59CHAPTER V
Two events wrote themselves indelibly on Christopher’s memory in connection with this first visit to Marden, while the one great matter that began there and influenced his whole after life merged itself into a general hazy sense of happiness and companionship. For it is given to few of us even when we have reached years of discretion to recognise those moments in our lives which are of real, supreme, and eternal importance: moments when the great doors of experience open slowly on silent hinges and we pass in, unconscious even that we have crossed the threshold. But all that happens to our familiar selves, that touches our well-known emotions, and rubs or eases the worn grooves of existence, is heavily underscored in our recollection, and not infrequently we take for mile-stones on the way what were but pebbles on the road.
The two events which Christopher carried in his memory were, however, not unimportant, for both bore on his relationship with the man who was moulding his life. The one episode turned Vespasian’s bald statements into real emotional facts, and the other was the first serious collision between the far-off disastrous tutelage of Marley Sartin and the new laws of existence as propounded by Aymer Aston.
Christopher’s education made vast strides during that winter. The season proved an unusually mild one. He was out the greater part of each day with Patricia, enduring with remarkable fortitude her alternate contempt and despair over his ignorance of such everyday matters as horses, guns, dogs, desert island games, and such like. When she laughed at him for not being able to ride he shut his teeth hard not to remind her he’d never possessed a shetland pony from60birth as she had, also he rose at an unconscionable early hour and rode in the cold winter’s dawn round and round the exercising yard with the young grooms, while Patricia was warm and fast asleep in bed. But he had his reward when Mr. Aston, who had heard of his doings from the stud-groom, took him out with him on one of his rounds of inspection to outlying farms.
“The boy’s got a good seat, and pluck, Aymer,” reported Mr. Aston. “It’s more creditable to him because he has had to learn. It’s not second nature to him.”
It took him less trouble to learn how to handle a gun, and when “off duty” to Patricia, spent a vast amount of time in the electric plant house, learning the A B C of a big dynamo.
Aymer knew all this and made no mention of lessons, for Christopher was backward in more matters than booklearning and the life on a big estate, the infinite variety of interests was all good food for the boy’s hungry brain and soul.
He grew apace. Mr. Aston declared he was a changeling and not the thin little urchin he had first encountered by the mile-stone on the Great Road. They never alluded to his life before that, though they all knew of it, and made their own private comparisons and observations.
Christopher became quite attached to the babies so long as they did not intrude on his own particular hours with Cæsar, but he did not get over a certain shy reserve towards Renata.
“She slips into empty places,” he said to Cæsar once, and Cæsar laughed at him and told Renata, who coloured and wrinkled her little forehead.
“He is a nice boy,” she said, “and I love him for being so good to Patricia. There hasn’t been a storm since he came.”61
One day, when it was too wet for even Christopher to be out, the two children amused themselves by turning out a cupboard in a disused room. It was a perfect stronghold of treasures. Old riding whips, Badminton Magazines (marked Aymer Aston, Christopher noticed), tennis balls, cricket pads, a pair of fencing foils and mask and gloves, a host of sporting trophies from a hare’s pad to a wolf’s ear labelled “Kronigratz,” and last of all a box full of photographs.
Patricia was called away before they could investigate this last treasure trove, and Christopher, not to be alone in the glory of discovery, carried it off to Cæsar’s room and lay on the hearth-rug enjoying it till Cæsar, busy working out estate accounts for his father, was at liberty to look too. They were interesting photographs,—to a boy. Mostly of horses ridden, led, alone, jumping, horses galloping, horses trotting, and over and over again a picture of one horse, and rider, who never seemed to wear a hat and had a thick head of hair that looked as if it might be the same colour as Cæsar’s. At last he came to a bigger, more distinct photo of the same man and horse. The horse was evidently a polo-pony and was galloping and the man on it in white riding things, with his shirt open at the neck and was swinging a polo stick in his hand. There was no mistaking it this time: it was undoubtedly Cæsar. Christopher gave a little gasp. Cæsar like that, vigorous, active, panting,—Christopher could feel it so—with life and excitement. He scrambled to his knees with the picture in his hand.
“Cæsar, dear Cæsar, look what I’ve found.”
Aymer looked round, saw the scattered photographs, and held out his hand.
“Is it you really? May I have it for myself?”
Cæsar took the card and as he gave it up, Christopher knew he had made a mistake, and got scarlet.62
“Where did you find it?” demanded Aymer sharply.
“In the cupboard in the little red room. We were turning it out.”
“Yes, it’s I. Why shouldn’t it be? I wasn’t always a cripple, you know.”
He tossed the picture back on the rug. The scar stood out white and distinct, and his face was strangely hard and set. A book slipped down on the left side and he tried to catch it with the left hand and failed, and it fell with a bang on the floor.
“May I have it?” asked Christopher meekly from the rug.
“What for? You don’t know the horse and you don’t know the man. Put it in the fire.”
“No, I won’t,” exclaimed Christopher indignantly. “Cæsar, don’t be so horrid, it’s—it’s—exactly like you.”
Cæsar ignored his own command and asked another question instead. “Where did you say you found it?”
“In a cupboard in the little red room. It’s such a jolly little room. It isn’t used now and there’s hardly anything in it, but the cupboards are full of things—lovely things. Patricia and I just explored.”
“It used to be my room and the things are all mine. Why haven’t they burnt them?” he muttered.
Christopher gathered up the unlucky photographs and put them back in the box. He was dimly conscious he did not want Mr. Aston to come and see them.
“I’m sorry, Cæsar, I didn’t know we shouldn’t have done it.”
“You haven’t done any harm, I—I had no business to be cross, old fellow. Come and show me the pictures again, I’ll tell you about them.”
Christopher sat down on the sofa with the box in63his hand. He really did want to know about them if Cæsar wasn’t going to be angry. He took out a photo at random.
“That was my first race-horse,” said Cæsar. “Her name was Loadstar. She didn’t win much, but I thought a lot of her. And that—oh, that’s a mastiff I had: he was magnificent, but such a brute I had to kill him. He went for one of the stable boys and I hardly got him off in time. I’ve got the marks now of his claws: he never bit me. We used to wrestle together.”
“Wrestle with a dog?”
“Yes, I used to be fairly strong, you know, Christopher. It was good training throwing him—sometimes it was the other way. But he had to die, poor old Brutus.”
“How did you kill him?”
“I shot him,” said Cæsar shortly, “don’t ask for morbid particulars. Where is another picture?”
“This?”
This was a photo of a horse standing alone in a field and beneath was written, “Jessica waiting to be tamed.” Aymer offered no explanation,—if Christopher had looked he would have seen the scar show up again sharply over a frown.
The next was rather a wicked snap-shot of Aymer cover shooting, with what looked suspiciously like a dead fox curled up at his feet.
“It was a wretched little cub I had tamed,” he explained, “the little beast used to follow me everywhere. It’s really tied up to a tree, but it always lay out as if dead when it heard a gun. I took it out with me to try and get it used to the sound.”
There was a picture of Aymer and Nevil riding and coming over a big water jump side by side.
Aymer told him it was at the Central Horse Show and related the triumphs and honours of the day.64
But when the polo photograph turned up again Aymer appeared tired of the amusement, and sent Christopher off to meet his father in the brougham at Maidley station, four miles distant. “If someone doesn’t go he’ll be reading reports and working out figures till he arrives at the door,” said Aymer. “It’s disgraceful not to know how to take a holiday properly. It’s only small boys who ought to work like that,” he added severely.
“You haven’t given me any work to do, Cæsar,” protested Christopher, but Cæsar only laughed.
When the boy had gone, however, Aymer continued to turn over the photographs. It was an extremely unwise proceeding, for each of them called him with irresistible voice back to the past from which he had sworn he would turn his eyes. It was always there with its whispering, mocking echo, but like a good fighter he had learnt to withstand its insidious temptations, and hold fast to the quiet, secure present where all he could know of joy or fulfilment was centred.
But there it was, the great gulf that lay between him and the past, in which were swallowed up the hopes, ambitions, expectations of his vigorous youth, and all the possibilities of a man’s life. He had fathomed it to its blackest depth, and seen no hope of escape or rescue. And yet he had escaped, through the devotion and courage of his father. And it was the ever-living recollection of that devotion that helped him to keep his face turned from the other side of the gulf. Only on rare occasions did his strength of purpose fail him, and by some momentary carelessness he found himself caught back into a black hour of bitterness and helpless anger.
There was no one to blame but himself, no power to accuse but his own headlong passion, and the imperious impatience that would take no gift from life65but that of his own choosing. There had been a woman and a tangle of events, and his passion-blinded eyes could see no way of disentangling it, and yet how trivial and easy the unravelling appeared now. The quick—not resolve—but impulse that caught him on the crest of his uncontrolled, wild temper, and prompted the shot that missed its intention by a hairs-breadth: the whole so instantaneous, so brief a hurricane of madness, succeeded by the long pulseless stillness of this life of his now.
To do, and not to be able to undo, to hunger and thirst and ache to take back only a short minute of life, to feel sick and blind before the irretrievableness of his own deed, that was still his punishment in these rare hours of darkness.
He had fought for life at first with all that virile strength of his and won this limited existence which, when he first understood its cruelly narrow horizon, he had as ardently longed and sought to lose again, but the life principle that had been so roughly handled was marvellously tenacious, and refused to be ousted from its tenement. Slowly and painfully Aymer had groped his way from desolate despair to something higher than mere placid resignation, to a brave tolerance of himself and an open heart to what life might still offer him.
There was, however, little toleration in his heart at this hour as he lay staring at the photograph, and then suddenly looked round the room he had made so beautiful for himself. It was just as usual, every detail complete, satisfactory, balanced, redeemed too from its own beauty by its strange freedom from detail and its emptiness.
It pleased him well as a rule, but this evening that same emptiness seemed to emphasise his own isolation. He was suddenly conscious of a sense of incompleteness, of some detail left out that should be there—a66want he could not measure or define. It was a sort of culminating point in his own grey thoughts. In a gust of his old imperious temper he caught up the photograph and tore it in half, and flung it from him: tried to fling into the fire and failed even in that. The box of photographs fell and scattered on the floor. He turned his head sharply and hid his face in the cushions.
It was very quiet in the room, the fire burnt steadily, and outside the dusk had already fallen. There was a very little knock at the door, but he did not hear it; the door opened with a breath of fresh cold air and a faint scent of violets as Renata entered.
She saw she was unobserved, saw his attitude, and her whole being seemed to melt into an expression of longing compassion. Nevil or his father would have gone away unseen in respect for his known weakness, but Renata for all her shyness had the courage of her instincts.
“May I come and warm myself, Aymer? You always have the best fire in the house.”
He did not move for a moment.
Renata knelt by the fire with her back to him and took off her long soft gloves, her bracelets making a little jangling sound. Then she saw the torn picture and picked it up and shook her head disapprovingly. The overturned box lay nearer the sofa. She picked that up too, and began replacing its contents in a matter-of-fact way.
“You can’t possibly see things in this light,” she remarked. “It is getting quite dark. Do you want a light, Aymer?”
“No,” said Aymer abruptly, turning so that he could see her.
She sat down in a big chair the other side of the hearth and began chatting of the very serious At Home she had just attended in Winchester.67
The black mood slipped from him, and with it the sense of need and incompleteness. It had melted as snow before a fire the moment he had heard the swish of her dress across the floor, and the breath of violets reached him. He forgot even to be ashamed of his own passing weakness as he watched her. She was all in brown with strange beautiful gold work shining here and there. She had flung back her furs and there was a big bunch of violets in her dress. He watched her little white fingers unfasten them as she talked.
“If they would not think they were amusing themselves, I could endure it,” she said, “but they solemnly pretend it’s amusement and frivolous at that. One old lady told me gravely, she hardly thought it seemly that the Dean should so lend himself to the pleasures of the world. There, the violets are not spoilt at all. The Dean gave them to me: it’s the one thing he can do—grow violets. You shall have them all to yourself.” She fetched a silver cup and began arranging them. Aymer ceased to be tired, ceased to be anything but supremely content as his eyes followed her. She went on relating her experience until she had made him laugh, and then she came and sat on a little stool near him.
“May I have the babies down?”
Aymer pretended to grumble.
“You’ll go to them if I say no,” he complained, “so I have no option.”
The bell was rung and the babies ordered to descend.
“Before they come, Cæsar, I’m going to ask you a favour,” she said coaxingly, “now you are in a good temper again.”
“Was I in a bad one?”
“Dreadful. It mustn’t reoccur. It is such a bad example for the children.”68
“The favour, please; bother the children.”
“Cæsar, I’m ashamed of you. Bless them, you meant to say. Well, the favour. Aymer, I am going to start a crêche in Winchester near the big clothing factory. I’ve talked to the Bishop and he quite approves. I know just the house, but I shall have to buy it, and I haven’t enough money for that. I can run it easily if I can only get the premises. What will you subscribe?”
“I haven’t any money at all,” he replied gravely. “Vespasian takes it all and I don’t think he’d approve of crêches, not being a family man.”
“Vespasian, indeed.” She tilted her chin in the air as Aymer meant her to do, a trifle too much, and the effect was spoilt, but he was well practised in obtaining the exact tilt he admired.
“You can ask him, of course.”
“Very likely I will: in the meantime what will you give me?”
“Half a crown. No; five whole shillings, if I have it,” he said teasingly.
She considered the matter gravely. “I am not quite sure. I should not like to inconvenience you. Shall we say four and six?”
“No, I will be generous. I’ll do this. If you will take the risk of being accused of burglary by Vespasian, I happen to know there is some money in the right hand drawer of the table over there. I don’t know how much. Fivepence, perhaps, but you shall have whatever it is.”
Renata walked with great dignity across the room and opened the drawer. A little smile hovered about her lips. She picked up a handful of gold and silver and sat down by him to count it.
“It looks an awful lot,” he remarked anxiously. “Won’t you let me off? Vespasian is always complaining of my extravagance.”69
“Sh––Sh––” she held up one finger, “ten, eleven, twelve, and two and six, that’s thirteen,—no, fourteen and sixpence.”
“Leave me the sixpence,” he urged plaintively, but she continued counting.
“Seven pounds, four shillings and sixpence. Count it yourself, Aymer.”
Aymer counted and gravely pronounced her arithmetic to be correct.
“Thank you, you are a dear.” She piled the coins up neatly in little piles on the table by her side. He told her she had better put it in her pocket.
“I haven’t one,” she sighed.
“You will be sure to forget it, and then Vespasian will get it again.”
“Is it likely I would forget seven pounds, four shillings and sixpence?”
But she did. The children arrived and rioted over Aymer. Master Max bumped his head and had to be consoled with his uncle’s watch, while Charlotte wandered off on a voyage of exploration alone, and finally sat on the floor by the window with her fat legs straight out in front of her, making a doll of one arm by wrapping it up in her dress, and singing to herself.
“She has quite an idea of time already: listen to her, Aymer.”
But Aymer only scoffed at his niece’s accomplishments, and then Nevil came in and went down on his knees to kiss his wife, who was much too occupied with her son and heir to move for him. For a moment all three heads were on a level, and it was only when the long Nevil stood up and Renata was reaching up on tip-toe to put some of the violets in his coat that Aymer’s sense of completeness vanished. Finally the children were carried off and he was alone again.70
“It’s a lucky thing for me,” he said to himself steadily, “that Nevil married Renata: he might just as easily have married someone I couldn’t endure.”
When Christopher and Mr. Aston returned they found Aymer whistling and drawing ridiculous caricatures of the family on the back of theTimes, and he was so outrageously flippant and witty that his father glanced at him suspiciously from time to time.
“Why haven’t you let Vespasian light up?” he inquired.
“I’m afraid to call Vespasian. Renata has been raiding and I shall get a lecture. She’s left her booty, as I told her she would. Christopher, when you have quite finished pretending it’s your duty to draw the curtains, you might run up with this money to her. Put it in that box.”
Christopher came forward rather slowly. He swept the money into the box indicated.
“What a lot,” he commented.
“Seven pounds, four shillings, and sixpence, and I am now penniless. I shan’t even get credit with Heaven. She’ll appropriate that.”
Christopher ran off with it and meeting Nevil on the stairs gave it into his hand. Renata had gone to dress, and Nevil sauntered in to his wife with her “spoils” at once.
“Seven pounds, four and sixpence,” she said gleefully. “For the crêche fund. It was nice of Aymer. I had not meant to worry him to-day, but he wanted distraction.”
“I thought Vespasian kept his money. Six pounds four and sixpence, Renata,” Nevil remarked, counting the money carelessly. She came over to him, brush in hand.
“You can’t even do addition. Nothing but dates! I counted it most carefully, so did Aymer.”
“Then he’s defrauded you of a pound since.”71
“Nonsense.”
They counted it together, but no amount of reckoning would make seven sovereigns out of six. The silver was correct.
“It must have fallen down,” said Renata at last and put it away carefully in her desk.
They were late for dinner, and Mr. Aston pretended to upbraid them and told Renata to take her soup and leave her correspondence alone, for there was a big envelope lying by her plate. It was her father-in-law’s contribution to the crêche scheme, Aymer having forestalled her request, and joined forces with his father in a really adequate sum.
Renata got pink with pleasure as she looked at the cheque. She was, however, far too shy to express her real gratitude in words before them all. She smiled at the donor and remarked she would give him a big photograph in a beautiful frame of the first baby admitted to the crêche, to hang in his room as a slight token of her appreciation of his gift.
“It shall take the place of Charlotte,” he assured her gravely.
Aymer looked aggrieved.
“May I ask the precise sum, Renata?” he inquired pointedly, “that earns so gracious a reward.”
“It’s three figures,” she answered, regarding the precious slip of paper affectionately before replacing it in its imposing envelope.
“Ninety-two pounds, fifteen and sixpence more,” he groaned; “it’s a lot for a photograph of a mere baby, but I can’t be left out in the cold.”
“Perhaps I can let you have one without a frame for less, only father’s must be the best.”
“Nevil,” remarked Aymer severely, “I would call your attention to the fact that your wife is beginning to weigh men’s merits by their means.”
Nevil only laughed.72
“I hear she has raided you of all you possess. Six pounds odd.”
“Seven pounds four and sixpence,” corrected Aymer. “I should like the correct sum printed in good plain figures on your list, Renata. Being my all, it is a superior present to more pretentious donations.”
“Six pounds four and sixpence, however,” persisted Nevil.
Aymer looked up quickly.
“Did you count it?”
Nevil nodded.
“It must have dropped,” said Aymer slowly. “I’ll send it you with the interest, Renata.”
But he knew it had not been dropped.
Mr. Aston began telling them of a deputation from the Friends of the Canine Race he had received that day, and no more was said on the other matter.
73CHAPTER VI
Although Christopher’s habit of acquisitiveness had given Aymer some uneasy moments, yet there had been so far no very serious conflict of the question of meum and tuum. Aymer had sought rather to overwrite the rude scrawl of Marley Sartin than to erase it. The most serious aspect that had shown itself hitherto was Christopher’s readiness to accept tips from over-generous callers and even to put himself to ingenious trouble to invite them. Constantia Wyatt was a great offender in this and brought down a severe scolding on her own head from her brother when he at last learnt of Christopher’s propensity.
“He does it so neatly and with such a charming, innocent face,” pleaded Constantia, half laughing; “it’s no harm, Aymer. All boys like tips: I know my boy does.”
But she rather libelled Master Basil Wyatt, who, though not averse to a donation, would have scorned to solicit it. Aymer had told Christopher that gentlemen did not do these things and had taken care to keep the boy out of the way of departing visitors. But this had been before his first lecture on the obligations of money, and Christopher had taken that lesson to heart and quite outgrown his childish and perfectly innocent habit of inviting tips.
Aymer was furiously angry with himself for the quick suspicion which connected the boy with the missing sovereign. He tried honestly to put it away from himself as unwarrantable and dangerous. But there it was, a wretched little poisonous thought, tugging at his heart, unreasonably coupled with a recollection of a conversation between Patricia and Christopher that he had overheard one afternoon at tea-time,74anent the construction of an amateur brickwork bridge across an inconvenient stream. Patricia had said they could buy bricks at the brick-yard, and Christopher had said he had no money left; it would cost lots and lots and they must wait till pay-day.
He mentioned the loss of the sovereign to Christopher and asked if he had dropped the money on the stairs, and Christopher had composedly answered in the negative, and had volunteered the remark that if it had been dropped in the room it could not have rolled far on the thick carpet. Aymer had been for the moment convinced of the injustice of his own suspicion. He made no attempt to discover any other solution to the problem; rather he evaded what might prove a difficult task, and contented himself with solemnly sending Renata a cheque for the remainder “with interest,” and neither Renata nor Nevil spoke of the matter again, at least to him. Nevil may have had his own opinions about it, and if he had they were quite certainly communicated to his wife. The worrying uncertainty, however, proved too much for Aymer, and the following evening when he was alone with his father he told him the story, half hoping to be scolded for harbouring uncharitable suspicions. Now, Mr. Aston had been scrupulous to a fault in avoiding the offer of any suggestions or advice on Christopher’s upbringing. He desired above all things to leave Aymer free in his chosen task, but he realised at once this was a point where Aymer was quite as likely to hurt himself as Christopher, and, therefore, that he, Aymer’s father, must make an exception to his rule and he did not like it. He began drawing vague lines on his shirtcuff with a pencil, an evil habit of his when uneasy in mind. Aymer watched him with disapproval.
“After all our efforts,” he sighed gravely, “you still persist in your old bad ways, sir. How often75have I entreated you to remember a poor valet’s feelings, and how often has Nevil begged you to recollect the sorrows of the washerwoman?”
Mr. Aston laughed and put away his pencil.
“Nevil once indited an ode to me entitled ‘The Lament of the Laundress.’ I fear I’m incorrigible.”
“What displeases you, sir?” demanded his son after a little pause; “it’s no use pretending there’s nothing wrong; you only do that when you want to say something you think won’t be acceptable.”
“Well, then, Aymer, I say this: Christopher is your concern. I don’t doubt your power to manage him, but I can speak of yourself, and I tell you it’s a very bad thing to live with an unsatisfied suspicion; particularly bad for you. If you don’t clear this up you will never feel quite at ease with the boy. It is so already, is it not?”
Aymer admitted reluctantly that it was indeed the case.
“Don’t let anything stand between you, Aymer. I am thinking of you, of course,” he added hastily.
“Are you sure you are not thinking of yourself?” returned his son, half laughing, half ruefully; and his father flushed a little.
“Perhaps I was,” he said humbly. “It would worry me if you were not happy with him.”
Aymer laughed outright at that and assured him he knew how to make allowances for his well-known selfishness. But he took his advice and grappled with the difficulty next afternoon. Christopher was mending a rod, seated on the floor as usual.
“We’ve not found that sovereign,” said Cæsar abruptly.
Christopher looked up quickly, and then went on with his work after a brief “Oh!”
“Did you take it, Christopher?”
He asked the question quite slowly and looked at76the boy, who got scarlet but went on tying his rod and appeared to be considering the question carefully, weighing it in his mind as it were, and when he answered, it was as deliberately as Aymer had questioned him.
“No, sir.”
Aymer felt a sudden sense of relief, for lying had not been one of Christopher’s faults. Then almost immediately he found himself wondering first, why the boy was not angry, and secondly, why it had taken so much thought to answer at all. However, he let the matter drop and told himself he was satisfied. Christopher finished mending his rod and then sat still considering deeply. Presently he took out a penny from his pocket and began rolling it on the thick carpet, and, as he had remarked to Cæsar, it did not roll far, try as he would. At last he jumped up with a satisfied mien and went out. Cæsar heard him whistling as he went down the passage and felt easier in his mind. Renata and the babies paid their usual visit after tea, and Miss Charlotte, after a brief conversation with her uncle, slid off the sofa and trotted away to the end window, where she appeared to be diligently playing hide-and-seek with herself. Suddenly her elders were startled with a prolonged cry of anguish and Renata flew to the rescue.
“I tan’t find it; naughty mousie taken my booful golden penny,” sobbed Charlotte in her mother’s arms. Renata could make nothing of her grief and persisted in thinking that she was hurt, and cuddling her. Aymer, listening attentively, said suddenly to Renata in his imperious way:
“Give Charlotte to me, Renata, and take baby away.”
Renata obeyed meekly. People had a weak way of obeying Aymer on occasions, even against their will.
“Now, Miss Charlotte,” said Aymer, when the77young lady was safely deposited by him, “tell me about it. What golden penny was it?”
But Charlotte got suddenly red and stopped crying.
“Were you playing with it yesterday in the window?” asked her uncle.
Charlotte nodded.
“Was it your penny or mine?”
“Wasn’t nobody’s, only mummy’s. Yousaid theywere for her. Charlotte wasn’t naughty.”
“Did you find it on the floor?”
“No.”
“Where then?”
“Dey was all in nice itty rows on the table. I only taken one pitty goldy penny. Mummy gives me goldy pennies always.”
“Sovereigns for playthings, Renata. That’s very immoral.”
“No, only new halfpennies. Charlotte didn’t know any better, Aymer.”
“And you played with it in the window there and left it there.”
“Is I naughty?”
“Not very naughty—if you tell me. Did you leave it there?”
Charlotte’s lip trembled. “I putted it to bed in the curtain by a mousehole, and it’s all gone, naughty mousie.”
“Go and see, Renata, if there’s a hole there.”
“Please,” said Charlotte gravely.
“Please what?”
“Please go and see.”
Aymer laughed. “I beg your pardon, Renata. Please will you mind looking for the mousehole?”
“I tan’t see the mousehole,” put in Charlotte, “I only ’tend it.”
But Renata looked all the same. There was no mousehole and no golden penny.78
“It is all right,” explained Aymer in answer to his sister-in-law’s troubled look. “I know all about it. Don’t worry your little head. We will give Charlotte another golden penny, or a silver one. Only,” he added, regarding his small niece severely, “Charlotte must not touch anyone’s pennies again, not mummy’s or Uncle Aymer’s, or anyone’s. It is not dreadfully naughty this time, but it would be next time—dreadfullynaughty.”
Charlotte opened her eyes very wide.
“Would you be dreffly angry?”
“Yes, and very unhappy. I shouldn’t let you come to see me any more.”
At that Miss Charlotte flung her arms round his neck, protesting she wasn’t naughty and Uncle Aymer must love her. Peace was at last restored and Aymer drew pictures of innumerable mice carrying off golden pennies and only sent the children away when Christopher came in.
He gave no hint to Christopher that he had solved the problem of the lost money and discovered the boy’s own compromise between truth and dishonesty. He was anxious to see whether Christopher’s moral standard was really satisfied with the same compromise or not. So he treated him as far as he could in his natural manner during the next few days, but found it a little difficult. Fond of Christopher as he was, this was just one of those points where the enormous difference between the child of one’s own self,—of self plus the unknown—and the adopted child of others, became visible. The fault was so inexplicable to Aymer, so utterly foreign to his whole understanding, that he had nothing but contempt for it, whereas, had Christopher been his own son, love would have overridden contempt with fear.
Christopher, with his uncanny, quick intuition of Aymer’s innermost mind, was not deceived by his ordinary79casual manner, and became, to Aymer’s secret satisfaction, a little suppressed and thoughtful.
It was at this point the boy had his first introduction to poor little Patricia’s temper.
The two children had been riding and returned home by way of the brook over which their ambitious dreams had already built a bridge. Patricia, who was in rather a petulant mood, reproached Christopher rather sharply for having got rid of his last month’s pocket money so prematurely. “Just like a boy,” she said, wrinkling her nose contemptuously. She had five whole shillings left of her money and when Christopher could double that they were to go to the brick-yard and bargain.
“Haven’t you any at all?” she questioned impatiently.
Christopher, who was examining the proposed site, did not answer at once, and she repeated her question.
“I have some,” he confessed unwillingly.
“Well, can’t we start with that. You said you hadn’t any on Monday. How much is it?”
But Christopher declined to answer.
Patricia persisted in her point. If Christopher hadany moneythey could begin the bridge next day. Christopher said he’d see about it.
Patricia, much exasperated, said she should go home, and her companion proposed to make the ponies jump the brook. She was too angry to answer him, but she set her pony at it, and the pony, instead of rising to the jump on command, very cautiously stepped into the stream and splashed across. It is to be feared Christopher laughed. Patricia cantered on, having seen, with much satisfaction, the other pony behave in precisely the same way. But the end was not the same. Christopher wheeled the pony round and tried again, tried eight times and failed and succeeded at the ninth. It was characteristic of him that80he did not lose his temper, but had kept on with a sort of dull, monotonous persistence that must have been very boring to the equine mind.
Then he galloped after Patricia, and catching her up at the lodge gates retailed his triumph gleefully. Perhaps he was a shade too triumphant, for he was still in disgrace, and she had not spoken. At all events by the time they had dismounted and were returning to the house through the garden, she was in a fever of irritation, and Christopher, blissfully ignorant of the fact, was just a tiny bit inclined for private reasons of his own, to emphasise his own good spirits. He never noticed the clenching and unclenching of her small hands or saw the whiteness of her tense averted face, and he began teasing her about her pony and her weight. “Nevil must buy you a brand new one, up to your weight,” he suggested, “you’ve broken Folly’s spirit evidently.”
He was standing on the steps, just one step below her, and he looked back laughing. On a sudden, with no word or sound of warning, she turned and cut at him with her riding whip, her little form quivering with the grip of the possessing demon. The lash caught him across the face and he fell back against the wall gasping, with his hand up. Luckily it was but a light whip and a girl’s hand, but the sting of it blanched him for an instant. The flaming colour died from Patricia’s face as suddenly as it had come, and with it the momentary fury. She stood gazing at her companion a moment, and when he looked up half terrified, half angry, she turned quickly and ran down a grass path, dropping her whip as she went.
Christopher stood still, rubbing his smarting cheek gingerly, wondering vaguely what he would say if it showed. He had heard from others as well as from Patricia herself, of the child’s fearful paroxysms of rage and had rather scoffed at it—to her. But at this81moment he was far nearer crying, very near it, indeed, to be strictly truthful. He was really concerned for Patricia, and also he was a little—unnecessarily—ashamed of his own collapse under the sudden attack. Probably she thought it worse than it was. He walked slowly down the grass path between the yew hedges and picked up the whip as he went. Patricia was not on the tennis court nor in the summer-house, nor in the rose-garden, so he turned his steps to the wilderness, as the rough wooded slopes on the northern side of the garden were called. He knew her favourite spots here and presently came on her huddled up on an old moss-grown stone seat, her head in her arms. She was quite still, she was not even crying, and Christopher felt a little frightened. What if she were still angry like that? However, the chances were against it, so he went up and sat down by her.
“Patricia, don’t be silly,” he commanded. “What did you run off like that for? You didn’t hurt—not much,” he added truthfully—he had taken to being very exact about the truth of late.
“Go away,” said Patricia. “I don’t want you. I don’t want anyone. You don’t understand.”
“Well, someone’s got to understand,” persisted the boy in a high-handed way. “You aren’t going to be let get in tempers with me and then sulk about it afterwards. Don’t be silly. Sit up.” Patricia’s golden hair lay about her like a veil. He pushed it aside and tried to pull her hands away from her face, for he was getting really a little frightened at her manner. Some instinct taught him that her misery was as exaggerated and bad for her as her temper, and he was dimly afraid of leaving her alone, as was the custom of her little world after one of her outbreaks.
Patricia suddenly sat up. There were black rims round her great sad eyes already and her face was red and white in patches from the pressure of her hands.82
“You said I hadn’t hurt you,” she gasped, gazing at the dull red mark of whichChristopherwas already almost unaware.
“Does it show? What a beastly nuisance. I said it didn’t hurt much, Patricia. Not at all now. I’m sorry I was such a baby.” He put his arm round her and she leant her head against him too exhausted to care whether he thought her a baby or not.
“It must be jolly exciting having a temper like that,” he said, thoughtfully. “It wouldn’t be half so bad if you meant it.”
She sat bolt upright and stared at him.
“Why?” she demanded breathlessly.
“Because if you meant it you could take carenotto mean it, silly. You’d look out. But you don’t mean it. You didn’t mean to hurt me then till you did it. It’s much worse for you.”
She drew a long breath.
“Oh, Christopher dear, how clever you are. No-one ever understood that before. They all say, ‘well, anyhow, you don’t mean it,’ as if that made it better.”
“Stupid, of course it’s harder to help what you don’t mean than what you do.”
“But I can’t help it.”
Christopher gave her a little shake. “Don’t be silly. You will have to help it, only it’s harder. You can’t go on like that when you are big—ladies don’t—none I’ve seen. It’s only––” he stopped.
“Only what?”
“Women in the street. At least—some, I’ve seen them. They fight and scream and get black eyes and get drunk.”
“Christopher, you are hateful!” She flared up with hot cheeks and put her hand over his mouth. “I’m not like that, you horrid boy. Say I’m not.”
“I didn’t say you were,” said Christopher with83faint exasperation. “I said it reminded me—your temper. Come along in.”
She followed very unwillingly, more conscious than he was of his disfigured face.
And Renata met them in the hall and saw it and got pink, but said nothing till Patricia had gone upstairs. Christopher was slipping away too—he never found much to say to Mrs. Aston—and of late less than ever. However, she stopped him.
“Have you been quarrelling, Christopher?” she asked deprecatingly with a little tremor in her voice.
Christopher assured her not.
“You have hurt your face.”
“The branch of a tree,” he began shamefacedly, and stopped lamely.
“I’m so sorry.”
No more was said. Renata was conscious of her own failure to get on with Christopher, but she put it down entirely to her own shyness, which interfered now in preventing her overriding his very transparent fib in Patricia’s defence. She went away rather troubled and unhappy. But Christopher, a great deal more troubled and unhappy, looked out of the hall window with a gloomy frown. His own words to Patricia that she had so sharply resented, about the women he had seen fighting in the street, had called up other pictures of the older life, pictures in which Marley Sartin figured only too distinctly. He felt uncomfortably near these shifting scenes. Like Patricia, he wanted to deny the connection between himself and the small boy following in the wake of the big man through crowded streets and long vistas of shops. He did not wish to recognise the bond between little Jim Hibbault and Christopher Aston. But the pictures were very insistent and the likeness uncomfortably clear. At last, with no more show of emotion or will than if he were going on an ordinary errand, he walked84slowly down the corridor to Cæsar’s room. He had entirely forgotten about Patricia now and was taken aback by Cæsar’s abrupt inquiry about the mark or his face.
“It was an accident,” he said hurriedly, and then plunged straight into his own affairs.
“Cæsar, I have something to give you.”
He held out his hand with a sovereign in it.
Cæsar took it and, after glancing at it casually, put it on the table, looking hard at Christopher, who got red and then white.
“It couldn’t have been the sovereign you lost,” he said earnestly. “I didn’t take any of that money, really, Cæsar. I found this on the floor by the window. It couldn’t have rolled all that long way from here. It must be another.”
He was pleading with himself as much as with Cæsar, desiring greatly to keep faith with his own integrity, though something in Cæsar’s face was driving him from his last stronghold.
“You didn’t ask me if I’d found a sovereign,” he pleaded desperately, “you asked me if I had taken one of Mrs. Aston’s sovereigns, and I hadn’t, because how could it have got to the window from here?”
Cæsar’s face flushed a dusky red. He spoke in a hard, constrained voice.
“Charlotte took one of the sovereigns as a plaything when we were not looking and hid it under the curtain in the window. To her it was only a toy, but to you––”
He made a last effort to keep control of his temper and failed. The storm broke.
“But to you––” he repeated with a curiously stinging quality in his voice as if the words were whipped to white heat by inward wrath—“to you a sovereign is no toy, but a useful commodity, and your code of honour—do you call it that?—is doubtless a85very convenient one. It is far too subtle a code for my poor intellect, but since you appear able to justify it to yourself it is no concern of mine.”
Christopher stood still and white under this ruthless attack: all his energies concentrated in keeping that stillness, but at the back of his mind was born a dull pain and sharp wonder, a consciousness of the Law of Consequence by which he must abide, and henceforth accept as a principle of life. There was too great confusion in his mind for him to weigh his instinctive action and subsequent behaviour against what, to Aymer, was the one and only possible code of honour. For the present it was enough that in Aymer’s eyes that action was mean, despicable and contemptible. The Law of Consequence he dimly realised worked from the centre of Aymer’s being and not from the ill-trained centre of his, Christopher’s, individuality.
“In future,” went on Aymer, still too furiously angry to weigh his words or remember they were addressed to a child, “if I have occasion to make any inquiries of you we will have a distinct understanding as to whether we are speaking with the same code or not. You can go.”
Christopher turned blindly away, and was stopped at the door. “As for the sovereign, which must be very precious to you, considering the price you were ready to pay for it, I will have it pierced and put on a chain, so you can wear it round your neck. It would be a pity to lose anything so valuable.”
Christopher turned with indignant protest in every line. However Aymer might talk of their separate codes of honour, he was, nevertheless, dealing out a punishment adequate to the infringement of his own code, and to Christopher it appeared unjust and cruel. For the moment it was in him to remonstrate fiercely, but the words died away, for such a protest must of86necessity be based on an acceptance of this divided code, and to that he would not stoop. It was some poor consolation to pay the penalty of a higher law than he was supposed to understand. He turned again to the door and got away before a storm of tears swamped his brave control.
When Charles Aston returned that night he found Aymer in a very irritable mood. Nevil, in his gentle, patient way, had been doing his best to soothe him, but in vain. When Aymer was not irritated, he was bitter and sarcastic, even his greeting to his father was short and cold. It was clear some event in the day had upset his mental equilibrium, and Christopher’s absence (he did not even appear to say “good-night”) gave Mr. Aston a clue to the situation.
Nevil was wading through a book on farm management, which bored him considerably. His part was to read long extracts which Aymer was comparing with some letters in the “Field.” They continued their employment and Mr. Aston sat down to write a letter. From time to time he paused and heard Aymer’s sharp, unreasonable remarks to his brother. A memory of the old bad days came so forcibly to Mr. Aston that he laid aside his pen at last and sat listening with an aching heart. He knew those quick flashes of temper were a sign of irritation brought to a white heat. Presently, after one remark more unjustifiable than ever, Nevil looked across at his father with a little rueful grimace, and seeing how grave was Mr. Aston’s expression he made another valiant effort to keep peace and ignore the abuse, and went on reading. The subject under discussion was the draining of a piece of waste land, and when the long article came to an end, Nevil in his dreamy way summed up the matter by saying it was a very picturesque corner of the estate and a pity to spoil it.
Aymer flung the papers down violently.87
“That’s all you care for, or are likely to care for,” he said brutally. “I know I might as well let the estate go to the dogs as try and improve it. Once my father and I are dead, you’ll turn it into a damned garden for your own use.”
For one second Nevil’s face was a study in suppression. He got up and walked across the room, his hands shaking.
Mr. Aston spoke sharply and suddenly.
“Aymer, pull yourself together. You are taking advantage of your position. What circumstances do you imagine give you the right to trample on other people’s feelings like this, whenever something or other has put you out? It’s outrageous! Keep your temper better in hand, man.”
It was so obviously deserved, so terribly direct, and at the same time so calculated to hurt, that Nevil turned on his father with reproachful eyes, and then perceiving his face, said no more.
Aymer became suddenly rigid, and lay still with waves of colour rising to and dying from his face, and his hands clenched.
Mr. Aston waited a moment and then said apologetically and hurriedly, “I’m awfully sorry, Aymer.”
“Oh, it had to be done,” responded Aymer, turning his face to him with a rueful smile. “I’m a brute. Nevil, old fellow, you ought to give him a V. C. or something; he is positively heroic.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” retorted his father, blushing for all his fifty-eight years, because of a grain of truth in his son’s words. For indeed it sometimes requires more courage to be brutal to those we love than to be kind to those we hate.
“Go away, Nevil,” continued Mr. Aston good humouredly, “I’ll look after Aymer.”
Nevil departed, with secret relief, the atmosphere was a little too electrical for his liking.88
When he had gone, Mr. Aston went over to his elder son and sat on the edge of the sofa.
“What’s really the matter, old chap?” he asked gently.
Aymer related the whole history of the sovereign, Christopher’s confession and the subsequent events.
“I dare say he was quite honest about his point of view,” he concluded petulantly, “but because I could not see it I lost my temper with him.”
His father sat thoughtfully considering the carpet.
“It will be a little hard on Christopher,” he said at length, very slowly and without looking up, “if every time he has the misfortune to remind you of his father you lose your temper with him.”
Aymer turned sharply.
“What do you mean, sir?”
“I think,” went on the elder man steadily, “I think, Aymer, it was not only Christopher’s hazy ideas of honour and honesty that angered you, but he forced on your notice the fact that he was his father’s son, that he had in him the germs of that quality which has made his father what he is—a successful man. Isn’t it so?”
Aymer did not answer. It was true, he knew, however great his wish to disown it. Something of the self-dissatisfaction that had numbed poor little Christopher fell to his share. He felt his father was a little hard on him—he could not really understand his relationship to the boy.
“It is not quite fair on Christopher, is it?” said Mr. Aston very gently, “at least that is how it strikes me. I do not want to interfere between you, but I do want you to do yourself full justice in dealing with him.”
Aymer looked suddenly up at his father and laughed. “It is evidently not only Christopher who is in disgrace to-day,” he said ruefully. “I wish I could in89turn upbraid you with unfairness, but Christopher has the pull over me there.”
He held out his hand. It was a great concession in Aymer to show even this much demonstration of feeling unasked, and it was appreciated.
“You might say good-night to Christopher when you go upstairs,” Aymer said casually a little later, and his father nodded assent, by no means deceived by the indifferent tone. Both Aymer and Christopher slept the better for his ministrations that night.