A Sovereign Remedy. Flora Annie Webster Steel
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it came from you both."
"Yes, from us both," assented Ned.
Her eyes were on Ted's face, which was good indeed to look upon, but she turned swiftly to Ned.
"Ah! It was you, of course. Yes, it was you," she said, holding out the coin. He took it without a word.
"It seems a shame to go to bed this heavenly night, but you have to be up so early." There was regret in her voice.
"Why should we?" said Ned impulsively. "Let us roam the hills, I have done it before now, alone."
She stood looking at them both, her face mysteriously bright.
"And you?" she asked of Ted.
He laughed. "I feel like it to-night, anyhow."
"Ah," she said, nodding her head, "you are a wise man. Good-night and pleasant dreams."
They watched her pass in her white raiment across the lawn, taking the glamour of the night with her, and leaving them with an ordinary moon shining on an ordinary garden.
Then Ted gave a short laugh and flung himself on the turf again, resuming his pipe.
"What's the matter?" asked Ned imperturbably.
"Nothing. I was only thinking of all the gassing you let out yesterday concerning money. Why, it means--everything! Hang that sovereign to your watch-chain, man, and then you can tell her a romantic tale when----"
A "whitt whitt, whitter," followed by a sudden sob among the shadows and lights of the pool, told of one more duck-and-drake----
"As if that made any difference," he continued sardonically. "You have plenty more of them."
"So far as I'm concerned, it makes some difference," retorted Ned with spirit. "That particular coin won't be put to baser uses."
There was a pause, broken only by Ned's vain effort to get his cheroot to draw. Suddenly he flung it aside, edged himself out of the shadow into the light and faced his namesake.
"Look here, Cruttenden," he said, "I've got something to explain to you, because--well--because I want this thing to be fair and square between us. The fact is, that though my name is Edward Cruttenden all right, I have the misfortune to have been for the last two years, most unexpectedly, Lord Blackborough."
"Lord Blackborough!" echoed Ted slowly. "Why--why, you're--you're my master--that is to say, I'm one of your clerks--and--and you're the richest man in the midlands."
"I believe I was, a year ago; but money doesn't stick by me. I wasn't brought up to it. Yes, I became Lord Blackborough against my will, by the death of my uncle, a cripple, who inherited the barony--bought by screws chiefly--from the original purchaser, who had a fit on hearing that his only son had shot himself over a woman. A squalid story, and the distinction between us is, as you see, a purely artificial one----"
"I quite agree with your lordship," interrupted Ted.
"My dear fellow," replied Lord Blackborough, "you will oblige me by not being a garden ass. The fact is, we have a considerable likeness to each other outside, in which you have distinctly the advantage. You're taller, broader; briefly, the better looking. As to the inside, we differ somewhat, but there again you have the qualities which make for wealth, and I haven't. I can see myself a poor man in my old age. Then we tumbled off our cycles together in an equal way. In a still more equal way we have tumbled into--let us say, this Garden of Eden. Now, why shouldn't we remain in it on equal terms?"
"Because it is impossible. You are Lord Blackborough, and I am your clerk."
"But why should we not remain the brothers Cruttenden? In this remote----"
"Impossible," repeated Ted angrily.
"Anyhow, let us think over it. We agreed, didn't we, to spend our holiday together. Well, let us talk it over, and if it is feasible, come back----"
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 title, instead of as in the beginning granting title 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 space, 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!