258CHAPTER XXIII
Perhaps they did spoil Aymer Aston, these good people, who loved him so greatly, setting so high a store upon his happiness that their own well-being was merged therein.
While it was quite true that neither Nevil nor any other could have worked peacefully in the electrical atmosphere of the house after Christopher left with Peter Masters, it is also true that no temporary personal inconvenience would have driven Nevil to undertake the long and tiresome journey, if his brother’s welfare had not been involved.
The need had been great. Aymer’s restless misery increased every day of Christopher’s absence. He refused to see any of the household but his father and Vespasian, and though at first he made desperate efforts to control himself, in the end he gave up, and long hours of sullen brooding silence were interposed with passionate flashes of temper. It was the old days over again, and all those near him realised to the full how great was the victory that had been won and how terrible life might have been for them all without it. Therefore they were very patient and tolerant, though Mr. Aston began to consider seriously if he would not be justified in breaking his given word to Aymer and summoning Christopher back at once.
He looked very worn and tired when he joinedRenataat dinner on the Thursday night.
“Nevil does not mean to be away long, does he?” he inquired anxiously.
“No, I think not. Why, St. Michael? Does Cæsar want him?”259
“He asked for him this evening.”
“What a pity.”
She went on with her soup, with a little rose of colour on her face, thinking of the secret her husband had of course confided to her. Presently observing St. Michael hardly touched his dinner and seemed too weary to talk, she suggested nervously that she should sit with Aymer that evening. He conjured up a kind smile of thanks, but refused in his gentle, courteous way, saying that Aymer seemed disinclined to talk.
When Mr. Aston went back to the West Room a little later, that disinclination seemed to have evaporated. He heard Cæsar’s furious voice pouring a cascade of biting words on someone as he opened the door. Vespasian was the unfortunate occasion and the unwilling victim; Vespasian, who was older by twenty years than in the days when he stood unmoved before continuous and worse storms. His usually impassive face was rather red and he now and then uttered a dignified protest and finally bent to pick up the shattered glass that lay between them and was the original cause of the trouble. Aymer, with renewed invective, clutched a book to hurl at the unfortunate man, but before he could fling it, Mr. Aston leant over the head of the sofa and seized his wrists. The left would have been powerless in a child’s grasp and the elder man’s position made him master of the still strong right arm.
At a faint sign from Mr. Aston, Vespasian vanished.
Aymer made one unavailing attempt to free himself as his father drew his hands up level with his head. He tried not to look at the face leaning over him.
“Aymer,” said his father, with great tenderness, “do you remember what I used to do with you when you were a little boy and lost your temper?”
Aymer gave a short, uneasy laugh. “Tie my hands260to a chair or a bed head. It was all right then, it is taking a mean advantage now.” He ended with a choking laugh again, and Mr. Aston felt his hands tremble under his careful grasp.
“Aymer, my dear old fellow, if you must turn on someone, then turn on me. I understand how it is. Vespasian doesn’t. That’s not fair. It’s the way of a fractious invalid, not of a sane man. Where’s your pride?”
Aymer bit his lip. He was helpless and humiliated, but after all it was his father. He looked up at him at last with a crooked smile.
“I’ve none—in your power like this, sir. Let me go, I’ll be a good boy.”
They both laughed, and Mr. Aston released him. The colour burned on Aymer’s face. Grown man as he was, the sudden subjection to authority so exerted was hard to bear even in the half-joking aspect with which his father covered it.
Mr. Aston knew it. He had deliberately used the very helplessness that was his son’s best excuse for his outbreak, to check the same, and however thankful for his success, the means were bitter to him also, only he was not going to let Aymer see it or get off without further word.
“I shall have to send you to school again,” he said, picking up the broken glass. “I can’t have Nevil’s property treated like this. He’ll be adding ‘breakages’ to the weekly bill.”
“I’ll pay,” pleaded Aymer, contritely, “if you won’t tell him. Where is he?”
“Gone to London, of all the preposterous things; so Renata says. She expects him back to-morrow, I suppose Bowden will look after him, but I should have wired to them had I known he was going.”
He seemed really a little worried, and Aymer laughed.261
“What a family, St. Michael! Nevil can look after himself a good deal better than you think. He puts it on to get more attention.”
“Do you think he is jealous?”
“Not an ounce of it in him. I have the monopoly of that,” he added, with a sharp sigh, and then, without any warning, he caught his father’s arm and pulled him near.
“Father,” his voice was hoarse and unsteady, “if Peter tells Christopher, what will happen? I can’t think it out steadily. I can’t face it.”
Mr. Aston knelt by him and put his hand on his shoulder, concealing his own distress at this unheard-of breakdown.
“My dear boy, it would not make the slightest difference to Christopher. I’m seriously afraid he’d tell Peter to go to the devil—and he’d come home by the next train. He’d never accept him.”
“He’d never forget,” persisted Aymer, the sleeping agony of long years shining in his eyes. “It would not be the same, father. He would not be—mine. I could not pretend it if he knew. Peter would be there between us—always as he was––”
He broke off and took up the thread with a still sharper note of pain, “Father, can’t you understand. I don’t mind a woman. He’ll love and marry some day: it’s his right. I don’t grudge that. But another father—his real one. Oh, My God, mayn’t I keep even this for myself?” He hid his face on the cushions, all the wild jealousy of his nature struggling with his pride.
His father put his arm round him, hardly able to credit the meaning of the crisis. Was that white scar on his son’s forehead no memorial to a dead jealousy, but only an expression of a slumbering passion?
“Aymer, old fellow, listen. Peter isn’t going to tell, I feel sure of it. And it would make no difference.262You must allow I know something of men. I give you my word of honour, Aymer, I know it would make no difference to Christopher. You wrong him. You will always be first with him.”
“It’s not Christopher,” returned Aymer, lifting hard, haggard eyes to his father, “it’s myself. Twice in my life I’ve wanted something—someone for myself alone. Elizabeth—and now Christopher! It’s I who can’t share.”
“Jealousy, cruel as the grave.” Involuntarily the words escaped Mr. Aston.
“More cruel.”
He dropped his head again. St. Michael continued to kneel by him in silence. The elementary forces of nature are hard matters with which to deal. Silence, sympathy, and the loan of mental strength were all he could offer.
It came to his mind in the quiet stillness how in just such a crisis as this, when he was not at hand to help the same cruel passion had wrought the irrevocable havoc with his son’s life. He looked at the dark head pressed on the pillows and remembered his young wife’s half-laughing pride in her first-born’s copper coloured aureole of hair. He recollected the day he had first held him in his arms, himself but just arrived at man’s estate, and this helpless little baby given into his power and keeping. He had done his best: God knows how humbly he confessed that more than truthful Truth, yet even all his love had failed to save that little red-haired baby from this ... jealousy, cruel as the grave! Perhaps he had been too young a father to deal with it at first. Was it his failure or were there greater forces behind—the forces of ages of other failures for which poor Aymer paid....
Aymer moved till his head rested against his father’s arm, like a tired child. Presently he looked up rather shamefacedly.263
“It’s over. What a fool I’ve been. Don’t tell Christopher, father.”
A faint reflection of what Aymer considered his own terrible monopoly, caught poor St. Michael for a fleeting moment, a jealous pang that his son’s first thought must go to the boy. He realised suddenly he was tired out and old, and got to his feet stiffly.
Aymer gave him a quick, penetrating glance.
“Send Vespasian back, father,” he said abruptly, “and you go to bed. What a selfish brute I’ve been.” And when Mr. Aston had bidden him good-night he added in the indifferent tone in which he veiled any great effort, “If Peter should want Christopher to stay longer, you might tell him to come back—it doesn’t pay to be so proud—and I’ll apologise to Vespasian.”
“He’s worth it,” said Mr. Aston with a smile, “he and I are getting old, Aymer.”
“Negatived by a large majority, sir,” he answered quickly.
It was not of Christopher he thought in the silent hours of the night, and Mr. Aston’s brief jealousy would have found no food on which to thrive had it survived its momentary existence.
When Mr. Aston came down in the morning the first sight that met his astonished eyes was Christopher, seated at the breakfast table and attacking that meal with liberal energy. He sprang up as Mr. Aston entered.
“My dear boy, I thought you were not coming till to-morrow at the earliest.”
“Will it be inconvenient?” asked Christopher, with demure gravity. “I’m sorry, but I was so bored.”
He stumbled a little over the prevarication. St. Michael was not Peter Masters, even excuses found no easy flow in his presence.
“I’m delighted,” said Mr. Aston, and looked it.264
He had breakfasted in his room, so he sat down by Christopher and tried to find out the reason of the opportune return.
“Your letters did not sound at all bored.”
“I only realised it yesterday evening,” returned Christopher, with great gravity, “so we—that is I—came down by the mail last night—and Nevil....”
“Nevil?”
“Yes, I picked him up, you know. He was seeing a man in Leamington.”
Christopher carved ham carefully, and avoided Mr. Aston’s eye, smiling to himself over his promise to Nevil not to betray him.
“Nevil went to London. How did—” Mr. Aston stopped suddenly, “Christopher.”
“Yes, St. Michael.”
“You are not to lie to me whatever you do to others. Tell me what it means.”
Christopher regarded him doubtfully and then laughed outright.
“Nevil did not like travelling alone. He thought he would get lost, so he asked me to look after him.”
“He went from London to Leamington to get a companion to travel home with?”
“Exactly. Isn’t it like him, St. Michael?”
They again looked steadily at each other.
“And being a bit weary of fighting for the right of individual existence,” went on Christopher, “I agreed to bring him home. Mr. Masters has been most kind, but he does like his own way.”
“And what about you?”
“Oh, I like mine, too. That’s why it was so boring. How’s Cæsar?”
“He will be pleased to see you. Where is Nevil?”
“Gone to bed, I expect. How he hates travelling.”
“Yes.”265
“He hates explanations still more, please St. Michael.”
“He should have prepared a more plausible story.”
“He thinks it quite credible. He expected me to believe—about the man in Leamington.”
“And did you?”
“Well, do you?”
They both laughed and Christopher looked at the clock.
“Do you think Vespasian will let me take in Cæsar’s breakfast?”
“He would be delighted, I’m sure. Cæsar won’t believe in Leamington either, Christopher.”
“But he will easily believe I was bored—which is true. I don’t think he is as fond of Mr. Masters as he pretends to be.”
Whether Aymer believed or not, he asked no questions. He only remarked that Peter was far more likely to have been bored and Christopher had no eye to his own advantage. To which Christopher replied flippantly that it was a question of “vantage out,” and he was not going to imperil his game with a rash service.
After that he sat on the foot of the bed and talked frankly of his visit, and minute by minute the jealous fire in Aymer’s heart died down to extinction.
Presently, however, he said abruptly and rather reproachfully: “You never told me Mr. Masters had married.”
For a confused second the room and the occupants were lost in a fiery mist and only Christopher’s voice lived in the chaos. Then Aymer found himself struggling to maintain hold of something in the mental turmoil, he did not know what at first: then that it was his own voice. It amazed him to hear it quite; steady and cool.266
“Why should she interest you? Did Peter tell you?”
“No. Never mentioned it. One day I found Mrs. Eliot, the housekeeper, in a room, a sort of boudoir, playing about with holland covers, and I helped her. What was she like?”
“Mrs. Eliot?”
“No, you old stupid. Mrs. Peter Masters. I know you knew her, because there’s a pen-and-ink sketch of you and Mr. Masters playing cards in the room.”
“Oh, is there.”
“Is she dead?”
“Yes.”
“What was she like—to marry Mr. Masters?”
“Like? Like other women,” returned Aymer, shortly.
Christopher looked at him sharply and realised he had committed an indiscretion—that this was a subject that might not be handled even with a velvet glove.
“Explicit,” he retorted lightly. “However, that’s not important. Now for something of real moment.”
He plunged into an account of Peter’s final offer to him, and his own refusal.
“Why on earth did you refuse? Wasn’t it good enough?” demanded Aymer curtly.
“No, not with P. M. attached. Might as well take lodgings in Wormwood Scrubs—quite as much liberty. But, anyhow, Cæsar, you see now what you have got to do.”
“Get you apartments in Wormwood Scrubs?”
“No. Do be serious. Give me a laboratory here and some experimental ground. Do, there’s a dear good Cæsar.” In reminiscence of old days he pretended to rub his head against Cæsar’s arm.
“Ah, you invented Peter’s offer to wheedle me into this. I suppose.”267
“Exactly. Seriously, Cæsar, if you would, it would be excellent. I’ve been thinking it out, I could work here safely. No one to crib my ideas. But I must have trial ground.”
“That’s Nevil’s affair.”
“Well, I undertake to manage Nevil if you are afraid,” said Christopher, with an air of desperate resolve.
“I thought you didn’t like Marden,” persisted Cæsar, fighting in an unreasoning way, against his own desires, “and this engaged couple will wander round and get in the way.”
He looked Christopher straight in the face with scrutinising eyes, but he never flinched.
“I’ll put up a notice, ‘Trespassers will be blown up.’”
“Well, you’d better talk to St. Michael, but remember, I can’t buy up the other fellows. You’d better have taken Peter’s offer.”
“I’d much rather bore you than Mr. Masters.”
“I’m not complaining.”
That was the nearest approach he made to expressing to Christopher his deep, quiet content at the arrangement that astute young man had so skilfully suggested. St. Michael said a little more and Christopher knew without words that he had pleased them both.
268CHAPTER XXIV
It took very little time for Christopher to establish himself in the desired manner. Indeed, before another week had passed the suggestion was an accomplished fact. After that his actual presence in the house might almost have been forgotten except by Cæsar. Mr. Masters’ half serious threat was like a spur to a willing steed. He spoke little of what he was doing, but the experimental ground was criss-crossed with strange-coloured roads, and the little band of men who worked for him, with the kindly indulgence of the “young master’s whim,” began to talk less of the fad and to nurse a bewildered wonder at the said young master’s strict rule and elaborate care over little points that slow minds barely saw at all.
As for the engaged couple, Christopher rarely met them. He did not intentionally avoid either Patricia or Geoffry, singly or collectively, but he was not sorry their preoccupation and his separated them. He did not lose his sense of possessorship of Patricia: in his innermost mind she was still his, and Geoffry was but the owner of an outside visible Patricia that was but one expression of the woman who stood crowned and waiting in his heart.
There was no question of the wedding, or if there were between themselves, Geoffry was not allowed to voice it. Patricia was enjoying life and in no hurry to forego or shorten the pleasant days of her engagement.
Towards the end of September Christopher began to relax his long hours of work and the tense look on his face gave way.
“I shall know in about a fortnight if it’s coming269out all right,” he said to Cæsar abruptly one day, “and it’s a fortnight in which I can do nothing but wait.”
“Go and play,” said Cæsar, watching him anxiously, “you concentrate too much. You’ll be getting nervous.”
Christopher laughed and gripped Cæsar’s hand in his firm, steady grasp.
“Never better in my life,” he said. “Concentration is an excellent thing. I’m beginning to appreciate Nevil.”
He spent the next five days in true Nevil fashion, however, following the whim of the moment, and “lazing” as thoroughly as he had worked. Geoffry and Patricia claimed his attendance, or Patricia did and Geoffry made no protest. They were supremely happy days. The three talked of nothing in particular, just the easy surface aspect of the world and the moment’s sunshine, and Geoffry was secretly surprised to find his pleasure so little diminished by the third presence.
Then one day that wore no different outer aspect to its fellows in their livery of autumn sunshine, the three walked over the wooded ridge to the open downland where the brown windswept turf was interspaced with stretches of stubble and blue-green “roots,” where a haze of shimmering light hung over copse and field, and beyond the undulating near country a line of hills purple and grey melted into the sky-line.
They had discussed hotly a disputed point as they mounted from the valley and came out on this good land of promise in a sudden silence. Patricia seated herself on the soft turf at the edge of a little chalk pit and sat in her accustomed attitude with her hands folded, looking straight before her, and the two men sat on either side of her. And over all three a sense of the smallness of the matter over which they had differed drifted in varied manners.270
Geoffry realised how little he really cared about it. Christopher was amused at their futile efforts to solve a problem of which they knew nothing, but Patricia was angry, first that she had been betrayed into expressing concern in something of which she was really ignorant, and secondly that neither Christopher nor Geoffry had agreed with her. The matter of the discussion—it arose from the subject of village charities—became of no importance, but the sense of irritation remained with her, and she was unaccountably cross with Christopher. Geoffry’s point of view she could ignore, but Christopher’s worried her.
Geoffry dismissed the whole thing most easily; he did not trouble about Christopher’s view, and he thought Patricia’s a little queer, but then to him Patricia’s views were not Patricia herself. He made the common mistake of divorcing that particular aspect of his lady love with which he was best acquainted from the multitudinous prisms of her womanhood. He would have allowed vaguely that she had “moods,” that these overshadowed occasionally the sunny, beautiful girl he loved, but no conception of her as a whole had entered his mind. He was in love with one prism of a complex whole, or rather with one colour of the rainbow itself.
This particular truth with regard to Geoffry’s estimate of Patricia impressed itself on Christopher with disagreeable persistency during the walk, and renewed that nearly forgotten fear that had come to him during the ride from Milton in the spring.
So presently he found himself watching her inner attitude towards her accepted lover in the forbidden way, without sufficient knowledge of what he was actually doing to stop it. Perhaps some subtle appreciation of this in the subconscious realm, roused a like uneasiness and dissatisfaction in Patricia herself.271
At all events Christopher soon found grounds for no immediate fear and left the future to itself.
“Shall we go on?” he suggested, marking how her hands grew white as she pressed them together.
She negatived the proposal, imperiously saying they had only just got there and she wanted to rest.
“You are getting lazy, Patricia,” said her lover gravely. “I warn you, it’s the one unpardonable sin in my eyes.”
“You mistake restlessness for energy,” she retorted quickly. “I’m never lazy. Ask Christopher.”
Geoffry did no such thing. He continued to fling stones at a mark on the lower lip of the chalk pit.
“It’s fairly hard to distinguish, anyhow,” said Christopher, thoughtfully. “There are people who call Nevil lazy, whereas he isn’t. He only takes all his leisure in one draught.”
“Oh, I don’t know. It’s simple enough, isn’t it? I never feel lazy so long as I’m doing something—moving about.”
Geoffry jumped down into the little white pit as he spoke, as if to demonstrate his remark. Patricia looked scornful.
“So long as your are restless, you mean,” she said.
“Well, you must teach me better if you can. I say, Patricia, do you always turn reproof on the reprover’s head?”
He leant against the bank looking up at her, smiling in his easy, good-tempered way. He wished vaguely the line of frown on her pretty forehead would go. He wondered if she had a headache.
He ventured to put his hand over hers when he was sure Christopher was not looking. She neither answered the caress nor resented it.
Presently he began to explore the hollow, poking into all the rabbit-holes with his stick.
Christopher sat silent, which was a mistake, for it272left her irritation but one object on which to expend itself, and after all it was Geoffry who should have tried to please her by sitting still.
Suddenly a frightened rabbit burst out of a disturbed hole, and Geoffry, with a shout of delight, in pure instinct flung a stone. By a strange, unhappy fluke, expected least of all by himself, the stone hit the poor little terrified thing and it rolled over dead. He picked it up by its ears and called to them triumphantly to witness his luck, with boyish delight in the unexpected, though the chances were he would never have flung the stone at all had he dreamt of destroying it.
A second flint whizzed through the air, grazing the side of his head. He dropped the rabbit and stood staring blankly at the two on the bank.
Patricia’s white, furious face blazed on him. Christopher was grasping her hands, his face hardly less white.
“Are you hurt?” he called over his shoulder.
“No,” the other stammered out, unaware of the blood streaming down the side of his head, and then dabbed his handkerchief on it. “It’s only a scratch. What’s happened?”
“Patricia mistook you for a rabbit, I think,” returned Christopher grimly and added to her in a low voice, “Do you know you struck him, Patricia?”
She gave a shiver and put her hands to her face. Even then he did not leave go of her wrists.
“A happy fluke you didn’t aim so well as I did,” called Geoffry, unsteadily coming towards them.
“Don’t come,” said Christopher sharply. “Wait a moment. Patricia,” he tried to pull her hands from her face: her golden head dropped against his shoulder and he put his arms round her.
“What is the matter with Patricia. Is she ill?” asked Geoffry at his shoulder, his voice altered and strained.273
“It’s all right now. Sorry I wasn’t quicker, Geoffry. Don’t touch her yet.”
But Geoffry was hard pressed already not to thrust the other aside, and he laid his hand on the girl’s arm. Christopher never offered to move.
“Patricia, what’s the matter. You haven’t really hurt me, you know. What on earth were you doing?”
But she gave no sign she heard him. Only her hands clung close to Christopher and she trembled a little.
“She is ill,” cried Geoffry quickly. “Put her down, Christopher, she’s faint.”
“No, she is not,” returned the other through clenched teeth, “she will be all right directly, if you’ll give her time. For heaven’s sake go away, man. Don’t let her see you like that. Don’t you know your head is cut.”
Geoffry put up his hand mechanically, and found plentiful evidence of this truth, but he was still bewildered as to what had actually happened, and he was aching with desire to take her from Christopher’s hold.
“It was just an accident,” he protested. “She didn’t mean to hit me, of course. Let her lie down.”
“She did mean to hit you, just at the moment,” returned the other, very quietly, “haven’t you been told. Oh, do go away, there’s a good fellow. I’ll explain presently.”
He was sick with dread lest Patricia should give way to one of her terrible paroxysms of sorrow before them both. She was trembling all over and he did not know how much self-control she had gained. Then suddenly he understood what was the real trouble with poor Geoffry.
“Don’t mind my holding her, Geoffry,” he went on swiftly, “I’ve seen her like this before and understand,274and I can always stop her, but she mustn’t see you like that first.”
Geoffry stood biting his lip and then turned abruptly on his heel and left them—and for all his relief at his departure, Christopher felt a faint glow of contempt at his obedience.
“Is he gone?” Patricia lifted her white face and black-rimmed eyes to his.
“Yes, dear.”
“Did I hurt him?”
“Not seriously. Sorry I was not quicker, Patricia.”
“I did not even know myself,” she answered, wearily. “Christopher, why was I born? Why didn’t someone let me die?”
He gave her a little shake. “Don’t talk like a baby. But, Patricia, how is it Geoffry doesn’t know?”
She looked round with languid interest.
“Why did he go?”
“I sent him away.”
“He went?”
“What else could he do?”
She made no further remark, but sat clasping and unclasping her nervous hands, as powerless against the desperate languor assailing her as she had been against the gust of passion.
Across the wide, smiling land westward a closed shadow, sharp of outline and rapid of flight, drove across the stubble field, sank in an intervening valley, and skimmed again over the close green turf to their feet as it touched the edge of the chalk pit. She shivered a little.
“Take me home, Christopher.”
He helped her up and with steady hands assisted her to smooth her hair and put on her hat, and then they turned and walked back along the path they had come. Christopher was greatly troubled. It seemed to275him incredible that Geoffry had been left in ignorance of this cruel inheritance. He tried to gauge the effect of it on his apparently unsuspecting mind and was uneasy and dissatisfied over the result.
“Someone must explain to Geoffry,” he said presently; “will you like him to come over to-night and tell him yourself, Patricia?”
“I don’t want to see him.” There was a deep note of fatigue in her voice, also a new accent of indifference. Her mind was in no way occupied with her lover’s attitude towards the unhappy episode.
“Someone’s got to see him and explain. It’s only fair,” persisted Christopher resolutely.
“What is there to explain. What does it matter?”
“He thinks it was an accident.”
She walked on a little quicker.
“Patricia, you must tell him.”
Then she turned and faced him, and her pallor was burnt out with red.
“Christopher, I will not see him. I can’t. What’s the use? What can he do?”
“He must learn how to help you, learn how to stop it,” he said doggedly.
She gave a curious, choking laugh. “Geoffry stop it? Don’t be absurd, Christopher. You know he’d make me ten times worse if he tried. Anyhow, I’m not going to marry him.”
“Patricia!”
“Don’t, don’t. I can’t bear anything now. But I won’t marry him, or anyone. It’s not safe.”
She went on down the path swiftly, without looking back, hardly conscious of the tears falling from her brimming eyes. Christopher followed her silently, furious with himself because of some unreasoning exultation in his heart, some clamorous sense of kinship with the golden land and laden earth that had been absent as they came, but it died when, presently emerging276from the wood on to the park land facing Marden, she turned to him again regardless of her tears.
“He won’t want to marry me now, anyhow,” she said wistfully, with a child’s appealing look of distress.
A great pity welled up in his heart and drowned the last thought of self, carrying visions of the cruel isolation this grim inheritage might entail on her, and he had hard work to refrain from taking her in his arms then and there to hold for ever shielded from the relentless pressure of her life. The temptation was more subtle and harder to withstand than on the sunny, gorse-covered cliff at Milton, for it was her need and her pain that cried for help and love, and she who suffered because he withstood. He could in no wise see what course he was to take beyond the minute, but he knew quite clearly what course he must not take, and such surety was the reward he won from that other fight.
He answered her appeal now with quite other words than those she perhaps sought, and it was the hardest pang of all to know it and recognise the vague discomfort in her eyes.
“You mustn’t be unfair to Geoffry, Patricia. You haven’t any right to say that. He will want to do his best for you when he understands.”
“He went away.”
“I sent him. I—I was afraid you were going to cry.”
Had he done wrong? He cast his thoughts back rapidly. He knew he could not have borne that they two should witness one of her wild fits of repentance and misery. It would have been unbearably unfit. He could not have left her to Geoffry, and yet it had been Geoffry’s right. He walked on by her side wondering where he had blundered.
“You would not have gone, Christopher, no matter who said so.” Her directness was dangerous.277She was then going to allow herself no illusions of any kind, not even concerning the man she loved, and Christopher became suddenly aware he was very young: that they were all three very young, and had no previous experience to guide them in this difficult pass, but must gain it for themselves, gain it perhaps at greater cost than he could willingly contemplate.
“It is no question of me, whatever,” he said slowly. “I’ve been used to you and I understand. I don’t know how it would be if I had not known, neither do you, but it’s clear, you or Nevil must explain the matter to Geoffry at once.”
“You can do it.”
“It’s not my place.”
“You were there.”
“That was mere chance.”
She slipped her arm through his in the old way.
“Dear Christopher, I love Nevil, and he’s awfully good, but you are like my own brother. Please pretend you are really. If I had a brother, he would see Geoffry for me.”
“But Nevil might not like it.”
It was a difficult pass, for how could he explain to her it was of Geoffry he was thinking, not of Nevil. His evasion at least raised a little smile.
“Nevil! An explanation taken off his hands!” She spread her own abroad in mock amazement.
“Tell him yourself, Patricia.”
“Christopher!”
He looked straight ahead, a certain rigidness in the outline of his face betokening a decision at variance with his will.
“What am I to tell him?”
“What you like.”
“I shall not tell him the silly thing you said just now, you know.”
“What thing?”278
“About not marrying.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said indifferently, “he won’t marry me if he thinks I tried to hit him.”
Christopher closed his mind and reason to so illogical a conclusion, but he disputed the point no more, and it was not till he left her and turned to face instantly the task she had laid upon him, that he realised how overwhelmingly difficult it was.
279CHAPTER XXV
“I suppose no one realised you did not know all about it as you’d known them all so long.”
Christopher concluded his simple and direct account with these words, and waited vainly for a reply from his hearer, who stood by the window with his back to him.
“It’s so nearly a thing of the past, too, that it hardly seemed worth mentioning,” he went on presently, an uneasy wonder at the silence growing on him.
At length Geoffry spoke, in a thick, slow way, like a man groping in darkness.
“You mean she did throw that stone deliberately, meaning to hit me?”
He had no sight at present for the wider issues that beset them or for Patricia’s story: his attention was concentrated on the incident immediately affecting him and he could see it in no light but that of dull horror.
“Deliberately tried to do it?” he repeated, turning to Christopher.
“There wasn’t anything deliberate about it. She just flung the stone at you precisely as you flung one at the rabbit. Sort of blind instinct. She does not know now she really hurt you.”
He glanced at the crossing strips of plaster with which the other’s head was adorned on the right side.
“It’s horrible,” muttered Geoffry, “I can’t understand it.”
“It’s simple enough.” There was growing impatience in Christopher’s voice. “She inherits this ghastly temper as I’ve told you. It’s like a sudden280gust of wind if she’s not warned. It takes her off her feet, as it were, but she’s nearly learnt to stand firm. She has a wretched time after.”
“It’s madness.”
“It’s nothing of the kind. She wasn’t taught to control it as a child. They just treated it as something she couldn’t help.”
“By heavens, are you going to make out she can help it, and that that makes it better?”
Christopher faced him with amazed indignation. Geoffry’s whole attitude and reception of his story seemed to him incredibly one-sided.
“Of course it’s better. A hundred times better. Do you mean you’d rather have her the victim of a real madness she could not control? Think what you are saying, man.”
“To me, it’s fairly unbearable if it’s something she can help and doesn’t.”
Exasperation nearly choked the other. To have to defend Patricia at all was almost a desecration in his eyes, but he was her ambassador and he stuck to his orders.
“She does help it. She’s nearly mastered it now.”
Geoffry put his hand to his injured head and gave a short laugh.
Christopher got up abruptly.
“What am I to tell her, then?” he demanded shortly.
The real tenor of the discussion seemed to break suddenly upon Geoffry and he was cruelly alive to his own inability to meet it. He spoke hurriedly and almost pleadingly.
“Don’t go yet. I’ve got to think this out. Can’t you help me?”
“What’s there to think about? I’ve told you. I can tell you how to help her if you like.”
“I’ve got to think of a jolly sight more than you281seem to imagine,” returned the sorely beset young man irritably, but unable to keep a touch of conscious superiority out of his voice, “a jolly sight more, if I marry her.”
“If you marry her?” Christopher turned on him with blazing eyes.
“I’m not saying I shan’t—but it’s a pretty bad pass for us both. I know how she feels. Marriage isn’t just a question of pleasing oneself, you see. I must think it out for both of us.”
Christopher began to speak and desisted. The other went on in an aggrieved tone.
“I ought to have been told. Heredity of that sort isn’t a thing to be played with, you know. Anything might happen. Why wasn’t I told?” He walked to and fro, and stopped by Christopher again.
“I wouldn’t mind a bit,” he burst out, “if it were just a bad joke, if she flung at me in fun and didn’t expect to hit.”
“She has a good aim as a rule,” put in Christopher, too blind with fury now to realise the other’s unhinged condition, but Geoffry went on unheeding.
“But to do it in a rage, and for nothing. Just a cold-blooded attack and no warning. I can’t get over it. Anything might happen.”
His first indignant pang that Christopher had been sent on this awkward errand had died out in the stress of the moment: he was ready to appeal for sympathy, for help, or even bare comprehension in the impossible situation in which he found himself, but Christopher had nothing to bestow on him but blind, furious resentment. He longed to be quit of his service and free to give way to his own wrath.
“There was plenty of warning for anyone with eyes and sense to use them, and there was nothing cold-blooded about it whatever, as I’ve told you fifty times. If you choose to make a mountain out of a molehill you must, but I’ll not help you. I would have282done my best for both of you if you’d taken it decently.”
“You? What concern is it of yours?” retorted the other, stung back to his original jealousy.
“It’s my concern so far as Patricia chooses it to be,” he answered curtly. “I’m going now. You’d better write to her yourself, when you’ve decided if the risk is worth taking or not.”
“It’s my risk at least, not yours—yet awhile,” was the unguarded reply.
The young men faced each other for a moment with passions at the point of explosion. It was Christopher who recollected his position of ambassador first and turned abruptly to the door. In the hall he narrowly escaped encounter with Mrs. Leverson, Geoffry’s large and ample mother, but slipped out of a garden door on hearing the rustle of her dress. In the open air he breathed freely again and hastened to regain his motor, which he had left near the gates. Once outside Logan Park he turned the car northward along a fairly deserted high-road and drove at full pressure, until the hot passion of his heart cooled and his pulse fell into beat with the throb of the engine, and he found himself near Basingstoke. Then he turned homeward, driving with greater caution and was able to face matters in a logically sane manner.
“They won’t marry and it’s a blessed thing for both of them,” was the burden of his thoughts, though it mitigated not one bit his indignant attitude towards Geoffry. Presently he turned to his own interest in the matter.
His first idea was that he was free to claim her who was his own at once, without loss of time, but that impulse died down before a better appreciation of facts. Patricia must be left free in mind to regain possession of every faculty, that was but common fairness: also he was by no means certain at this time what response283she would make to his claim, and if it should be a negative his position at Marden would be difficult, and there was Aymer to consider. Quite slowly, and with no appreciable connection with the chief subject a recollection of that first journey with Peter Masters from London came to the surface of his mind, and written large across, in Peter’s own handwriting, were the words, “Aymer’s son.”
He had put that idea deliberately behind his back, hidden it in the deepest recess of his mind, with a strange content and a germ of pride unconfessed and unacknowledged to himself. It remained a secret feeling that touched at no point his steady faith and devotion to his dead mother.
But Peter’s suggestion had utterly quenched his original intention of asking Mr. Aston or Cæsar of his own origin, as he had intended to do at the time of his return from Belgium. The actual possibility or impossibility of the idea counted nothing so long as the faintest shadow of it lurked there in the background. If it were a fact, it was their secret, deliberately withheld; if it were not, he must be the last to give it life.
The incalculable power of suggestion had done its work and the suggested lie, taking root, had grown at the pace of all ill weeds and obscured his usually clear visions of essentials. The more he questioned the possible fact the denser seemed the screen between him and Patricia, until he called himself a fool to have dreamed she was ever his to claim at all.
It was in this wholly unsatisfactory mood he was called upon, on his return, to face Patricia and give his own account of the interview.
Patricia was lying in wait for him at the door of her own sanctum, which he had to pass on his way to his room. He would have gladly deferred the interview, but she summoned him imperiously.284
“There’s a good hour till dinner, Christopher, and I must know what he said. How long you’ve been!”
He followed her in and closed the door behind him. The little white-panelled room was so perfect an expression of its owner that at all times Christopher felt a still wonder fall on him to find himself within its confines. It was singularly uncrowded and free, and the monotonous note of light colour was broken by splashes of brightness that were as an embroidery to the plain setting.
Patricia turned to him with questioning eyes and no words, and the difficulty of his task made him a little curt and direct in speech, for otherwise how could he avoid voicing the tenderness that flowed to her.
“I told him about it and he seemed surprised he hadn’t been told before, and he hadn’t really taken in what happened this afternoon at all. I expect he’ll write to you.”
A faint ghost of a smile touched her white face.
“You are not really telling me what I want to know, Christopher.”
“There’s nothing else. He hadn’t got the real focus of the thing when I left.”
“I understand.”
She turned away and leant her arm on the mantelpiece, wondering in a half-comprehensive way why the stinging sense of humiliation and helpless shame seemed so much less since Christopher had come. What had been well-nigh unbearable was now but a monotonous burden that wearied but did not crush her: she feared it no longer. He stood looking at her a moment, gathering as it were into himself all he could of the bitterness that he knew she carried at her heart, and then turned away to the window, realising the greatness of her trouble and yearning to do that very285thing which unconsciously by mere action of his receptive sympathy he had done already.
Presently she came to him and put her hand on his arm.
“You’ll understand, anyhow, Christopher,” she said with a little sigh.
“We shall all do that here.”
“But Geoffry won’t.”
“I suppose he can’t.”
She recognised the hard note in his voice at once, and seating herself on the window-seat set to work to fathom it.
“It will help me if you can tell me exactly how he took it, Christopher. Was he angry, or sorry, or horrified or what?”
He had to consider a moment what, out of fairness to Geoffry, he must withhold, and choose what he considered the most pardonable aspect.
“I think he was frightened, Patricia, not at you, so much as at some silly ideas he’s got hold of about heredity. Not his own: just half-digested ideas, and he probably finds it pretty difficult to listen to them at all. He just thinks he ought to, I suppose.”
Again the faint little smile in her face.
“You are a dear, Christopher, when you try to whitewash things. Listen to me. Whatever Geoffry said or does or writes, I’ve decided I will not marry him. I’ve written to say so and posted it before you came in, so he should know that nothing he had said or done influenced me in the slightest.”
Christopher gave a sigh of relief and she went on in the same deliberate way.
“And I shall never marry at all. I can’t face it again. I’ll tell Renata about Geoffry, and may I also tell her you will explain to the others if she can’t satisfy them?”
“I will do anything you wish.” Then he suddenly286claimed for himself a little latitude and spoke from his heart.
“Patricia, dear, I’m glad you’ve done it. It’s the best and right thing, however hard, and if I could manage to take all the bother of it for you I would. Honestly, Geoffry wouldn’t have been able to help you, I fear. But as to never marrying, you must not say that or make rash vows, and you must never, never let yourself think it isn’t safe to marry, or that sort of nonsense. It’s in your own hands. We are always strong enough for our own job, so Cæsar says. Shall I find Renata and ask her to come to you?”
They stood facing each other, an arm’s length separating them, and she looked at him across the little space with so great gratitude and affection in her eyes that he felt humbled at the little he offered from so great a store at his heart.
“Christopher, how do girls manage who haven’t a brother like you? I’ve been fretting because I was all alone and no one to stand by me—will you forgive me that, dear?”
Her eyes were brimming with tears. She laid her hand on his arm again and drew nearer. Her entire ignorance of their true relationship to each other left her a child appealing for some outward sign of the one dear bond she knew between them.
Christopher recognised it and put his arm round her and she kissed him. “I’ll never forget again that I’ve got you,” she whispered, “such a dear good brother.”
He neither acquiesced nor dissented that point, but very gravely and quietly he kissed her too, and she thought the bond of fraternity between then was sealed.