It was some time ere, seeing the chapel folk coming out, he made his way round at the back of the Rectory wood and joined Ted, whom he found enthusiastic about the singing, and glad to have heard the Reverend Morris Pugh's "hwl," the bardic note. It was really rather impressive, that constant iteration of the A-flat, and even to one ignorant of Welsh gave a feeling of something being desperately wrong, of something needing desperately to be set right.
But there had been no outpouring--nothing out of the common.
"You should have----" said Ned, and paused.
"What?" asked Ted.
"Nothing, except that it must be about time for us to be going back--to Paradise!"
CHAPTER IV
Aurelia in a blessed white frock, looking like a Botticelli angel, was in the garden talking to old Adam. She received their half-hearted apologies for return with a fine superiority.
"Of course," she said, "we all knew you were coming. Martha was unkind enough to kill a beautiful white chicken for you, and there is raspberry tart, and curds and cream. Oh yes! and I made a sponge-cake for tea. So you ought to have enough I'm sure. Now, before we go in, I do want to find my Ourisia coccinea, and Adam has mislaid it. Now, Adam, do think! and please don't say the underground mice have eaten the label, for I'm sure they haven't--it would be a miracle, you know, if they did."
Here she turned to her companions with shining eyes.
"You see, Adam believes in boggles and miracles, and all sorts of queer things, though he isn't Welsh. And to-day there was a miracle in church."
"A miracle," echoed Ned, flushing slightly and wondering more.
She nodded. "Yes! The organ that hasn't sounded a note for ever so long, played of itself, or rather Griffiths Morgan, the sexton, says he was awoke by the Archangel Gabriel."
"Nonsense," interrupted Ned with spirit, "it--it couldn't have been----"
"That is what Adam says," replied Aurelia smiling. "Adam! tell the story yourself."
"'Twain't much story, Miss Aura," put in the old gardener, "but 'twas how as this. Rector he bin preechin' of the roarin', rushin' wynd, an'
as he coombed down the chauntrey steps, as might be the Pope o' Rome with that there brass platter, it let loose quite suddint. A wynd, indeed, a rushin' and roarin', an' heavenly notes all a-dyin' away to twanks like the last Trump. Folks were greatly put about, even passon himself didn't know what to make on't till Griffiths Morgan, as sleeps on the beller's 'andle through being accustomed to it as a lad, said he was woke and bid blow by the Archangel Gabriel. Whereupon passon give it 'im for sleepin', and says as he must a' laid on the notes somehow; but I says, says I, that nothin' but true miracle 'ud ever make the broken-wynded old orgin' give out sech a rare 'ollerin'."
"But there's no such thing as a miracle, Adam," declared the girl, and the next moment was on her knees peering into an aster patch. "Why, there it is," she cried, "Oh! Adam, how could you?"
Adam stooped over the border in simulated astonishment.
"Why, drat my garters" (this was his most extreme form of words). "So be it. Well, miss, 'tis true miracle how that pr'anniel stuff comes up, libel or no. 'Tis the Lord's doings, as don't call 'em by name, see you."
"But Adam did," said Ned, relieved as the necessity for confessing that he was not the Archangel Gabriel vanished before this change of venue.
"What Adam?" asked Aura. "Oh! I suppose you mean the one in the Bible, only grandfather doesn't believe in it, you know. It couldn't, anyhow, be this one," she continued, her eyes shining with laughter once more as they moved across the lawn, leaving Adam shaking his head over the Ourisia coccinea, "for when he digs my borders he begins by collecting all the tallies into a heap; then he puts them back again at regular intervals in a row. It's very funny, you know, but terribly confusing.
Each spring I have to rack my brains to think what each dear thing means as it peeps up. Of course, that is interesting in itself, but"--here her eyes grew clearer, lighter as she looked up for sympathy--"it is rather sad to make mistakes. I don't like dreaming a campanula is white when it is blue, blue when it is white."
"I think one is as beautiful as the other," laughed Ted.
"Yes!"--then her eyes sought Ned's--"but it is hard, always, to lose what one has learnt to expect."
He smiled back at her but said nothing.
So as they strolled over the grass, she, every now and again giving them a glimpse of the secluded busy life she led (for she and her grandfather never went into the village except, perhaps, to judge at some competition concert) the bell rang, and crossing to the verandah they found Mr. Sylvanus Smith less crippled as the day went on, but urbane and talkative as ever, while Martha, with her little bob curtsey, was waiting to take off the covers.
And they feasted like kings on the chicken and raspberry tart; and the weak rough cider which Martha made, and Mr. Smith drank for his rheumatism, seemed to get into their heads with the Wine of Life, as they sat and talked and watched Aurelia against the background of flower and fruit.
"Oh! cupbearer! save the Wine of Life, what gifts canst thou bring?"
quoted Ned suddenly under his breath.
"A fine poet Hafiz--a very fine poet," remarked Sylvanus Smith, who appeared to have read and remembered most things, "but he lacks the true human spirit. He fuddles himself into content with mystic unrealities, and misses the great individual claim of each soul to freedom and equality. So unlike Byron."
"Very," assented Ned dryly.
Still the conversation did not languish, and when dinner was over they adjourned to another large room opposite the library, which was also empty of all things save a grand piano, an arm-chair, and a music rest. Here Ned settled himself down to accompany Ted and Aura as they sang, and finally, with apologies, for not being so much at home on the piano as on the organ, persuaded Mr. Sylvanus Smith, who turned out to be a passed musician, into trying a Brahms sonata for piano and violin. And here Martha coming to announce tea found them still happily busy over the great piles of music that were ranged along the wall.
It was when Ned lingered to close the piano that Aura lingered also watching him quietly; but she made him start and blush violently by saying with a smile, "You were the Archangel Gabriel, weren't you?"
Taken aback as he was, his eyes met hers with a reflection of their confidence. "I was. But how did you find out?"
"I don't know," she said, a faint trouble coming into her face, "that is the worst of it. It was when we were running through the _Messiah_, something in your mind touched mine, I think. It happens sometimes, doesn't it?--and--and it isn't altogether pleasant."
She drew herself away from him instinctively, but he followed her.
"Why?" he asked.
She flashed round on him. "Because I dislike being touched."
There was a silence; finally he asked curiously, "Ought I to tell Adam?"
"Why should you? He loves miracles, and it will give him something to talk about, besides"--here she laughed--"it was a miracle, you know, to make the old organ sound at all."
"Perhaps," replied Ned, relieved of the necessity for confessing one of the many sudden impulses which were always getting him into trouble.
They found Martha by the tea-table looking very rakish and young in a coat and skirt and a sailor hat, which, however, did not prevent her from, as usual, masking her supremacy by subserviency. The gentlemen's rooms were quite ready for them, and as she was going through the village could she leave any message with the smith?
"Thanks, no!" replied Ted curtly, for he had noticed Aura's confidence with Ned, and had--he scarcely had time to think why--resented it; "but, I think, Cruttenden, that if we do avail ourselves of Mr.
Smith's kindly offered hospitality, we must start at dawn, picking up our bicycles by the way."
"As you please, Ted," replied Ned carelessly. "But thanks all the same, Martha. I hope there will be no more miracles in church."
"Thank _you_, sir," retorted Martha cheerfully, "but I don't 'old with church nor yet with chapel neither. As I keep tellin' of Adam, they makes people think too much of their sins. An' 'is is but what we cooks call second stock at that, sir; for takin' 'im, fine an' wet, Adam do 'is work like a real Briton--yes! he really do----"
With which testimonial to Adam's worth she bobbed another curtsey, and was off for her panacea for all ills, a "spin on her bike."
"I suppose," said Ted after a pause, in a somewhat awed voice, "that Adam is Martha's husband."
Aura bubbled over with quick mirth. "Martha's husband! Oh dear, no!
Why, she is always at me 'not to incline to no man, no; not if his 'air be 'ung round with gold'; and just think of Adam's little cropped head!"