Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker Part 14

"Oh, Christopher dear, how clever you are. No-one ever understood that before. They all say, 'well, anyhow, you don't mean it,' as if that made it better."

"Stupid, of course it's harder to help what you don't mean than what you do."

"But I can't help it."

Christopher gave her a little shake. "Don't be silly. You will have to help it, only it's harder. You can't go on like that when you are big--ladies don't--none I've seen. It's only----" he stopped.

"Only what?"

"Women in the street. At least--some, I've seen them. They fight and scream and get black eyes and get drunk."

"Christopher, you are hateful!" She flared up with hot cheeks and put her hand over his mouth. "I'm not like that, you horrid boy. Say I'm not."

"I didn't say you were," said Christopher with faint exasperation. "I said it reminded me--your temper. Come along in."

She followed very unwillingly, more conscious than he was of his disfigured face.

And Renata met them in the hall and saw it and got pink, but said nothing till Patricia had gone upstairs. Christopher was slipping away too--he never found much to say to Mrs. Aston--and of late less than ever. However, she stopped him.

"Have you been quarrelling, Christopher?" she asked deprecatingly with a little tremor in her voice.

Christopher a.s.sured her not.

"You have hurt your face."

"The branch of a tree," he began shamefacedly, and stopped lamely.

"I'm so sorry."

No more was said. Renata was conscious of her own failure to get on with Christopher, but she put it down entirely to her own shyness, which interfered now in preventing her overriding his very transparent fib in Patricia's defence. She went away rather troubled and unhappy.

But Christopher, a great deal more troubled and unhappy, looked out of the hall window with a gloomy frown. His own words to Patricia that she had so sharply resented, about the women he had seen fighting in the street, had called up other pictures of the older life, pictures in which Marley Sartin figured only too distinctly. He felt uncomfortably near these s.h.i.+fting scenes. Like Patricia, he wanted to deny the connection between himself and the small boy following in the wake of the big man through crowded streets and long vistas of shops.

He did not wish to recognise the bond between little Jim Hibbault and Christopher Aston. But the pictures were very insistent and the likeness uncomfortably clear. At last, with no more show of emotion or will than if he were going on an ordinary errand, he walked slowly down the corridor to Caesar's room. He had entirely forgotten about Patricia now and was taken aback by Caesar's abrupt inquiry about the mark or his face.

"It was an accident," he said hurriedly, and then plunged straight into his own affairs.

"Caesar, I have something to give you."

He held out his hand with a sovereign in it.

Caesar took it and, after glancing at it casually, put it on the table, looking hard at Christopher, who got red and then white.

"It couldn't have been the sovereign you lost," he said earnestly. "I didn't take any of that money, really, Caesar. I found this on the floor by the window. It couldn't have rolled all that long way from here. It must be another."

He was pleading with himself as much as with Caesar, desiring greatly to keep faith with his own integrity, though something in Caesar's face was driving him from his last stronghold.

"You didn't ask me if I'd found a sovereign," he pleaded desperately, "you asked me if I had taken one of Mrs. Aston's sovereigns, and I hadn't, because how could it have got to the window from here?"

Caesar's face flushed a dusky red. He spoke in a hard, constrained voice.

"Charlotte took one of the sovereigns as a plaything when we were not looking and hid it under the curtain in the window. To her it was only a toy, but to you----"

He made a last effort to keep control of his temper and failed. The storm broke.

"But to you----" he repeated with a curiously stinging quality in his voice as if the words were whipped to white heat by inward wrath--"to you a sovereign is no toy, but a useful commodity, and your code of honour--do you call it that?--is doubtless a very convenient one. It is far too subtle a code for my poor intellect, but since you appear able to justify it to yourself it is no concern of mine."

Christopher stood still and white under this ruthless attack: all his energies concentrated in keeping that stillness, but at the back of his mind was born a dull pain and sharp wonder, a consciousness of the Law of Consequence by which he must abide, and henceforth accept as a principle of life. There was too great confusion in his mind for him to weigh his instinctive action and subsequent behaviour against what, to Aymer, was the one and only possible code of honour. For the present it was enough that in Aymer's eyes that action was mean, despicable and contemptible. The Law of Consequence he dimly realised worked from the centre of Aymer's being and not from the ill-trained centre of his, Christopher's, individuality.

"In future," went on Aymer, still too furiously angry to weigh his words or remember they were addressed to a child, "if I have occasion to make any inquiries of you we will have a distinct understanding as to whether we are speaking with the same code or not. You can go."

Christopher turned blindly away, and was stopped at the door. "As for the sovereign, which must be very precious to you, considering the price you were ready to pay for it, I will have it pierced and put on a chain, so you can wear it round your neck. It would be a pity to lose anything so valuable."

Christopher turned with indignant protest in every line. However Aymer might talk of their separate codes of honour, he was, nevertheless, dealing out a punishment adequate to the infringement of his own code, and to Christopher it appeared unjust and cruel. For the moment it was in him to remonstrate fiercely, but the words died away, for such a protest must of necessity be based on an acceptance of this divided code, and to that he would not stoop. It was some poor consolation to pay the penalty of a higher law than he was supposed to understand. He turned again to the door and got away before a storm of tears swamped his brave control.

When Charles Aston returned that night he found Aymer in a very irritable mood. Nevil, in his gentle, patient way, had been doing his best to soothe him, but in vain. When Aymer was not irritated, he was bitter and sarcastic, even his greeting to his father was short and cold. It was clear some event in the day had upset his mental equilibrium, and Christopher's absence (he did not even appear to say "good-night") gave Mr. Aston a clue to the situation.

Nevil was wading through a book on farm management, which bored him considerably. His part was to read long extracts which Aymer was comparing with some letters in the "Field." They continued their employment and Mr. Aston sat down to write a letter. From time to time he paused and heard Aymer's sharp, unreasonable remarks to his brother. A memory of the old bad days came so forcibly to Mr. Aston that he laid aside his pen at last and sat listening with an aching heart. He knew those quick flashes of temper were a sign of irritation brought to a white heat. Presently, after one remark more unjustifiable than ever, Nevil looked across at his father with a little rueful grimace, and seeing how grave was Mr. Aston's expression he made another valiant effort to keep peace and ignore the abuse, and went on reading. The subject under discussion was the draining of a piece of waste land, and when the long article came to an end, Nevil in his dreamy way summed up the matter by saying it was a very picturesque corner of the estate and a pity to spoil it.

Aymer flung the papers down violently.

"That's all you care for, or are likely to care for," he said brutally. "I know I might as well let the estate go to the dogs as try and improve it. Once my father and I are dead, you'll turn it into a d.a.m.ned garden for your own use."

For one second Nevil's face was a study in suppression. He got up and walked across the room, his hands shaking.

Mr. Aston spoke sharply and suddenly.

"Aymer, pull yourself together. You are taking advantage of your position. What circ.u.mstances do you imagine give you the right to trample on other people's feelings like this, whenever something or other has put you out? It's outrageous! Keep your temper better in hand, man."

It was so obviously deserved, so terribly direct, and at the same time so calculated to hurt, that Nevil turned on his father with reproachful eyes, and then perceiving his face, said no more.

Aymer became suddenly rigid, and lay still with waves of colour rising to and dying from his face, and his hands clenched.

Mr. Aston waited a moment and then said apologetically and hurriedly, "I'm awfully sorry, Aymer."

"Oh, it had to be done," responded Aymer, turning his face to him with a rueful smile. "I'm a brute. Nevil, old fellow, you ought to give him a V. C. or something; he is positively heroic."

"Don't be an idiot," retorted his father, blus.h.i.+ng for all his fifty-eight years, because of a grain of truth in his son's words. For indeed it sometimes requires more courage to be brutal to those we love than to be kind to those we hate.

"Go away, Nevil," continued Mr. Aston good humouredly, "I'll look after Aymer."

Nevil departed, with secret relief, the atmosphere was a little too electrical for his liking.

When he had gone, Mr. Aston went over to his elder son and sat on the edge of the sofa.

"What's really the matter, old chap?" he asked gently.

Aymer related the whole history of the sovereign, Christopher's confession and the subsequent events.

"I dare say he was quite honest about his point of view," he concluded petulantly, "but because I could not see it I lost my temper with him."