Meanwhile Ned Blackborough had paused to re-make his plans in his new condition of pennilessness; for he had but a few shillings left for the immediate present. Afterwards there was money and to spare awaiting him at various points on the route which he had carefully prepared for flight. Still he must first get to a point.
Then the remembrance of the hundred pounds he had hidden away in the cleft of the rock up on the hills came to him, making him laugh; because there was no question now as to who needed it. He came back to it a beggar; beggared, indeed, of all save life. Yet life was all. The words of the Indian sage came back to him:--
"Indestructible the life is, spreading life thro' all.
I say to Thee weapons reach not the life.
Flame burns it not, waters cannot overwhelm
Nor dry winds wither it. Impenetrable,
Unentered, unassailed, unharmed, untouched,
Immortal, all arriving, stable, sure,
Thus is the Life declared."
Vaguely he felt comforted. The sense of Unity lay around him in the air. He saw the Golden Gateway. He knew that its Door was open. But his love kept him from entering. He could yield himself without one sigh to the Beginning that was the End, but he could not yield her, for he had not yet realised that she also was the Beginning, the End.
The dawn was just breaking as he reached the gap, and searching in the cleft found nothing.
Was he glad, or was he sorry? He was not sure. In a way he felt more free, since he need now have no plans for the future. He could sit down and watch the sun rise. After that he could walk over Llwydd-y-Bryd to the coastline by the country town, and so--anywhere!
This was sufficient, surely, for the moment.
The sun rose in a panoply of purple and red with, low down above the hills, a band or two of torquoise blue to hint of the vast fields of calm ether beyond the storm clouds of the world.
"Aura! Aura! Aura!"
Even there, to the far, unending depths, the cry echoed. A cry apart, poignant with individual anguish.