lights--the lights which he had been almost--unconsciously watching in the valley below him--had gone.
But one steady star remained. That came from the room where she lay dead. It seemed incredible. Such sudden endings to all things came into life sometimes, of course; still why should they come into his?
It was unfair. He risked everything on this one stake. Bit by bit he had given up everything else. He had chased love to the outside edge of the world, and now--it had gone over the verge.
He stood up and stretched himself, wondering vaguely how he had passed the last few hours. He had slept for a while, he knew. That was at the beginning, after he had gone down to the hollow where they had sat together, and where he had planted the iris by the side of the narcissus which was too proud to look for its fellow in the earth-bounded pool at its feet. It had amused him--yes! positively amused him--to dig holes for the bulbs with his pen-knife, and make a grave--long and narrow like the window-sill--just such a grave as he remembered on hill and dale at Kashmir. And it was not an empty grave either; for he had buried in it the violets and the primroses, the lilies of the valley and all things sweet.
In that first hour he must have been almost crazy with grief.
But then, he remembered, he had lain down half-hidden by the hyacinths, dog-tired in mind and body to sleep a dreamless sleep. Then he had come and watched the lights until it should be dark enough for the night to bring disguise.
Now it had come, and it was time to be going.
Whither?
As if that mattered! He had come prepared for a secret journey, and there was a hundred pounds odd in his pocket. The thought made him smile bitterly. So far as outward circumstances stood, he was in exactly the same position as he had been two years ago when he and Ted had first met in a bicycle smash. In exactly the same position since what was there to prevent his turning up at New Park in a few days, and resuming his life as Lord Blackborough? There was nothing to prevent it since the deed of gift could stand, of course; nothing but his utter weariness. It would be better to start afresh.