200CHAPTER XVII
Patricia was in the orchard, and not only in the orchard, but of it, for she was comfortably perched on a low bough of an ancient hoary apple tree. She had a volume of Robert Bridges’s poems in her hand and a thirst was on her to be at the edge of a cliff and look over into blue space below. The secluded orchard with its early crown of pink blushes, the serene shut-in valley screened from cold winds and cradled between the chalky highlands, weighed on her. She looked upwards through the dainty tracery of soft green and pink to the sky above, delicately blue with white clouds racing over it. There was air up there, free and untrammelled. Patricia sighed and then laughed at herself, for it was good, even here in the narrow orchard, life with its coming possibilities, its increasing riches. She was glad to be alone at that moment if only to share a thought with the poet who at this period held sway over her mind.
The previous evening had been one of great moment to her and she was joyfully thankful to find that it obscured and clouded no particle of the daily simple joy of her existence. She had claimed this day to herself, free from all new issues to prove this point, and her heart sang with content for what had been, was, and would be.
The orchard gate clicked, and looking through the intervening boughs and leaflets, she saw Christopher coming across the grass towards her with his even, swinging step.
In her rough grey dress she was as part of the rough tree herself. Her golden head and the delicate201lovely colouring of her face rivalled the tree’s darling blossoms, so Christopher thought when he reached her. He came straight to her through the maze of old and young trees and had the exquisite joy of seeing her flush with surprise and pleasure at sight of him. Here indeed she felt was the one addition to her day that she needed. She did not descend from her perch, and it was his hand which steadied her there when excitement imperilled her throne.
“To come down on us without warning like this!” she expostulated, smiling down at him. “Why, we might have had no leisure to see you or luncheon to give you! When did you actually come?”
“Half an hour and five minutes ago. I’ve seen Cæsar and St. Michael, and I’ve had luncheon.”
“And have you come to stay?”
“I don’t know yet.” He leant his arm on the bough where she sat, which was of exactly convenient height.
“The amount of leisure you seem to have on hand,” said Patricia severely, “is outrageous, considering how hard the rest of the family work.”
“Especially Nevil,” laughed Christopher.
“Especially Nevil. We have not sat down to a meal with him for three weeks. He nearly walked on Max’s puppy last week and he has forgotten Charlotte’s existence except as a penwiper—she went in to him one morning with a message and came out with an ink smudge on her red dress—shesaidit was his pen—the dress is the same colour as the penwiper, so she may be right. He paid no attention to the message.”
“Well, at present, if you take the trouble to go into the Rosery you will find Nevil lying by the fountain catching goldfish with Max. I do not think he remembered I’d been away.”
“Oh, I am glad,” cried Patricia, clapping her hands;202“of course it’s very nice of him to be so clever and write so beautifully, but it’s much nicer when he’s just a dear silly thing—and catches goldfish. But tell me about yourself now. Are you well? And have you been working hard? Why aren’t you in Belgium, why have you come, and what are you going to do, and when are you going back?”
“Stop, I can’t keep more than five questions in my head at once and I’ve answered several of yours already. The first is trivial; you have eyes. I have been working as usual; it’s no use to explain how, you have no conception of work at all. I am not in Belgium because I am here in a better place. I am going to enjoy myself, I hope, and I shall go away when it pleases me.”
“Indeed, Your Highness. You have not explained why you came.”
“I think,” said Christopher, considering hard and speaking with slow deliberation, “Ithink, only it is so preposterously silly, that I came to see you, or perhaps it was Cæsar or Nevil if it were not Max.”
Patricia laughed deliciously and leant forward, making pretence to box his ears. Christopher shook the bough in revenge till she cried pax, and peace supervened.
“Since you have evidently no business of your own to see to,” she said severely, “it shall be my business to teach you to appreciate Robert Bridges.”
“I don’t like his name; who is he?” Christopher grumbled.
“He is a genius and you must sit at his feet and listen.”
“Isn’t it respectful to stand?”
She regarded him gravely with her head on one side. “True humility sits ill on you, I fear. You may stand if you take off your hat.”
He flung it on the grass obediently.203
“The Cliff Edge.” “The Cliff Edge has a carpet ... of purple, gold, and green.”
She read the little poem all through, her sweet, appreciative voice making music of the lines already melodious. Christopher wondered if the writer ever knew how beautiful his words could be made.
“Is that not lovely?” she asked when she finished, leaning forward so that her hand and the book rested for a moment on his arm.
Christopher nodded without moving.
“It makes me thirsty for the sea,” she went on, “for sky, for space to move and breathe. Oh, Christopher, things here are either old or small. All the great and beautiful things are old, the glory of it, the house, the life, the very trees, old, old, old. And the rest is small, protected and shut in. I want to feel things that are young and free and great, as the sky and sea and the wind. I am thirsty sometimes to stand on the edge of the cliff and taste the free, free air from off the sea that has no one else’s thoughts in it. Do you understand that?—the longing for something that does not belong to any part, to any one?”
“Yes, I understand. I feel it too, sometimes.”
“I knew you did. You see, it’s because neither of us belong here—to Marden—really. Oh, I don’t mean it horridly. It’s the dearest place and they are all the dearest people; but the life, the big thought of it all, isn’t ours.Ourpeople didn’t help make it.”
Christopher made no answer. He was idly flinging bits of bark into his hat. If he were but certain—oh, if he could but be certain she were right! He looked up at her at last.
There could be no room for the grey shadows of doubt any longer. Shewasright. He felt it as he looked and as the thought she suggested sank deeper into his mind. Was not he truly one with her in it?204He, too, had been conscious of a Life and History here at Marden not his own, that exacted no obligations from him, but rather silently insisted on the freedom. Such freedom, mated to hers, was the last great boon he asked of life that had already given him so much. Still he hesitated for very fear of losing the joy of the hour that would be his and hers for eternity when he sealed it with the passionate words in his heart.
“I know just what you mean,” he said, “it is no disloyalty to them to feel it—only loyalty to ourselves. As for the sea and all that, I will motor you down to Milford whenever you like.”
“Oh, Christopher!” She clasped her hands with joy like a child. “Have you brought the new motor? What is it like?”
“It’s a perfect love, Patricia. I drove it down from town to-day. Such a road, stones, ruts—and it behaved like an angel although weighted with an extra sixteen stone of colossal brutality—Peter Masters, Esquire, millionaire.”
“Oh, why on earth did you bring him down here?”
“He did not ask permission. He just came—wanted to see St. Michael. Don’t let’s talk about him. Let’s talk about ourselves. We are much more interesting.”
“Egoist!”
“Doesn’t the plural number cancel the egoism? But I really have something to tell you about myself. Two things, indeed, if you’ll kindly listen.”
“I will try to be polite. Proceed.” She ensconced herself comfortably against the trunk of the tree, folded her hands in her lap and smiled down at him under her half-shut lids. He also moved his position a very little so that he could see her better.
“First, then, Patricia, I have actually done something in Belgium. The roads of which I have dreamed205are not quite such fantastic fancies now as they were a year ago.”
She sat erect at once, alert and brimming over with interest.
“Oh, Christopher!”
“It is not done yet,” he went on slowly, “but it is on the way to be done. It means that all the roads here, and the roads all over the world, will one day be made easy to travel upon. It means that mud, dirt and noise will be evils of the past, and they will be roads that will last down the ages.” He stopped with a little catch in his breath and looked at her half ashamed, half pleadingly.
But Patricia was gazing past him through a gap in the trees at a white flinty road that struggled up to the distant downs. “Yes,” she said very softly, as if fearing to quench a vision she saw there, “yes, that is a great and a good thing, and like you.”
“Thank you,” he answered laughing—the spell of their mutual earnestness pressed him too sorely.
“Don’t laugh,” she returned swiftly with a frown; “it is not the goodness that’s like you. It’s a sort of strongness about it—something to hold on to for all time.” She stopped abruptly, looking at him gravely.
This time he did not laugh, but he put one hand on hers, and his was shaking.
“Christopher,” she said coaxingly, “will you really take me down to the sea when I like?”
“Whenever you like.”
“Then do it this afternoon. Now, at once,” she cried pleadingly, and seeing his face of amazement, added, “you promised, Christopher.”
“Of course. I’ll do it; but why not to-morrow, when we can have a long day?”
“Because—because to-day is all my own,” she said softly, “and to-morrow isn’t. Christopher, I did not mean to tell anyone to-day, but I must tell you, I am206going to marry Geoffry,”—she flushed rosy red, but he did not see it—“it was last night—he wanted to see Nevil at once, but I wouldn’t let him. I wanted this day to myself. It was nice of you to come and make it complete.”
His hand still held hers, but it was still and motionless now. She stroked it softly. Christopher drew it gently away.
“You ought to wish me happiness or something, ought you not?” she said.
“I do, Patricia,” he said, looking up at her.
He wanted to say more; self-preservation demanded it, and again demanded silence. Their voices seemed to him far away, speaking in some fairy orchard where he was not. He could barely hear them.
“You’ll pretend not to know anything about it till to-morrow, won’t you?” she pleaded. “Don’t spoil my day. It isn’t that it won’t be perfectly lovely to be engaged, but the past has been, lovely too, and I want to keep it a tiny bit longer. You’ll help me, won’t you?”
“Yes, I’ll help you.”
If he could but keep to-day forever shut in his heart with her, though life crumbled to ruins about them! But the invincible hours were ranged against him, and would claim it their own.
“And you’ll take me to the sea?”
“Yes, if you come at once.”
She descended from her perch with his help. She did not know his hands felt numb and dead as he held and released her.
“You haven’t told me the second thing about yourself,” she remarked, brushing the bark and lichen from her dress.
“It will keep,” he said quietly.
And they went out of the orchard.
207CHAPTER XVIII
Whatever may have been the pressing business that caused Peter Masters to seek his cousin’s company in so speedy a manner, the immediate necessity of it seemed to have evaporated on the journey. He sat talking of various things to Aymer and Charles Aston, but uttered nothing as to the reason of his visit, and Mr. Aston, with his eye on Aymer, chafed a little and found it hard to maintain his usual serenity. Aymer, on the contrary, seemed more deliberate and placid than usual; there was a slowness in his speech, and an unusual willingness to leave the conversation in his visitor’s hands as if he mistrusted his own powers to keep it in desirable channels. He appeared to have suddenly abdicated his position on the objective positive side of life and to have become a mere passive instrument of the hour, subjective and unresisting.
It was his father who was ready, armed against fate, alert, watchful to ward off all that might harm or distress his eldest son. Peter spoke of their exodus from London, their sojourn in the country, told them anecdotes of big deals, and was, in his big, burly, shrewd way, amusing and less ruthlessly tactless than usual. He had long ago given up all hope of interesting Aymer in a financial career, but he nevertheless retained a curiously respectful belief in his cousin’s mental powers.
“By the way,” he said presently, “I’ve not bought a car yet. That boy of yours seems to know something about them. Do you think he could be trusted to choose one for me?”
“Perfectly.”208
Aymer’s tone was completely impartial, and Peter ruminated over his next remark a moment.
“You still mean him to stick to his Road Engineering?”
“He is perfectly free to do as he likes.”
Charles Aston put in a word.
“He is twenty-two now, and he knows his own mind a good deal better than most boys of that age. He seems bent on carrying out his Road scheme, and there seems no reason why he should not.” He pushed over a box of cigars to his visitor.
“No, exactly. No reason at all.” Peter selected a cigar carefully. “I expect you find it very interesting watching how he turns out, don’t you, Aymer?”
“It is not uninteresting.”
“You’ve not seen Nevil yet,” suggested Mr. Aston. “He is just out of a spell of work; come out in the garden and find him while you smoke.”
“Well, perhaps we might, if you don’t mind being left, Aymer?” Peter’s voice was full of kindly interest. To him the great catastrophe was ever a new and awful thing, and Aymer an invalid to be considered and treated with such attention as he knew how.
“Not in the least,” said Aymer politely, marvelling how exactly his father had gauged the limits of his endurance. When the heavy curtained door had shut out voices and footsteps and only the stillness of the room was with him the forced passivity slipped from Aymer like a mask, and his was again the face of a fighter, of one still fighting against fearful odds.
He lay with clenched hands and rigid face, and great beads of perspiration stood on his forehead, for that passive indifference towards what had become a matter of life and death to him was the fruit of a victory that had to be won again and again each time his perilous position was assailed by the appearance of Peter Masters.209
His very existence had become so bound up in the life of the boy he had taken as his own that the smallest fraying of the cord which bound them together was a thought of new pain. The passionate, fiercely jealous nature that had lain dormant so long had gathered strength from silence and clamoured with imperious insistence on its right, to love, to whole allegiance, to undisputed sway over Christopher.
What right could this man, Christopher’s father though he were, in the flesh, show beside his, Aymer Aston’s? Every instinct rose in indignant rebellion against the fiat of his own conscience.
For before his deep love was awake to confuse his judgment he had declared that if he might only be permitted to bring Elizabeth Masters’s son through the perilous passage of boyhood, he would never stand between Christopher and what, after all, was his right due, and in the eyes of the world, his wonderful fortune. Elizabeth of the brave heart and uncompromising creed had thought otherwise of this fortune, as did Charles Aston and Aymer himself. The first had imperilled her beloved child’s bodily welfare to save him from what she thought an evil thing, and the Astons, father and son, had bid defiance to their hitherto straightforward policy and followed expediency instead of open dealing, but there Aymer stopped.
The decision he had made must be adhered to at all costs. It mattered nothing he had not been in a position to count the cost ten years ago. He at least could not discount his own word. If Fate drew Christopher to the side of his unknown father, Aymer must put out no hand to intervene.
But the cost of it—the cost!—He put his shaking hands over his face, trying to consider the position reasonably.
Even if Peter Masters learnt the truth and claimed210
Christopher, Christopher was of age and must act for himself, and Aymer could not doubt his action. His misery lay in no suspicion of Christopher’s loyal love, but in his own unconquerable, wildly jealous desire to stand alone in the post of honour, of true fatherhood to the son of the woman he had loved to such disastrous end. And behind that lay the bitter, unquenchable resentment that, pretend as he would, Christopher was not his son, not even of unknown parentage, but in actual fact the son of the man who had unknowingly robbed him of love, and whom he had all his life alternately hated and despised.
It was some subtle knowledge of what was passing in that still room that made Charles Aston a shade less kindly, a little more alert than usual to hidden meanings, and it was the sight of Aymer’s apparent passivity in the face of all that threatened him, that brought him to the mind to fight every inch of ground before he put into the hands of Peter Masters the tangled clue of the story that he alone knew in all its completeness.
The suspicion that had gripped Peter Masters on the journey down was slowly stiffening into a certainty, but he was still undecided in his mind as to the line of action he would take. If these people with their ultra-heroic code of honour had fooled him, and forestalled him in this matter of his son with deliberate intent to frustrate any advances he might make, it would go hard with them in the end, cousins or no cousins. Such was his first thought; but he had yet to prove they were not simply waiting for a sign to deliver back his son to him, in which case Peter was not unprepared to be grateful, for his heart—and he had one—had gone out to the plucky, determined young man who had lied so bravely. Peter determined, therefore, he would give Charles Aston a chance and see what happened. In a blindly, inarticulate way he211felt it was impossible to play with Aymer, he was even conscious it was a matter of great moment to him, though he could not in any manner see why it was so.
“Nevil will survive if we put him off a little longer,” said Peter as they crossed the hall, “I want to see you on a private matter, Cousin Charles.”
Mr. Aston led the way without a word to his own room. He made no doubt as to what the matter was. Perhaps the shadow of the expected interview had lain too heavily on him of late to leave room for suspicion of other affairs.
It was a long, cheerful room, lined with books, and the furniture was solid and shabby with long service. There was an indefinite atmosphere of peace and repose about it, of leisured days haunted by no grey thoughts, very typical of the owner. The window stood open, though a fire burned clearly on the plain brick hearth, beneath a big hooded chimney-piece.
Mr. Aston indicated a big easy chair to his visitor and seated himself at his writing table, from whence he could see, behind Peter, on the far wall, a portrait of Aymer painted in the pride of his life and youth, so wonderfully like even now in its strong colour and forcible power, and so full of subtle differences and fine distinctions.
“I don’t know even if you’ll listen to me,” began Peter, who knew very well Charles Aston would refuse to listen to no man; “fifteen years ago you told me you’d said your last word on the subject.”
“I beg your pardon, Peter, it was you who said the subject was closed between us.”
“Ah, yes. So I did. May I reopen it?”
“If it can serve any good purpose, but you know my opinions.”
“I thought perhaps they might have altered with the changing years,” said Peter blandly.
“Not one bit, I assure you.”212
“Really. It never strikes you that I was justified in attending to Elizabeth’s very plainly expressed wishes, or that it might be a happy thing for the boy that I did so.”
“The question between us,” said his cousin gently, “was whether you were justified in abandoning them, not whether it was advantageous to them or not.”
“I would point out in passing, Cousin Charles, that Elizabeth abandoned me, but we will let that be. My reason for opening the subject at all is not a question of justification.” He puffed away slowly at his cigar for a minute and then went on in an even, unemotional voice. “The fact is something rather strange has happened. For twenty years I have believed I knew the exact whereabouts of Elizabeth and my son. I had a good reason for the belief. One man only shared this supposititious knowledge with me.” His hearer seemed about to speak, but desisted and looked away from Peter out of the window. Not a movement, a sign, a breath, escaped those hard blue eyes, and Charles Aston knew it. It did not render him nervous or even indignant, but he was a trifle more dignified, more obviously determined to be courteous at any cost.
“That boy and his mother were living at Liverpool,” went on Peter calmly. “He was employed in a big shipping firm in a very minor capacity. He was killed in the great explosion in the dock last week.”
He spoke as calmly as if he were saying his supposed son had lost his post or had gone for a holiday.
Charles Aston gave a sudden movement and turned a shocked face towards the speaker.
“Terrible!” he said, “I wonder how the shareholders in that company feel? Did you see the verdict?”
Peter waved his hand. ”Yes, yes. Juries lose their213heads in these cases. But to continue. I went down to Liverpool at once before the funeral, you understand.” He paused. “I was naturally much disturbed and horrified, and then—well, the boy wasn’t my son, after all.”
“Not your son?” echoed Charles Aston slowly.
“No, not my son.” There was a tinge of impatience in his voice. “I should not have known, but the mother was there. She went in as I came out.”
“His mother was alive?”
“Yes. She was not Elizabeth.”
His cousin turned to him, indignation blazing in his eyes. “For twenty years, Peter, you believed you knew your wife’s whereabouts, you knew she was in more or less a state of poverty, and you made no attempt to see her face to face? You accepted the story of another with no attempt to personally prove the truth yourself?”
“I had good reason to believe it,” returned Peter sulkily. “She would have let me know if she were in want. I had told her she could come back when she had had enough of it.”
“And this poor woman, whose son was killed. What of her?”
“I don’t know anything about her except she wasn’t Elizabeth.”
“You had believed her so for twenty years.”
“I had made a mistake. She knew nothing about that. I took good care she should not. There was no doubt about her being the boy’s mother, and no doubt she was not Elizabeth. She had no claim on me.”
“No claim!” Charles Aston stood up and faced him, “not even the claim of the widow—her one son dead. No claim, when for all those years those two items of humanity represented in your perverse mind the two people nearest—I won’t say dearest—to you.214No claim!” He stopped and walked away to the window.
Peter smiled tolerantly. He enjoyed making this kind, generous man flash out with indignation. It was all very high-flown and impossible, but it suited Charles Aston. To-day, however, he was too engrossed in his own affairs to get much satisfaction from it.
“Well, well, don’t let us argue about it. We don’t think alike in these matters. The point I want to consult you about is not my susceptibility to sentiment, but the chances of my picking up a clue twenty years old.”
“I should say they were hardly worth considering.” He spoke deliberately, turning from the window to resume his place by the table. The fight had begun; they had crossed blades at last.
“There is a very good detective called Chance and a better one called Luck.”
“You have secured their services?”
“I am not certain yet. Can you help me?”
He made the appeal with calculated directness, knowing his man and his aversion to evasion, but if he expected him to hesitate he was disappointed.
“No, I can do nothing. I tried for five years to bring you to some sense of your responsibility in this matter. You were not frank with me then, it seems. I can do nothing now.”
“And have lost all interest in it, I suppose?”
“No. It is your interest that rises and falls with the occasion, but I decline to have anything to do with it. If—as I do not believe—Elizabeth is still alive she and your son have done without your help for twenty years and can do without it still.”
“They have doubtless plenty of friends.”
“Let us hope so. What was the name of the Liverpool woman?”215
“Priestly. What does it matter? The question is, I must find my son somehow, for I must have an heir.”
“Adopt one.”
“As did Aymer?” He shot a questioning glance at him. “It’s such a risk. I might not be so lucky. Sons like Christopher are not to be had for nothing.”
“No, they are not,” said Charles Aston drily. “They are the result of years of love and patience, of generous tolerance, of unquenchable courage. They bring days of joy which must be paid for with hours of anxiety and nights of pain. Were you prepared to give your son this, even if you had taken him to you as a boy?”
Peter waved his big hand again. “I quite admit all that is needed to produce men of your pattern, Cousin Charles, and I have the profoundest admiration for the result; but I am not ambitious; I should be content to produce the ordinary successful man.”
“I think Christopher will score a success.”
“Yes, in spite of you both, by reason of his practical, determined, hard-headed nature which he probably inherits from his father, eh?”
“You are probably right. I am not in a position to say.”
“You did not know his parents?”
Charles Aston pushed back his chair and looked beyond Peter to the portrait of Aymer. They must come to close quarters or he would give out, and suddenly it came to him that he must adhere to his universal rule, must give the better side of the man’s nature a chance before he openly defied him. The decision was made quite quickly. Peter only recognised a slight pause. “You seem interested in Christopher,” Mr. Aston said slowly. “I will tell you what there is to know. About eleven years ago Aymer became possessed of a passionate desire to have a boy to216bring up, since he might not have one of his own. In hunting for a suitable one I stumbled on the son of someone I had known who had fallen on very evil days.” He stopped a moment. Peter took out another cigar and lit it. “On very evil days,” repeated the other. “The boy was left at a country workhouse in this county as it happened. I knew enough of his paternity to know that he was a suitable subject for Aymer to father. I have never regretted what I did. The boy has become the mainspring of Aymer’s life; he lives again in him. All that has been denied him, he finds in Christopher’s career; all he cannot give the world he has given to this boy, this son of his heart and soul. No father could love more, could suffer more. And Christopher is repaying him. He has known no father but Aymer, no authority but his, no conflicting claim. I pray God daily that neither now nor in the future shall any shadow fall between these two to cancel by one solitary item Christopher’s obligation to his adopted father. Perhaps I am selfish over it, but anyway, Aymer is my son, and I understand how it is with him.”
There was a silence in the room. Peter puffed vehemently and the clouds of blue-grey smoke circling round him obscured the heavy features from his cousin when his eyes left the picture to look at him.
“Yes, yes, I see. Quite so,” said a voice from the smoke at last, and slowly the strong, bland expressionless face emerged clearly from the halo, “but I am no further on my way towards my son. And who’s to have the money if I don’t find him? Will you?”
“Heaven forbid!—and Nature! Peter, I’m sixty and you are fifty-four.”
“Will Nevil’s boy?”
“We have enough. We should count it a misfortune. Leave it in charities.”217
“And suppose he discovers some day who he is, and wanted it?”
“Hardly likely after so long.”
“Quite likely. Shall I leave it to Christopher?”
It was the last thrust, and it told. There was quite a long silence. Charles longed passionately to refuse, but even he dared not. The issue was too great. “I cannot dictate to you in the matter,” he said at length, “but I do not think Christopher would appreciate it.”
“Then I must hope to find a Christopher of my own,” returned Peter, rising; “let us meanwhile find Nevil.”
The duel was over and apparently the result was as undetermined as ever. The only satisfaction poor Charles Aston derived was from the fact that Peter was unusually gentle and tactful to Aymer that afternoon. He seemed in no hurry to go, urged as excuse he wanted to consult Christopher about a motor, but when they sent to find that young gentleman, they discovered he and Patricia and the motor were missing.
218CHAPTER XIX
It seemed to Christopher as he overhauled his long-suffering motor preparatory to the new run, that a great gap of innumerable grey days stretched between him and the moment he brought the car to a standstill before the doors of the house, that had appeared to him to be a Temple of Promise. It was in fact barely an hour and a half and the greater part of that time had been occupied with lunch and a hasty interview with Aymer. That shorter interlude in the orchard just over, had already blotted out a golden landscape with a driving mist that obscured all true proportion of time or space. He longed greatly, with a sense of strange fatigue, to be sitting at Cæsar’s side and to find the restless discomfort evaporate as they talked, even as his boyish troubles had melted in that companionship. That must come later: for the present Fate—or Patricia—made a demand on him to which he was bound to answer. Where a weaker nature would have said “impossible,” he simply found an ordinary action rendered difficult by his own private view of it, therefore it behooved him to close the shutters on that outlook if he could, and ignore the difficulty.
Renata, who came out with Patricia, protested a little indignantly at the latter’s exaction.
“It is so inconsiderate of Patricia, just as you have had such a journey. Why do you give in to her, Christopher?”
“To-day is as good as any day,” he answered her, “perhaps the visitor will have gone when we return.”
“Oh, I hope so,” said Renata fervently, and then219blushed at her own inhospitality. “I mean, Cæsar would rather have you to himself, I am sure.”
“And I would rather have Cæsar unaccompanied. So there is some use in Patricia’s fancy.”
“Of course,” put in that young lady, “there always is. Please do not waste precious time talking. Tell me where I am to sit, Christopher.”
“I’ll take every care of her,” said Christopher, looking at Renata, “we’ll be back in time for dinner. Be kind and get rid of Mr. Masters by then.”
“Like a dear little angel,” concluded Patricia, kissing her; “think how he bores Nevil, and don’t be hospitable.”
Christopher settled her in the seat beside him, tucked her in with rugs, put up the front screen and started.
For a few short minutes the joy of having her there beside him, his sole charge for some golden hours to come, his to carry in a mad rush if he would to the ends of the earth, obliterated for a moment the bewildering mist.
He drove for some way in silence. Patricia was too much absorbed in the pleasures of swift motion to talk. Her first words, however, shut down the mists on him again.
“Geoffry must have a car,” she declared. “He must get one just like this.”
“I thought Geoffry was to be left behind this afternoon?”
“Oh, I suppose he was. I don’t believe you are a bit pleased about it really, Christopher.”
He clutched at the truth as a plank of safety.
“Well, you can’t expect me to be glad to lose your company, can you? I shall never make a golfer now.”
She laughed at that and recommended a course at St. Andrew’s under a professional, which proposal220he treated with scorn, but after a short silence he said in a different voice:
“Don’t think I’m not glad at anything that makes you happy, Patricia. Geoffry’s a real good sort and—here’s a town—you must not speak to the man at the wheel.”
Patricia was obedient. She sank into a reverie in which, despite her own determination, Geoffry played a long part. It was characteristic of her exact attitude towards her accepted lover that it was the immediate future in which he figured most clearly. Her thoughts hovered round the pleasant summer to come with the distant excitement of a wedding to crown it. She never considered, or only in the most cursory way, the long years ahead, the daily companionship with the man she had chosen. She was honestly attached to Geoffry. She believed she was in love with him, whereas, as is far more often the case than the young suppose, she was in love with the love that had come to her in the glory of the spring, offered by familiar hands that were dear because of what they held for her.
So they drove through the glowing afternoon, and the line of white road before them appeared to Christopher as a track dividing past and future, the thin edge of the passing minutes. They spoke no more, however, on the forbidden subject. Christopher presently explained to her the visible mechanism of the car and on a stretch of clear road let her put her hands on the wheel beneath his own and feel the joy of fictitious control. Before the sun quenched itself in the sea they stood on the Cliff Edge and looked out across the shining waters into the great space, where a thought-laden air renews itself, reforming, cancelling and creating in the crucible of Life. They clambered down from the lip of the cliff on to a jutting-out shelf of rock, screened with gorse, where the few221feet of gravel bank behind them shut out all signs of habitation.
Patricia sat with her hands clasped round her knees drawing slow, deep draughts of the cool air, her eyes on the immense free space, and she spoke not at all with her lips, yet Christopher, lying at her feet, caught her thoughts as they came and went with strange certainty and stranger heartache. He picked a handful of golden gorse petals and pressed the sweet blossoms to his face: ever after their scent was to mean for him that place and rapture of that hour, in which was borne to him the certainty of his right to her, and the knowledge of the surrender he was making in each silent minute. For she was his now, if he told her, if he broke faith, if he claimed the right that was his.
Now in this golden hour he would win if he spoke, sweeping aside the shadowy intervening form of the other with the relentless persistent truth of the faith that was in him, a faith that had no ground in personal vanity or individual pride, but was only the recognition of a great Fact that lay outside and beyond them both, that named Patricia forever his in a world where the Real is disentangled from the Appearance.
Was life to consist, for him, in a relinquishing of his own rights in conformity to the Law of Appearance? Was it but a cowardly fear of convention that held him back from claiming her now on the verge of the world? Or was it a deeper, half-understood trust of the Great Realities of Life, a knowledge that faith, integrity, and honour are no conventions, but belong to Real World of Truth, and that he could snatch no joy of life over their trampled forms? He tried dimly to understand these things, to gauge the nature of the forces that controlled him, but he never doubted what force would claim his obedience. It was already habitual to him by reason of training and instinct to set such Laws of Life as he recognised before his own222will. But that will was very clamorous this evening as he pressed the hot yellow whin-flowers to his face drinking their fragrance into his thirsty soul.
When he raised his eyes he looked out at sea and sky and avoided the dear sweet face above him. She still sat smiling out into the serene space, watching as it were the random thoughts of her subconscious self floating in those ethereal realms. It was almost too great a happiness for peace, the fair world, the comprehending companion, who understood without the clumsy medium of words, and the love awaiting her on the morrow. She did not wish for Geoffry’s presence now, she was perfectly content that he stood in the beautiful morrow, that he was bringing her a good and precious crown to the golden days of her youth.
She sighed out of pure joy and so broke the spell of the golden and blue-cloaked silence which had reigned. Without moving she gathered a handful of whin blooms and scattered them over the brown head at her feet, a baptism of golden fire. He shook them off and looked up at her, laughing.
“Asleep, I believe, Christopher, you lazy person. What were you dreaming about?”
“Bees, heather and honey,” he murmured, surreptitiously gathering up a handful of the golden rain she had tossed him. “Have you had your breath of freedom, Patricia—are you ready for tea and buttered toast?”
“And honey, you provoking materialist,” she insisted.
“Honey is stolen property—I always feel a consort of thieves when I eat it.”
“Then I’ll eat it and you can shut your eyes. Christopher, suppose the car goes wrong on the way home?”
He scoffed at that, but while she ate her honey he made an exhaustive inspection of it.223
When the sun dropped out of sight a shivering wind sprang up and the blue sky drew a grey cloak over itself. Christopher wrapped his companion in a fur coat and tucked her in anxiously.
She had become restless and dissatisfied as if the sun had taken her joy to rest with him, or as if the thoughts gathered from space found an unready lodgment in her mind. Christopher made some effort to talk on indifferent subjects, but she answered with strange brevity or not at all, once with such impatience that he glanced quickly at her hands and saw they were hidden by the long sleeves of his big coat she wore.
Presently she said abruptly:
“We ought not to have stayed so long. Why did you go to sleep?”
“I didn’t,” he retorted, amazed at the accusation.
“Then you ought to have talked.”
“I thought we were superior to such conventions.”
“That is an excuse for sheer laziness on your part. And even if you are superior,” she added, inconsequently, “I am not. What were you thinking about?”
“Shall I tell you of what you were thinking?”
“You can’t.”
“Out in the great space you saw all the future days weaving for you a dress of blue and gold, of hopes and fulfilment. You saw how they smiled at you, you were glad of the love they bore you, the good they were bringing you. You felt in your own soul how you belonged to them, you were a part of all this dear living world.”
“Don’t, don’t,” she cried, half under her breath.
“Isn’t it true?” he insisted.
“You have no business, no right to know. Christopher, how dare you.” Her face flushed with inward emotion, with some fierce resentment that laid hold of224her senses without reason and dragged fear in its wake.
“I’m sorry,” he said humbly. “I’ve often done it before and you never minded.”
“It’s quite different now. It’s unbearable. I don’t like it any more, I hate it. Do you hear, Christopher?”
“Yes. It was unpardonable. I am sorry, Patricia, I won’t do it again.”
“You won’t try to understand me like that? Promise,” she urged.
“I didn’t try then. I only knew. I promise I won’t tell you again.”
“That’s not enough,” she persisted, twisting her fingers under cover of the long sleeves. “You mustn’t know. You must not be able to do it. I won’t bear it. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Then promise.”
“I’ve promised all I can. I certainly won’t try to know. I can’t help it involuntarily.”
“You must. I insist—Christopher, quick.”
They were running at a great pace along a straight level piece of road with high banks on either side, and by the roadside at regular intervals were piles of broken granite. Christopher’s attention was fixed on a distant speck that might be a danger-signal and he did not answer her or notice the nearer signal of danger in her white face.
She was in the grip of her old wild passion again, on fire with her need of assurance, and in a gust of anger she caught at the wheel that seemed to claim his mind. The car swerved violently, jolted up on to the turf, bumped madly along at a dangerous tilt, swerved back into the road two feet clear of a grey pile of stone. Only then did Christopher know her fingers were gripped between his hands and the steel wheel.225He brought the car to a standstill and her released hand fell white and numb to her side. She neither spoke nor moved, but gazed before her, oblivious even of her crushed fingers.
There was a running brook the other side of the hedge and a convenient gate. He soaked his handkerchief in it, came back to her and put the numbed hand on the cool linen. His grip had been like iron and the averted disaster so near as to be hardly passed from his senses, yet he felt sick and ashamed at this almost trifling price they had to pay. He felt each bruised finger carefully and bound them up as best he could, and only then did he speak.
“I’m fearfully sorry, Patricia, I didn’t know.”
She looked vaguely at the white bound hand.
“My fingers? Oh, I’m glad. You shouldn’t have tied them up.”
He paid no heed, but having examined the car, climbed back to his place.
“We must go on,” he remarked, “so it’s no use asking you if you are too frightened, Patricia.”
“You might put me out on the roadside,” she suggested dully.
To that, too, he paid no heed and they started again.
The miles slipped by in unbroken silence. It was not till they were nearly home that Christopher spoke.
“I thought that was all quite gone, Patricia.”
“So did I,” she returned wearily. “It’s ages since I was so stupid. It’s generally all right if you are there.”
“But I’m not always there anyhow.”
“I don’t mean there really. I just shut my eyes and pretend you are and hold on. But just now I waited for you to do something. I forgot you were driving.”
“You mustn’t rely on me to stop you now,” he insisted, with new gravity.226
“Oh, yes, I do. It’s always you if I stop in time; either you actually, or thinking of you. Don’t talk about it, Christopher dear, it was too horrible.”
She did not explain if she meant the danger or the cause, but he obeyed and said no more. A terrible fear clamoured at his heart. Did Geoffry Leverson know or did he not? and if he knew, would he even understand? He tried to tell himself that if he could manage her, then another, and that her acknowledged lover, could do so too, but he knew this was false reasoning. Such power as he had over her lay in his recognition that the irresistible inheritance was not an integral part of Patricia, but was an exotic growth, foisted upon her by the ill-understood laws of paternity, and finding no natural soil in her pure self—something indeed, of a lower nature, that she must and could override. He could have curbed it in the brief flash just over, he knew, had his attention been free. It had died as it had come and the penalty of the crushed fingers hurt him as unwarrantable, combined with the peril they had run.
It was a fresh addition of cloud to the dimmed day to find Peter Masters had not departed, but was staying the night.