Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker Part 32

"Dear, dear. Is Marden such a bad atmosphere for the intelligence?"

He coloured up boy-like and then laughed.

"There are too many clever people to help one think there. Also there is a man in Belgium trying some private road experiments. I want to help him."

"What will Aymer say to it?"

"He thinks I've been idle long enough."

"And the man in Belgium will help you to think?"

"I'm afraid that's my own job."

Constantia rose and wandered round the room, vaguely touching a flower here and there and presently came to stand behind her visitor's chair.

She was thinking how young he was, and how strong, and that Patricia was a fortunate girl. Her eyes were very soft and kind as she bent over his chair and touched his shoulder with her fingers.

"Christopher, you are in love!"

Very young indeed, was her inward comment on his startled wondering face turned to her.

"How do you know?" he asked, making no denial of the fact. Denial would have savoured of disloyalty to his new kingdom.

She laughed gently. "Don't you even know that? What a lot I could teach you if Aymer would hand you over. Listen, Master Christopher, love is the only thing men want to think about alone, just as it's the only thing a woman never wants to keep to herself. You could think to much better advantage at Marden but it's no use telling you so. You won't believe it."

"I do believe it, only it's not a question of _my_ advantage, you see."

"There spoke Aymer's pupil. Remember roads take a good deal of making and short cuts were made for--lovers."

She returned to the fire and stood there looking at him with an interest that surprised herself: a tall, gracious presence whose knowledge of his secret hurt not one bit, so clearly did it lie within the realms wherein all gracious, tender women reign.

Then she changed the subject quite abruptly, thrust it back into those hazy regions of speculation from which Christopher had so hardly and impatiently dragged it the previous night.

"I wonder if your mother were alive, if she would be satisfied with you, Christopher, and if she would still want to make a socialist of you."

"My mother?" he echoed dully.

For a while he struggled with a strange inability to lay hold on the shadowy form he knew so well. He looked round the beautiful room that was but a setting to a lovely woman and then back at her. Why had she spoken of his mother? He again attempted to crystallise the thought of the dearly loved, defeated woman in the presence of her to whom the world denied nothing.

"I can't do it," he said aloud with a quick breath.

"Do what?" she queried swiftly, but got no answer.

"Was my mother a socialist?" he asked presently with difficulty.

"So I have always understood."

"Who told you so?"

"My father. I thought you knew that, Christopher, or I should not have mentioned it. All I know is, she chose to be poor rather than expose you to the dangers of wealth. I know nothing else."

Christopher stood up. "Thank you," he said, "I believe I did know that, but I have never been reminded of it. I do not know her story: I suppose she did not wish me to know it, but I do know whatever she chose, whatever she did, it was chosen and done because it seemed to her the right course and therefore the only one she could take."

Constantia nodded, still gazing at the fire.

"Aymer's training on the top of that," she mused, "I suppose you are accounted for."

He grew red and looked a boy again. "I should have much to account for if I failed them."

"Them?" She swung round.

"Caesar and my mother."

There was a pause.

"And so you will go to Belgium and think?" she said lightly.

"No, I shall go to Belgium and work."

"You said _think_," she insisted.

"I have thought here. I was not sure when I came, but I am now."

"May I know what you have thought?"

For a moment the strangeness of speaking to her like this held him dumb. How did it happen she should know so much and must know more, she who had been barely a real individual to him before? It bewildered and confused him. He did not understand that the unspoken pa.s.sionate claim he made on one woman had broken the barriers between him and woman-kind, that because he loved Patricia Connell he could speak to Constantia Wyatt, for they stood together on holy ground.

"You have every right. You helped me after all," he said doubtfully, but smiling "I ought not to have hesitated. Caesar is waiting for me to make roads, not to take short cuts."

"You think love can better afford to wait than Caesar?"

"I have my life before me."

"And if you lose her?"

"It is settled," he said simply.

She drew in her breath. By every law of man he was right, and yet all the woman in her cried out against this decision as falseness to some other law imperfectly understood, but clamorous for recognition.

Nevertheless how her heart went out to him for the quiet finality of that refusal to yield to a law not of his own making! She was proud he was so much the handiwork of Aymer, while she recognised the very weakness of his strength.

"He will lose her," she mused as she sat alone when he had gone, "and it would break Aymer's heart if he knew, but he won't know. He has succeeded in making a man of him, but, oh, what a nice boy he would have been!"

So Christopher turned his back on the great discovery and went to Belgium. Whereupon Patricia complained bitterly, but her golf improved, and Geoffry Leverson, who knew nothing of road-making, started on a very short cut indeed.

The Roadmaker remained in Belgium longer than he expected and in the laboratory of a great man stumbled on the key of the discovery that in a few years was to make him famous from one end of Europe to the other.

When the apple blossoms were again blus.h.i.+ng pink across the land and the blue sky was piled high with dreams of love castles, Christopher remembered the short cut and abruptly announced his intention of returning home. He sent no warning of his coming, but arrived one day at Aston House with his beloved car. It was in his heart to continue his journey straight away, but thinking what pleasure it would give Aymer to watch the practical working of his experiment, he put aside the dictates of his desires and spent the day purchasing materials.

Also he called on Constantia and found himself incomprehensibly making excuses for the delay. "I shall go down early to-morrow," he said; "it can make no difference, since they do not know I am in England."