"But surely, Mr. Masters——" began Christopher and stopped.

"Mr. Masters has nothing to do with the place outside the works. It is not part of the System. He pays 6d. a head more than any other employer and that frees him. There's the station."

He paused as if he would leave his companion to make his way on alone. He was obviously dissatisfied and uneasy.

"Won't you come to the station with me?" Christopher asked, and as they walked he began to speak slowly and hesitatingly, as one who must choose from words that were on the verge of overflowing. "I was brought up in Lambeth, Mr. Fulner. I am used to poverty and bad sights. Don't go on thinking I don't care. These people earn fortunes beside those I have known, but in all London I've never seen anything so horrible as this, nothing so hideous, sordid—" he stopped with a gasp, "the women—the children—the lost desire—the ugliness."

They walked on silently. Presently he spoke again.

"You are a plucky man, Mr. Fulner. I couldn't face it."

"I've no choice. I don't know why I showed you it, except I thought you were coming and I wanted your help."

"Are there many who care?"

"No. It's too precarious. Mr. Masters doesn't approve of fools. Mind you, the men have no grievances inside the works. The unions have no chance now. It's fair to remember that."

"Is it the same everywhere?"

"The System's the same. I know nothing about the other works but that. There's the train: we must hurry."

"What do you want for your club?" Christopher asked as he entered his carriage.

"A billiard table, gym fittings, books. We've a license. We sell beer to members," his eyes were eager: the man's heart was in his hopeless self-imposed work.

Christopher nodded. "I shall not forget."

So they parted: each wondering over the other—would have wondered still more if they had known in what relationship they would stand to each other when they next met.



CHAPTER XXI

Christopher stood for a moment inside the great hall at Stormly Park and looked round. It was quite beautiful. Peter Masters, having chosen the best man in England for his purpose, had had the sense to let him alone. There was no discordant note anywhere and Christopher was quite alive to its perfections. But coming straight from Stormly Town the contrast was too glaring and too crude. It was not that Peter Masters was rich and his people were poor. Poverty and riches have run hand in hand down the generations of men, but here, the people were poor in all things, in morals, in desire, in beauty, in all that lifted them in the scale of humanity, in order that he, Peter Masters, should be superfluously rich, outrageously so!

Christopher struggled hard to be just: he knew it was not the superfluous money that was grudged, it was the more precious time and thought saved with a greed that was worse than the hunger of a miser—for no purpose but to add to over-filled stores. He knew all Peter Masters' arguments in defence of his System already: That he compelled no man to serve him, that none did so except on a clear understanding of the terms; that for the hours they toiled for him he paid highly, and his responsibility ceased when those hours were over. If Peter Masters was no philanthropist at least he was no humbug. He said openly he worked his System because it paid him. If he could have made more by being philanthropical he would have been so, but he would not have called it philanthropy: it would have been a financial method.

The grim selfishness of it all crushed Christopher as an intolerable burden that was none of his, and yet, because he was here accepting a part of its results, he could not clear himself of its shadow. So, twenty-two years ago, had his mother thought until the terror of that shadow outweighed all dread of further evil, and she had fled from its shade into a world where sun and shadow were checkered and evil and good a twisted rope by which to hold.

Some dim note from that long struggle and momentous decision had its influence with her son now. Without knowing it he was hastening to the same conclusions she had reached.

He lunched alone and then to escape the persistence of his thoughts decided to explore the west wing of the house which he had hardly entered.

At the end of a long corridor a square of yellow sunlight fell across the purple carpet from an open door and he stopped to look in.

It was a pretty room with three windows opening on to a terrace and a door communicating with a room beyond. The walls were panelled with pale blue silk and the chairs and luxurious couches covered with the same. There were several pictures of great value, on a French writing table lay an open blotter, but the blotting paper was crumbling and dry and the ink in the carved brass inkstand was dry also.

In the middle of the room surrounded by a pile of Holland covers and hangings stood Mrs. Eliot, the housekeeper. Christopher had seen her once or twice and she was the only servant, except the butler, with whom he had heard Peter Masters exchange a word. "Lor', sir, how you made me jump!" she cried at sight of him in the doorway. "It isn't often one hears a footfall down here, they girls keep away or I'd be about 'em as they know very well."

"May I come in?" asked Christopher. "What a pretty room."

The woman glanced round hesitatingly. "Well, now, you're here. Yes. It's pretty enough, sir."

"Are you getting ready for visitors?"

He had no intention of being curious, he was only thankful to find some distraction from his own thoughts, and there seemed no reason why he should not chat to the kindly portly lady in charge.

"No visitors here, sir. We don't have much company. Just a gentleman now and then, as may be yourself."

She pulled a light pair of steps to the window and mounted them cautiously one step at a time, dragging a long Holland curtain in her hand.

"Do you want to hang that up?" asked Christopher, watching her with idle interest. "Do let me do it, Mrs. Eliot, you'll fall off those steps if you go higher. I can't promise to catch you, but I can promise to hang curtains much better than you can." Mrs. Eliot, who was already panting with exertion and the fatigue of stretching up her ample figure to unaccustomed heights, looked down at him doubtfully.

"Whatever would Mr. Masters say, sir?"

"He would be quite pleased his visitor found so harmless an amusement. You come down, Mrs. Eliot. Curtain-hanging is a passion with me, but what a shame to cover up those pretty curtains with dingy Holland!"

"They wouldn't be pretty curtains now, sir," said Mrs. Eliot, descending with elaborate care, "if they hadn't been covered up these twenty years and more."

"What a waste," ejaculated Christopher now on the steps, "isn't the room ever used?"

"Never since Mrs. Masters went out of it. 'Eliot,' says the master—I was first housemaid then—'keep Mrs. Masters' rooms just as they are, ready for use. She will want them again some day.' So I did."

Christopher shifted the steps and hung another curtain.

"I didn't know there had been a Mrs. Masters."

"Most folk have forgotten it, I think, sir."

"This was her boudoir, I suppose."

"Yes. And I think he's never been in here since she went, but once, and that was five years after. The boudoir bell rang and I came, all of a tremble, to hear it for the first time after so long. He was standing as it may be there. 'That cushion's faded, Eliot,' he said, 'get another made like it. You are to replace everything that gets torn or faded or worn without troubling me. Keep the rooms just as they are.' He had a pile of photographs in his hand and a little picture, and he locked them up in that cabinet, and I don't suppose it's been opened since. He never made any fuss about it from the first. No, nor altered his ways either." She drew a cover over a chair and tied the strings viciously. "It's for all the world as if he'd never had a wife at all."

Christopher had hung the three sets of curtains now and he sat on the top step and looked round the room curiously. It was less oppressively modern that the rest of the house and he had an idea the master of Stormly was not responsible for that. He felt a vivid interest in the late Mrs. Masters, Why had she gone and why had neither Aymer nor St. Michael mentioned her existence? He longed to override his own sense of etiquette and question Mrs. Eliot, who continued to ramble on in her own way.

"I takes off the coverings every two months, and brushes it all down myself," she explained, "and I've never had anyone to help me before. If I were to let them girls in they'd break every vase in the place with their frills and their 'didn't see's.'"

"Do those sheets hang over the panels?"

"I couldn't think of troubling you! But if you will, sir, why then, that's the sheet for there. They are all numbered."

Christopher covered up the dainty walls regretfully. Why had she left it? Had she and Peter quarrelled? It seemed to Christopher, in his present mood towards Mr. Masters, they might well have done so.

"Do you remember Mrs. Masters?" he was tempted to ask presently.

"Indeed I do, seeing I was here when he brought her home. Tall, thin, and like a queen the way she walked, a great lady, for all she was simple enough by birth, they say. But she went, and where she went none of us know to this day, and some say the Master doesn't either, but I don't think it myself."

Christopher straightened a pen and ink sketch of a workman on the wall. It was a clever piece of work, life-like and sympathetic.

"She did that," said Mrs. Eliot with a proprietor's pride. "She was considered clever that way, I've been told. That's another of hers on the easel over there."

Christopher examined it and gave a gasp. It was a bold sketch of two men playing cards at a table with a lamp behind them. The expression on the players' faces was defined and forcible, but it was not their artistic merit that startled him, but their identity. One—the tolerant winner—was Peter himself—the other—the easy loser—was Aymer Aston.

So Aymer did know of Mrs. Masters' existence, knew her well enough for her to make this intimate likeness of him.

"Was it done here?" he asked slowly.

"No, she brought it with her. I don't know who the other gentleman is, but it's a beautiful picture of the master, isn't it? so life-like."

"Yes."

He looked again round the room, fighting again with his desire to search for more traces of its late owner, and then grew hot with shame at his curiosity. He left Mrs. Eliot rather abruptly and wandered out of the house, but the unknown mistress of the place haunted him, glided before him across the smooth lawns, he could almost hear the rustle of her dress on the gravel, and then recollected with relief it was only the memory of the old game he used to play at Aston House with his dead mother, transferred by some mental suggestion to Stormly Park. Presently he saw the bulky form of Peter Masters on the steps and joined him reluctantly.

"I want to see you, Christopher," said Peter as he approached. "Come into my room. I shan't be able to go to London this week to buy the car, so you must stay until Monday and go up with me then," he announced, and without waiting for assent or protest plunged into his subject with calculated abruptness.

"This road business of yours, is there money in it?"

"I think so. It is not done yet."

"How long will it take you to perfect it?"

"How can I tell? It may mean weeks, it may mean months."

"What are you going to do when you've found it?"

"Get someone to take it up, I suppose."

Christopher was answering against his will, but the swift sharp questions left him no time to fence.

"I'll take it up now. Fit you up a laboratory and experimenting ground and give you two years to perfect it—and a partnership when it's started."

Christopher looked up with incredulous amazement.

"But it's a purely scientific speculation at present. There are just about half a dozen people on the track. We are all racing each other."

"Well, you've got to win, and I'll back you. You shall have every assistance you want—money shan't count. You can live here and have the North Park for trials, as many men as you want and no interruption."

"But it's impossible. It's not a certainty even."

"No speculation is a certainty. If you bring it off it will mean a fortune, properly managed. I can do that for you far better than Aymer. We should share profits, of course, and I should have to risk money. It's a fancy thing, but it pleases me."

Christopher got up and went to the open window. The tussle between them had come. It would need all his strength to keep himself free from this man's toils. However generous in appearance, Christopher knew they were toils for him, and must be avoided.

"Aymer's done well enough for you so far," pursued Peter Masters from the depths of his chair. "We will grant him all credit, but this is the affair of a business man: it requires capital: it requires business knowledge: and it requires faith. You will have to go to someone if you don't come to me, and I'm making you a better offer than you'll get elsewhere. I'll do more. We'll buy up the other men if they are dangerous. You can have their experience, too. It's only a question of investing enough money."

As he stood there in the window Christopher realised it all: how near his darling project lay to his heart, how great and harassing would be the difficulties of launching it on the world; how sure success would be under this man's guidance, and yet how with all his heart and soul and unreasoning mind he hated the thought of it, and would have found life itself dear at the purchase of his freedom.

His hands shook a little as he turned, but his voice was quiet and steady.

"It is very generous of you, sir, but I could not possibly pledge myself to you or any man."

"I'm asking no pledge. I'm only asking you to complete your own invention, and when it's completed I'll help you to use it."

"I must be free."

"You own you can't use any discovery by yourself, you'd have to go to someone. I come to you. The credit will be yours. I only find the means and share the return—fair interest on capital."

"It's not that."

"Then what? Do you doubt my financial ability or financial soundness?"

The meshes of the net were very narrow. Christopher sat with his head on his hands. He could waste no force in inventing reasons, neither could he explain the intangible truth. It was a fight of wills solely.

"I can't do it," said Christopher doggedly.

"You are only a boy, but I credit you with more common-sense and a better eye for business than many young men double your age. What displeases you in my offer? Where do you want it altered?"

"I don't want it at all, Mr. Masters. I won't accept it. I don't think my reason matters at all. I know I shall never do so well, but I refuse."

"There are others who would take it. Suppose you are forestalled?"

Christopher looked him straight in the eyes.

"It's a fair fight so far."

"A fight is always fair to the winner," returned Masters grimly. There was a silence. The next thrust reached the heart of the matter.

"What is your objection to dealing with me?"

Peter Masters leant forward as he spoke and put a finger on the other's knee; his hard, keen eyes sought the far recesses of his son's mind, but they did not sink deep enough to read his soul. Christopher struggled with the impetuous words, the direct bare truth that sought for utterance. Truth was too pure and subtle a thing to give back here. When he answered it was in his old deliberate manner, as he had answered Fulner—as he would invariably answer when he mistrusted his own judgment.

"If I told you my objections you would not care for them or understand them. You would think them folly. I won't defend them. I won't offer them. It is just impossible, but I thank you."

He rose and Masters did the same with a curious look of admiration and disappointment in his eyes.

"I thought you a better business man, Christopher. Will you refer the matter to your—guardian?"

"No. It is quite my own. Even Aymer can't help me."

Peter's lips straightened ominously.

"You will come to me yet. My terms will not be so good again."

"Then I am at least warned."

"As you will. You are a fool, Christopher, perhaps I am well quit of you."

"I think that is quite likely," returned Christopher gravely, with a faint twinkle of amusement in his eyes. He went away despondently, however, and stopped at the door.

"When would you like me to go?"

"I told you: we go up to London on Monday," said the millionaire sharply. "I engaged you to buy a car and you must buy it."

"I am quite ready to do so."

He left the room with an appalling sense of defeat and humiliation on him. He could hardly credit a victory that left him so bruised and spiritless. It was in his mind to run away and avoid his engagement in London. He might even have done so but for Peter's remark. He walked across the hall with downcast eyes and nearly fell against a tall thin form.

"Nevil!" cried Christopher.

"Yes, Nevil. Christopher, could I be had up for libel if I wrote the life of a railway train?"



CHAPTER XXII

Christopher led the way into the nearest room and turned to Nevil with an anxious face.

"What is wrong? Is it Caesar?" He stopped abruptly.

"There's nothing wrong. Mayn't anyone leave Marden but you, you young autocrat?"

Nevil deposited his lanky self in a comfortable chair and smiled in his slow way. Then he looked round the room with a critical, disapproving eye.

"Is Peter at home?" he asked, "and do you think he could put me up for a night? I suppose I ought to see him."

Christopher did not offer to move.

"You shan't see him till you tell me what brings you here, Nevil," he said firmly.

The other shook his head. "That's a bad argument, Christopher. However, I'll pretend it's effectual. There's a man at Leamington who has some records he considers priceless, but which I think are frauds. I thought if I came up to-day I could travel down with you to-morrow."

It sounded plausible—too plausible when Christopher considered the difficulty it was to rouse Nevil even to go to London. There might be a man in Leamington, but he didn't believe Nevil had come to see him.

"You are growing very energetic, Nevil," he said slowly, "all this trouble over some fraudulent records."

"They might be genuine, and really important," Nevil suggested cautiously.

"At all events I was not returning till Saturday, and Mr. Masters wants me to stay till Monday now, and go to London with him then."

Nevil crossed and uncrossed his long legs, gazing abstractedly at a modern picture of mediaeval warfare.

"Those helmets are fifteen years too late for that battle," he volunteered, "and the pikes are German, not French. What a rotten picture. Don't you think you could come back with me? I hate travelling alone. I always believe I shall get mislaid and be taken to the Lost Property Office. Porters are so careless."

He did not look round, but continued to examine the details of the offending picture.

Christopher leant over his chair and put his hands on Nevil's shoulders.

"Nevil, I can't stand any more. Tell me why I am to come back."

The other looked up at him with a rueful little smile, singularly like his father's.

"You were not always so dense, Christopher. I hoped you wouldn't ask questions that are too difficult to answer. To begin with, neither my father nor Aymer know I've come. They think I'm in town. You see, Caesar misses you, though he wouldn't have you think so for the world, in case it added to your natural conceit, but it makes him—cross, yes, rather particularly cross and that upsets the house. I can't write at all, so I thought you had better come back. The fact is," he added with a burst of confidence, "I've promised an article on the Masterpieces of Freedom for August. I seldom promise, but I like to keep my word if I do, and it's impossible to write now. If you're enjoying yourself it's horribly selfish—but you see the importance of it, don't you?"

"Yes," allowed Christopher with the ghost of a smile, "it's lamentably selfish of you, but I realise the importance. Shall we go by rail to-night?"

"But Leamington?"

"Will the man run away?"

"My father might have been interested to see the papers."

"You dear old fraud," said Christopher with an odd little catch in his voice, "do you suppose St. Michael won't see through you? Is it like you to travel this distance to see doubtful records when you won't go to London to see genuine ones? Why did not St. Michael write to me?"

"Caesar would not let him."

"He must be ill."

"He is not, on my word, Christopher. He is just worried to the verge of distraction by your being here. It seems ridiculous, but so it is."

"Why didn't you write yourself?"

Nevil considered the question gravely.

"Why didn't I write? Oh, I know. I only thought of it this morning and it seemed quicker to come."

"Or wire?" persisted Christopher.

"It would have cost such a lot to explain," he answered candidly. "I did think of that and started to send one. Then I found I had only twopence in my pocket. If I had sent anyone else to the office everyone would have known I was sending for you and Caesar would have been more annoyed than ever."

"I quite see. What did Mrs. Aston say?"

"I think she said you'd be sure to come."

Christopher nodded. "Yes, I'll go by mail to-night." Then he shut his teeth sharply and looked out of the window with a frown, thinking of the renewed battle of wills to come, and at last said he would go and find Mr. Masters, since no one appeared to have told him of Nevil's arrival.

He went straight down the corridor to Peter Masters' room. The owner was still seated as he had left him, smoking placidly.

"Changed your mind already?" he asked as his guest entered.

"No, not that, but Nevil Aston has come and I must go back with him by the mail to-night."

"What's up?" The big man sprang to his feet. "Is Aymer ill?"

"No, no. I don't think so. It may be Nevil's fancy. He thinks Aymer wants me back. Of course it sounds absurd, but Nevil, who won't stir beyond the garden on his own account, has come all this way to fetch me to Caesar."

Peter Masters was half-way to the door and tossed a question over his shoulder curtly.

"Where is he?"

"In the little reception-room."

Christopher followed him down the passage puzzling over this unexpected behaviour.

Nevil was re-exploring the inaccurate picture with patient sorrow and despair. He hardly turned as they entered.

"How do you do, Peter," he said unenthusiastically, "why do you buy pictures like that by men who don't even know the subject they are painting?"

"I'll burn it to-morrow. What's the matter with Aymer, Nevil?"

Nevil looked reproachfully at Christopher.

"Nothing is the matter, as I told Christopher, only I'd a man to see at Leamington and thought I could get a fellow victim here for the journey home."

"I'll meet you in London on Monday," put in the fellow victim quietly to Mr. Masters.

Peter looked from one to the other, lastly he looked long at Christopher and Christopher looked at him. Nothing short of the revelation Peter was as yet unprepared to make would stop Christopher from going to Aymer Aston that night he knew, and if he let the boy go back with the truth untold, it would be forever untold—by him. That it was the Truth was a conviction now. There was no space left for a shadow of mistrust in his mind.

"If you go by the mail we'd better dine at eight sharp," he said abruptly. "I want to see you, Christopher, before you go, in my room." He turned towards the door, adding as an afterthought, "You must look after Nevil till I am free."

Nevil gave a gentle sigh of satisfaction as the door closed.

Christopher laughed. The relief was so unexpected, so astounding. "We'll have some tea in the orangery," he said after a moment's consideration. "You may not like the statuary, but the orange trees at least offer no anachronisms."

Peter Masters shut the door of his room with a bang and going to an ever-ready tray, helped himself to a whiskey and soda with a free hand. Then he carefully selected a cigar of a brand he kept for the Smoke of Great Decisions, and lit it. All this he did mechanically, by force of habit, but after it was done, habit found no path for itself, for Peter Masters was treading new roads, wandering in unaccustomed regions, and found no solution to his problem in the ancient ways.

Was he, who for thirty-five years of life—from full manhood till now—had never consulted any will or pleasure but his own—was he now going to make a supreme denial to himself for no better reason than the easing of a stricken man's burden?

The man once had been his friend, but the boy was his. And he wanted him. He clenched his fist on the thought. He was perfectly aware of his own will in this matter.

Even from the material or business point of view his need of a son and heir had grown great of late. He had never contemplated the non-existence of one, just as he had never contemplated the non-existence of Elizabeth. He had counted, it is true, on overpowering the alert senses of one who had known the pinch of poverty with superabundant evidence of the fortune that was his. He had noted the havoc wrought to great fortunes by children brought up to regard great wealth as the natural standard of life; he meant to avoid that error, and in the unnatural neglect of the boy he had believed to be his, there was less callous indifference than Charles Aston thought: it was more the outcome of a crooked reasoning which placed the ultimate good of his fortune above the immediate well-being of his child. The terrible event in Liverpool that had shattered his almost childish belief in his wife's existence had also wiped away her fading image from his mind. The whole force of his energetic nature was focussed on the possible personality of his son. This Christopher of Aymer Aston's upbringing, entirely different from all he had purposed to find in his heir, called to him across forgotten waters. His very obstinacy and will power were matters in which Peter rejoiced—they were qualities no Aston had implanted. He was proud of his son and his pride clamoured to possess in entirety what was his by right of man.

What could prevent him? He sat biting his fingertips and frowning into the gathering twilight without—at that persistent vision of Aymer Aston's face.

There were plenty of men in the world who would have shrugged their shoulders over the question of Peter Masters' honesty, some who would have accredited his lightest word and yet would have preferred a legal buffer between them and the bargain he drove: many who considered him a model of financial honesty. It was a matter of the personal standpoint: perhaps none of them would have troubled to measure the millionaire by any measure than their own. Peter's own measure was of primitive simplicity—he never took something for nothing, and if he placed his own value on what he bought and what he paid, he at least believed in his own scale of prices. Had he picked up a banknote in the street he would have lodged it with the police unless he considered the amount only equalised his trouble in stopping to rescue it. Had his son dragged himself up the toilsome ladder to manhood (he ignored the possibility of woman's aid), he would have taken him as he was, good or bad, without compunction, but he recognised that Christopher was not the outcome of his own efforts only, that Aymer having expended the unpriceable capital of time, patience and love, might, with all reason, according to Peter Masters' code of life, look for the full return of sole possession in the result. Was he, then, in the face of his own standard of honest dealing, going to rob Aymer of the fruit of his labours, to take so great a something for nothing?

Let it be to Peter's everlasting credit that he knew his millions to be as inadequate to offer a return as any beggar's pocket. He had no quarrel with himself over his past conduct, he repudiated nothing and regretted nothing, he merely viewed the question from the immediate standpoint of the present. Was he going to violate the one rule of his life or not? He made no pretence about it. If he claimed his son he would claim him entirely. Christopher would refuse, would resist the claim at first—of that Peter was assured. But it would be Aymer himself who would fight with time on his side and insist on Peter's rights, he was equally assured of that. But still Christopher would refuse.

Peter Masters got up and began to walk up and down and parcelled out bribes.

"He shall have the Foundry to play with—a garden city for them if he likes. His own affair run on his own silly lines." So he thought, ready to sweep to oblivion rule and system for the possession of this son of his.

But there remained Aymer.

Whether he gained Christopher in the end or not the very making of the claim would make a break between Aymer and his adopted son,—a gulf over which they would stretch out hands and never meet.

Aymer loved him. Aymer of the maimed life, the shattered hopes, whose destiny filled Peter with sick pity even now, so that he stretched out his great arms and moved sharply with a dumb thankfulness to something that he could move.

He might as well rob a child—or a beggar—better: he could give them a possible equivalent.

He went slowly to the side table and had a second whiskey and soda, mechanically as he had done at first, then he rang the bell.

When Christopher sought him shortly before dinner-time he was told curtly he could go to London at his leisure and purchase a car where and how he liked, so it were a good one.

"I shall want a chauffeur with it," he added, "English, mind. You can charge your expenses with your commission, whatever that is."

Christopher said gravely he would consider the matter.

"You can send me word how Aymer is," concluded Masters shortly. "I suppose he's ill. The whole lot of you spoil him outrageously."



CHAPTER 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 joined Renata at 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 Caesar want him?"

"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 Caesar'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 hands to 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.

"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. You 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.

"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.

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 Caesar?"

"He will be pleased to see you. Where is Nevil?"

"Gone to bed, I expect. How he hates travelling."

"Yes."

"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 Caesar's breakfast?"

"He would be delighted, I'm sure. Caesar 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.

"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, Caesar, 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 Caesar." In reminiscence of old days he pretended to rub his head against Caesar's arm.

"Ah, you invented Peter's offer to wheedle me into this. I suppose."

"Exactly. Seriously, Caesar, 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 Caesar, 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.



CHAPTER 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 Caesar. 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 coming out all right," he said to Caesar abruptly one day, "and it's a fortnight in which I can do nothing but wait."

"Go and play," said Caesar, watching him anxiously, "you concentrate too much. You'll be getting nervous."

Christopher laughed and gripped Caesar'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.

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.

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 it left 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.

"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, and 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 to him 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 emerging from 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. She 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?"

"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.



CHAPTER 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 sudden gust 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 you seem 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 have done 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 response she 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 Caesar 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.

"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 very thing 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 suddenly claimed 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 Caesar 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.



CHAPTER XXVI

Matters were made as easy for Patricia as the united efforts of those who loved her could compass. Geoffry, in his gratitude for her decisive action, which lifted the onus of a broken engagement from his shoulders, found a substantial ground for his belief that they had sacrificed themselves on the altar of duty. Mrs. Leverson sighed profoundly with unconscious satisfaction over the highly heroic behaviour of them both and yielded easily to Geoffry's desire to travel. They eventually sold Logan Park, which they had purchased about ten years previously, and passed out of the ken of the lives that were so nearly linked with theirs.

Life renewed its wonted routine at Marden except that Christopher was often absent for weeks together. The final experiments hung fire and he had to seek new material and fresh inspiration further afield, but never for long. The end of a set term would see him back by Aymer's side sharing his hopes and disappointments impartially, always declaring that nowhere could he work with better success than at Marden Court. He was five years older than his natural age in development and resource, and the dogged obstinacy that was so direct a heritage from his father, stood him in good stead in his stiff fight with the difficulties that stood between him and his goal. Peter Masters made no sign and no greater success seemed to crown the other workers' endeavours, but there was always the secret pressure of unknown competition at work and it told on Christopher. He became more silent and so absorbed in his task as to lose touch of outside matters altogether. It was this absorption in his ambition that made the daily intercourse with Patricia possible at all. Unsuspected by her, his love, lying in abeyance, was but awaiting the growth in her of an answering harmony that must come to completion before he could make his full demand of it.

One day in March, when the land was swept with cold winds and beaten with rain, Christopher came out of the little wooden building, where he worked, and stood bareheaded a moment in the driving rain. First he looked towards the house and then turning sharply towards the left made his way once more to the edge of the last of the experimental tracks that threaded that distant corner of the park like the lines of a spider's web.

He stood looking down at the firm grey surface from which the pouring rain ran off to the side channels as cleanly as from polished marble. He walked a few yards down its elastic, easy-treading surface, ruminating over the "weight and edge" tests that had been applied, and on the durability trials from the little machine that had run for so many long days and nights over a similar surface within the wooden shanty.

It was morning now. His men, whose numbers had increased each month, had gone to breakfast, and he was alone with his finished work.

The strain and absorption of the long months was over. He had at last conquered the material difficulties that had been ranged against him. The dream of the boy had become a tangible reality, ready by reason of its material existence to claim its own place in the physical world. This unnamed substance whose composition had awaited in Nature's laboratory the intelligent mingling of a master hand, would add to the store of the world's riches and the world's ease, and was his gift to his generation.

As he stood looking down at the completed roadway, the Roadmaker suddenly remembered his own slight years and the inconceivable fraction of time he had laboured for so wide a result, and there swept up to him across the level way a new knowledge of his relationship to all the past—that he was but the servant of those who had preceded him and had but brought into the light of day a simple secret matured long ago in the patient earth.

It is in this spirit of true humility and in the recognition of their actual place in the world that all Great Discoverers find their highest joy. It is the joy of service that is theirs, the loftiest ambition that can fire the heart of man, making him accept with thankfulness his part as a tool to the great artifices and filling him with love and reverence for the work he has been used to complete. As Christopher stood bareheaded in the rain that windy March morning, his heart swept clear for the time of all personal pride or self-gratification, he offered himself in unconscious surrender again to the Power that had used him, craving only to be used, divining clearly that achievement is but the starting post to new endeavour.

At last he turned away, locked up the hut and went down towards the house, and at the entrance of the little plantation between park and garden he met Patricia.

They exchanged no greeting but a smile, and as he stood on the slope above her, looking at her, he was aware of a great sense of peace and rest, and on a sudden, her understanding leapt to meet his.

"It is done—you have finished it?" she cried, and her hands went out to him.

"Yes," he said, quietly, freeing himself from the strange inward pressure by the touch of that outward union. "This piece of work is done, Patricia. The thing is there—my Road stuff. It's all right. It will stand whatever it is asked to stand. It is ready to use if anyone will use it."

"Oh, I'm glad—so glad!" she cried. "Christopher, it is just the best thing in the world to know you have succeeded."

Her complete sympathy and generous joy seemed to open his mind to the outward expression of the speaker, which of late, since the breaking of her engagement with Geoffry, he had tried hard not to observe.

It seemed to him her face had lost a little of its childish roundness, that there was something accentuated about her that was nameless and yet expected. Also for the first time in his life he was conscious that her presence by his side was helpful. He had been unaware till she came that he needed any aid in what, to him, was a great moment in his life, but he knew it was restful and good to walk by her, a strange relief to tell her how the last difficulties that had arisen on the heels of each other had finally been met: how strong had been his temptation to give his discovery to the world before the tedious tests had gone to the uttermost limits experimental trials could reach.

"It's so simple really," he said, "just a question of proportions once the material is there. I felt anyone might hit on it any day, and yet it would have been such a sickening thing to have someone else planting an improvement on the top of it within a few months. It may need it now, but at least it would mean the test of years, and not immediate improvement. Do you happen to know if Caesar had a good night or not?"

"You've got to have some breakfast yourself first. I don't believe you remember you never came in to dinner last night at all."

"Didn't I? Breakfast must wait till I've seen Caesar anyhow. He must know before anyone else, and you'll never be able to hold your tongue through breakfast, you know."

"But I'm first, after all." She tilted her chin a little with a complacent nod at him.

He stopped with a puzzled expression.

"So you are. It never struck me—but—but," he hesitated, unable to read his own hazy idea, and concluded, "but, you are only a girl, so it doesn't matter."

The look in his eyes atoned for the "only," and she bore no resentment, for she had met his look and read there the thought he could not decipher, and it sunk deep into her heart, with illuminating power.

At the garden door, where the paths branched, she stood aside.

"Go and tell Aymer and get your breakfast."

"You are not going to stay out in this rain?"

"You know I love rain, and I've had breakfast."

Before he could stop her she had turned and disappeared up the winding path that led out eventually on to the open down.

Christopher looked after her a moment doubtfully, but her strange fondness for walking in the rain was well known and he had no reason or right to stop her. So he went indoors to Caesar. But Patricia walked on with rapid steps, never pausing till she was well outside the confines of the park amongst the red ploughed fields and bare downs. The rain swept in her face and the wind rushed by her as she walked with lifted head and exultant heart, hearing the whole chorus of creation around her, conscious only of the uplifting joy of the great light that had broken in on her. At last she stopped by a gate that led into a field of newly-turned earth—downland just broken by the plough, lying bare and open to the breath of heaven, and beyond, the swelling line of downs was blurred with misty rain and merged into the driving grey clouds above. Behind her in an oak tree a robin was singing with passionate intensity. She drew a deep breath and then held out her arms to the world.

"I understand, I understand," she whispered. "Love and Christopher. Love and Christopher, there is nothing else in the whole world."

She had accepted the revelation without fear, without question, without distrust. She gave no thought at all at present as to Christopher's attitude to her, as to whether he had anything to give in return for her great gift of herself. She gave herself to Love first, to him after, if such were Love's will. But it made no difference whether he knew or not, she was his, and the recognition drowned all lesser emotion in the great depth of its joy. She wasted no time in lamenting her blindness or the interlude with another lesser love: it troubled her not at all, for by such steps had she climbed to this unexpected summit. Just at present the glory of that was all-satisfying, so much more than she had ever looked for or imagined possible, that to demand the uttermost crown of his returning love was in these first moments too great a consummation to be borne.

She stood there with her hands clasped and the only words she found were, "Christopher and Love," and again, "Love and Christopher," as if they were the alphabet of a new language.

Quite slowly the physical horizon crept up to this plane of exultant joy and claimed her, but even as she recognised the claim she knew the familiar world would bear for her a new aspect, and found no resentment, only a quiet relief as it closed her in. The languor and fatigue of the backward journey did not distress her, every step of the way she was studying the news.

Every blade of grass and every twig spoke of this new language to her, proclaiming a kinship that made her rich in sympathy and comprehension of all humble lovely things.

She was seized with fear when she reached home that she would encounter Christopher in the hall before she was prepared to accept him as the most unchanged point of her altered world. Instead she met Constantia Wyatt, who was at Marden with her family for Easter, just coming down, who asked her if she had been having a shower bath.

Now Constantia felt a proprietary right over Patricia by reason of her knowledge of Christopher's sentiments, and her own prophetic instincts. She had most carefully refrained from interference in their affairs, however, and accepted the post of lookeron with praiseworthy consistency. But she looked on with very wide-opened eyes, and this morning when Patricia answered with almost emphatic offhandedness that she had only been for a solitary walk in the rain, she could not refrain from remarking that she appeared to have gathered something more than raindrops and an appetite on her walk, and only laughed when Patricia, betraying no further curiosity, hurried on.

"Something has happened," she thought to herself. "Patricia's eyes did not look like that last night. She is grown up."

But her rare discretion kept her silent, and when later on she was confronted with the news of Christopher's victory she guessed one-half of the secret of Patricia's shining eyes.

Patricia exchanged her dripping garments for dry ones and curled herself up on the sofa in her own room before the fire, with full determination to fathom her growing unwillingness to meet Christopher, and to accommodate herself to the new existence, but the gentle languor of mental emotion and physical effort took the caressing warmth of the fire to their aid and cradled her to sleep instead, till the balance of nature was restored.

It was in this manner that Patricia and Christopher arrived at the same cross roads of their lives, where the devious tracks might merge into one another, or, being thrust asunder again by some hedge of convention, continue by a lonely, painful and circuitous route towards the destined goal.

The matter lay in Patricia's hands, little as either she or Christopher suspected it, and poor Patricia was hampered by a power of tradition and a lack of complete faith of Christopher's view of her inherited trouble.

Ever since the broken engagement with Geoffry, she had bent in spirit before her own weakness, withstanding it well, and yet a prey to that humiliation of mind that accepts the imperfect as a penalty, instead of claiming the perfect as a birthright. Having given in to this attitude, she now, as a natural consequence, could but see the view offered from that comparatively lowly altitude, and that shut her in with the belief her duty lay in renouncing marriage, and also, more limiting still in its effect, the idea that Christopher also held this view in his secret heart.

She wasted no time in the consideration as to whether he loved her or not: she was sure of that much crown to her own life; but slowly the false conviction thrust itself upon her that had he thought otherwise the long, empty months that had passed would not have been possible. She was too young a woman to balance correctly the power of strenuous occupation on a man as weighed against the emotion to which a woman will yield her whole being without a struggle. Looking back on the long days that had elapsed since the affair by the little chalk pit on the downs, it seemed to her clear that Christopher had avoided her, and there was sufficient truth in this to make it a dangerous lever when handled in connection with the fear of her mind.

It was, therefore, by a quite natural following-out of the mental process that she ultimately arrived at the conclusion it was her duty to assist Christopher to renounce herself, and for that purpose, that she might less hamper his life, she must leave Marden Court.

The decision was not arrived at all at once. The day wore on and the natural order of things had brought her and Christopher face to face at a moment when she had forgotten there was any difficulty about it. Caesar had issued invitations to a family tea in his room in honour of Christopher's achievement, as was a time-honoured custom when any of the members of the family distinguished themselves in work or play. Christopher served tea, as it was Caesar's party, and it was not until he gave Patricia her cup that he recollected she had not crossed his path since that morning in the rain.

"Where have you hidden yourself?" he demanded severely.

"You said I could not hold my tongue, so I determined I'd prove you false," was her flippant rejoinder.

"At the cost of self-immolation. I think it proves my point."

"I appeal to Caesar." She got up and took a chair close to the sofa.

"Caesar, I wish you'd keep that boy of yours in order. He is always so convinced he is in the right that he is unbearable."

"Allow him latitude to-day. He'll meet opposition enough when he tries to foist this putty-clay of his on the world. By the way, what are you going to call it, Christopher?"

Everyone stopped talking and regarded the Discoverer with critical anxiety. He looked slightly embarrassed and offered no suggestion, and it was Constantia who insisted airily that they should all propose names and he should choose from the offered selection.

Christopher was made to take a chair in the midst of the circle and to demonstrate in plain terms the actual substances of which the "Road-stuff," as he inelegantly termed it, was made.

The younger members of the family called pathetically for some short, ready name that would not tax pen or tongue. After a long silence Nevil, modestly suggested "Hippopodharmataconitenbadistium."

This raised a storm of protests, while Constantia's own "Roadhesion" received hardly better support.

Caesar flung out "Christite" without concern, and demanded Patricia's contribution.

"Aymerite," she ventured.

Christopher's glances wandered from one to the other. She was seated on his own particular chair close to Caesar, in whose company she felt a strange comfort and protection, a security against her own heart that could not yet be trusted to shield the secret of her love.

Mr. Aston was called on in his turn and he looked at Christopher with a smile.

"I think we are all wasting our time and wits," he said placidly. "Christopher has his own name ready and your suggestions are superfluous."

They clamoured for confirmation of this and Christopher had to admit it was true.

"I call it Patrimondi," he said slowly, his eyes on Patricia, "because it will conquer the country and the world in time."

Which explanation was accepted more readily by the younger members of the party than by the elder.

But "Patrimondi" it remained, and if he chose to perpetuate the claims of the future rather than the past in this business of nomenclature, it was surely his own affair. Patricia, at all events, made no objection. She had recovered her equilibrium to find the relationship between them was so old that it called for nothing but mute acceptance on her part: the only thing that was new was her recognition of the barrier between them, whose imaginary shadow lay so cold across her heart.

Constantia offered a refuge. Her watching eyes divined something of Patricia's unrest. She visited her that night at the period of hair-brushing and found her dreaming before a dying fire.

"You get up too early," Constantia remonstrated, "it's a pernicious habit. If you would come and stay with me in London, I would teach you to keep rational hours."

"Would you have me, really?" cried Patricia, sitting bolt upright, with every sense alert to seize so good an opportunity of escape.

"Why, yes. I've been wanting to have you a long time. You had better come back to town with me to-morrow."