A Sovereign Remedy

by Flora Annie Webster Steel

Her eyes were clear as she looked back at Ned, who had come in to find her, as she so often was nowadays, alone. For Ted's first great success had been but a preliminary to months of daily excitement spent in gaining, losing, gaining again, in the midst of which he seemed to have lost sight of the future altogether. And for the present he was too busy to care. Then underlying all things was his consciousness of youth. The outlook before him was long; he could not but see that chance might come into it. Why! in five years time he would be just reaching the age at which it was prudent for a business man to marry; for, of course, his marriage to poor dear Aura had been grossly imprudent, though, but for this one disappointment,--which naturally meant more to her than to him--it had turned out very well. If only she would have condescended to amuse herself like other girls--like Rosa Hirsch, for instance--they might have had a jolly time together in the various European capitals whither his business took him. But what was the use of taking her when the only places in which Aura was not shy and ill at ease were musty fusty old picture galleries and dreary botanical gardens. And "the Zoo," of course; she had always been at home in "the Zoo"; but then there was that beastly smell of smaller mammals all over the shop. So he had gone his way, kindly, quite affectionately, wholly without sympathy. To Aura it was rather a relief; it gave her time to rearrange her world.

She was looking a little weary over a pile of household accounts. There was no need nowadays for heartburnings as to expense; but none the less Ted expected a properly-balanced book, and the items were terribly numerous. It was the herring-and-a-half problem expressed in pounds instead of pence, and there was quite a wrinkle of thought between Aura's eyebrows, for she was no arithmetician.

To Ned that wrinkle was a tragedy; but then it is always a tragedy for a man to watch from a distance the woman he loves trying to reconstruct her life, and reconcile herself to the lack of what he knows he could give her; and the greater her success the greater--in a way--is the tragedy.

Ned had felt this every instant of those four months during which the memory of that pitiful protest, "Not you Ned. Ah! Ned, not you!" had come between him and even apology. When he had gone back that evening to fling himself into a chair and gloom over the fire for a few minutes, he had told himself he was a fool. He had told himself so hundreds of times since that evening, until there had grown up in him the conviction that this sort of thing could not possibly last for ever. Why should it? Why should three human beings be sacrificed? And in heaven's name to what? Not to a marriage of either soul or body. They all needed something which they had not got. Ted needed, or would need, a wife and children. These might be his if Aura were taken away. She needed the old, free, natural life. This Ned could give her in that island on the southern seas. And how much more? Ye gods! how much more of love--true love, and tenderness and truth! As for his own needs, they were simple, being summed up in that one word--Aura. He needed her every instant of the day and night. He could not be content without her. Love had left his body; it had invaded his mind; it had not yet touched his soul. The personal element was still too strong for him, so by degrees he had brought himself to believe that perhaps the best way out of the impasse for all the three actors in the tragedy would be for him to beguile her away--if he could.

"You know you promised me last year," he reiterated.

"Yes! I promised," she said sadly, and he knew where her thoughts had fled. He used to see her so often in his dreams, wandering through great drifts of purple iris, the flower which brings the messages of the gods, leading a little child by the hand. She was there now, and a sudden dread came over him again lest nothing short of that would ever make her really happy. But the next moment he had roused himself. "I should love to go, of course," she went on. "Fancy seeing Cwmfaernog and the floor of heaven! Only I can't, can I? till Ted returns, and that may be----"

"Never, perhaps!" interrupted Ned sarcastically. "He hasn't been much at home lately, has he?"

She flushed up hastily. "Why should he be? he is not like you--you are an idle man; besides----" she paused, her pride refusing to justify her husband even to Ned. "It may not be for a fortnight," she went on coldly, "he never can tell. And by that time the hyacinths will be over, and it would be no good. So--so it is no use thinking of it."

But her very readiness in the self-defence of this refusal to blame her husband, decided him. If that went on much longer, the tragedy would become permanent. A sudden weariness of the whole foolish muddle seized on him. He was not going to have Aura spend her days in saintliness and martyrdom, growing more and more dignified and gracious, more and more motherly in the look of brimming affection she never failed to give to him--to him her lover!

It was beyond bearing. He would break down the prison walls at all costs. He was tired to death himself of civilisation; they would go into the wilderness and be happy.