A Sovereign Remedy. Flora Annie Webster Steel
Peter Ramsay, M.D. So just hand it over, will ye?"
Close behind them stood a sturdy, thick-set man, with bright red-brown eyes and bright bronze-red hair.
He had evidently come down one of the steep mountain sheep-tracks, leading his pony, for it stood beside him now, its hoofs half hidden in the moss, while it stretched its inquiring muzzle towards the glittering pile of sovereigns, as if suspicioning them as a new kind of corn.
"Welcome, sir, so far as I am concerned," replied Ned calmly. "But it isn't in any lack of claimants that our difficulty lies. We have in fact too many! Our reverend friend wants the shekels, why he would be puzzled to say, since he preaches that they have no purchasing power for the one thing needful. My namesake over there wouldn't be averse to them, though he holds the possession of gold to be a crime----"
"I never said so," broke in Ted hotly.
"Excuse me! It follows inevitably from your premise of equality. That gives the coup de grace to lawful personal possession of anything; since 'to possess,' means the having and holding of something extraneous to the personality, whereas if every personality has an equal amount of any one thing, that thing ceases to be a possession and becomes part of the personality!--which, of course, is mere hair-splitting! As for you, doctor, you also are illogical. Health and life are the goods you desire, yet money is no remedy for disease and death. Practically, I am the only one with a leg to stand upon. I am a pleasure seeker, pure and simple, so, as this gives me pleasure--here goes!"
The third curved flight of gold finished his remarks so pointedly that silence fell upon all four, as they looked out on the golden light haze, which, finding a mist-wreath in its path, had driven it, all transmuted into gold, to blot out both land and sea, leaving nothing visible save that foreground of rippled brimming pool, set in its fringe of rushes. The peewit, fearful once more lest the new comers should have keener eyes, wheeled and wailed; the pony, dissatisfied with the sovereigns, nosed and nibbled reflectively at the coarse grass and the delicate campanula.
"I'll tell you what," cried Ned suddenly, his face showing a half scornful amusement. "Let Fate decide which of us needs money most!" He took out a pocketbook as he spoke, and withdrew from it a sheaf of bank notes. "There's a hundred here, and I don't want it--that"--he pointed to the cash--"will carry me through for a week, so my namesake and I could start fair together for a holiday--if he chooses. I'll leave this, therefore, on deposit! There is a convenient cleft in the rock over there, and my tobacco-pouch will keep out the damp----"
He produced the latter also, and began leisurely to exchange contents, while the others gasped----
"But, sir, you can never mean," began the Reverend Morris Pugh, finding his voice first--"To leave money here, so close to the road!--think of the temptation!"
"To us, certainly," interrupted Ned dryly, "but to no one else. It is ours to take when we think the world--that is, of course, ourselves--wants it--but mind you--we are to say nothing about the taking to any one else in the world. Of course, we agree to treat it as--let us say, a sovereign remedy; therefore we're to use it only to--to cure what we can't cure without it."
"Or think we can't cure," amended Peter Ramsay with twinkling eyes, "my prescriptions are personal matters between me and my conscience. The idea is fetching, an unappropriated balance----"
"Hardly unappropriated," remarked Ned caustically, "it is apparently hypothecated--as you Scotch call it, doctor--to philanthropy, for I suppose charity mustn't begin at home."
"Why not?" put in Ned. "There's really no limitation of object or time. Any of us may withdraw the deposit to-morrow without notice to any one, if he possess a solid conviction that--that he can't do without it? Do you all agree?"
There was a pause.
"It's d--d rot," said Ted Cruttenden at last sulkily, "but on those conditions I agree."
The Reverend Morris Pugh looked abstractedly over the golden haze in which the whole world was hidden.
"Money is the root of all evil," he began.
"Bosh!" interrupted Dr. Ramsay, springing to his feet. "I'm game! I shall take that money, if some of you aren't too previous, for the first real necessity----"
Ned Cruttenden sprang to his feet also, and laughed. "So will I, if I can only make up my mind as to what constitutes a 'real necessity.'"
The two stood challenging each other, then the red-brown eyes under the shaggy bronze-red eyebrows softened.
"Not much, I'll allow; very often bare life."
Ned stooped to secrete the tobacco-pouch murmuring, "Il faut vivre! Pour moi je n'en vois pas la necessité!"
Then he looked up. "There it is, gentlemen, very much at your disposal. And now, namesake, we can start fair--for our walk to the first blacksmith's shop anyhow."
Five minutes afterwards the golden haze had usurped even the still unrippled pool and the cleft in the rock, while the four young men on the downward path were lost to view utterly.
CHAPTER II
Owen Jones, who in his leathern apron might have been a moyen age smith, looked up and said something lengthy in Welsh, whereupon the eager, alert little crowd, which had gathered round on the chance of a new emotion, echoed something else in Welsh, smiled, nodded, and looked sage.
"Well," said Ted impatiently.
The smith having no English, the office of translator was taken up by Morris Pugh, who, with a certain appropriative courtesy, had shown them all the beauties of the way with pardonable pride, informed them effusively and charmingly of his past life, his present opinions, told them of his widowed mother with tears in his eyes, of his clever young brother whose ambition was Parliament with a thrill of pride in his voice, and had finally introduced them formally to the smith as an elder of his chapel.
"In about half-an-hour they will be ready, he says; and, see you, Owen Jones is an excellent workman, indeed." Here he raised his voice and looked round for approval. "None better, I am sure."
"No! Indeed," assented Isaac Edwards, who, another elder, had come from his merchant's shop over the way to help on the general interest, "there will be none better than Owen Jones from Pembroke to Pwlhelli!"
The largeness of this proposition suited the hearers. It reflected credit on themselves, their clan, their country; so the quarrymen off duty from their piles of slaty shale among the oak woods, and the boys off school this Saturday afternoon, smiled and saluted quasi-military fashion as the two Cruttendens moved off to seek tea in the little inn, where a Cycle Club sign was nearly hidden in a massive cotoneaster--all red berries and white blossoms--which covered the walls from roadway to gable.
Here they bid good-bye to the Reverend Morris Pugh's good offices. He was due ere long in chapel for choir practice and prayer meeting. As he said so, the unction came into his voice which was noticeable whenever he touched on his profession. It was as if some necessity for shibboleth arose in him, as if some claim--not altogether natural--had to be considered. Indeed, he had lingered a moment to say that prayer was needful everywhere--even in the peaceful hamlet of Dinas--prayer for some outpouring of the Spirit this Whitsuntide week. There had been no special manifestation at present, but one might come any moment--the Lord's mercy being nigh to all them that feared Him; let them remember that. So, having said his word in season, he changed his manner, wished them good luck heartily, and thus left them to their own company; for the Scotch doctor, who had also proved a pleasant acquaintance, had branched off at the bridge, some half a mile up the hill from the little hollow in which Dinas hid itself modestly among the trees. But you could see where the bridge lay, because of the startling red-and-white school beside it, which looked as if it had sprung, like Diana from Jove's brain, fully armed for education out of the bare hillside.