Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker Part 39

She laughed at that and recommended a course at St. Andrew's under a professional, which proposal he treated with scorn, but after a short silence he said in a different voice:

"Don't think I'm not glad at anything that makes you happy, Patricia.

Geoffry's a real good sort and--here's a town--you must not speak to the man at the wheel."

Patricia was obedient. She sank into a reverie in which, despite her own determination, Geoffry played a long part. It was characteristic of her exact att.i.tude towards her accepted lover that it was the immediate future in which he figured most clearly. Her thoughts hovered round the pleasant summer to come with the distant excitement of a wedding to crown it. She never considered, or only in the most cursory way, the long years ahead, the daily companions.h.i.+p with the man she had chosen. She was honestly attached to Geoffry. She believed she was in love with him, whereas, as is far more often the case than the young suppose, she was in love with the love that had come to her in the glory of the spring, offered by familiar hands that were dear because of what they held for her.

So they drove through the glowing afternoon, and the line of white road before them appeared to Christopher as a track dividing past and future, the thin edge of the pa.s.sing minutes. They spoke no more, however, on the forbidden subject. Christopher presently explained to her the visible mechanism of the car and on a stretch of clear road let her put her hands on the wheel beneath his own and feel the joy of fict.i.tious control. Before the sun quenched itself in the sea they stood on the Cliff Edge and looked out across the s.h.i.+ning waters into the great s.p.a.ce, where a thought-laden air renews itself, reforming, cancelling and creating in the crucible of Life. They clambered down from the lip of the cliff on to a jutting-out shelf of rock, screened with gorse, where the few feet of gravel bank behind them shut out all signs of habitation.

Patricia sat with her hands clasped round her knees drawing slow, deep draughts of the cool air, her eyes on the immense free s.p.a.ce, and she spoke not at all with her lips, yet Christopher, lying at her feet, caught her thoughts as they came and went with strange certainty and stranger heartache. He picked a handful of golden gorse petals and pressed the sweet blossoms to his face: ever after their scent was to mean for him that place and rapture of that hour, in which was borne to him the certainty of his right to her, and the knowledge of the surrender he was making in each silent minute. For she was his now, if he told her, if he broke faith, if he claimed the right that was his.

Now in this golden hour he would win if he spoke, sweeping aside the shadowy intervening form of the other with the relentless persistent truth of the faith that was in him, a faith that had no ground in personal vanity or individual pride, but was only the recognition of a great Fact that lay outside and beyond them both, that named Patricia forever his in a world where the Real is disentangled from the Appearance.

Was life to consist, for him, in a relinquis.h.i.+ng of his own rights in conformity to the Law of Appearance? Was it but a cowardly fear of convention that held him back from claiming her now on the verge of the world? Or was it a deeper, half-understood trust of the Great Realities of Life, a knowledge that faith, integrity, and honour are no conventions, but belong to Real World of Truth, and that he could s.n.a.t.c.h no joy of life over their trampled forms? He tried dimly to understand these things, to gauge the nature of the forces that controlled him, but he never doubted what force would claim his obedience. It was already habitual to him by reason of training and instinct to set such Laws of Life as he recognised before his own will. But that will was very clamorous this evening as he pressed the hot yellow whin-flowers to his face drinking their fragrance into his thirsty soul.

When he raised his eyes he looked out at sea and sky and avoided the dear sweet face above him. She still sat smiling out into the serene s.p.a.ce, watching as it were the random thoughts of her subconscious self floating in those ethereal realms. It was almost too great a happiness for peace, the fair world, the comprehending companion, who understood without the clumsy medium of words, and the love awaiting her on the morrow. She did not wish for Geoffry's presence now, she was perfectly content that he stood in the beautiful morrow, that he was bringing her a good and precious crown to the golden days of her youth.

She sighed out of pure joy and so broke the spell of the golden and blue-cloaked silence which had reigned. Without moving she gathered a handful of whin blooms and scattered them over the brown head at her feet, a baptism of golden fire. He shook them off and looked up at her, laughing.

"Asleep, I believe, Christopher, you lazy person. What were you dreaming about?"

"Bees, heather and honey," he murmured, surrept.i.tiously gathering up a handful of the golden rain she had tossed him. "Have you had your breath of freedom, Patricia--are you ready for tea and b.u.t.tered toast?"

"And honey, you provoking materialist," she insisted.

"Honey is stolen property--I always feel a consort of thieves when I eat it."

"Then I'll eat it and you can shut your eyes. Christopher, suppose the car goes wrong on the way home?"

He scoffed at that, but while she ate her honey he made an exhaustive inspection of it.

When the sun dropped out of sight a s.h.i.+vering wind sprang up and the blue sky drew a grey cloak over itself. Christopher wrapped his companion in a fur coat and tucked her in anxiously.

She had become restless and dissatisfied as if the sun had taken her joy to rest with him, or as if the thoughts gathered from s.p.a.ce found an unready lodgment in her mind. Christopher made some effort to talk on indifferent subjects, but she answered with strange brevity or not at all, once with such impatience that he glanced quickly at her hands and saw they were hidden by the long sleeves of his big coat she wore.

Presently she said abruptly:

"We ought not to have stayed so long. Why did you go to sleep?"

"I didn't," he retorted, amazed at the accusation.

"Then you ought to have talked."

"I thought we were superior to such conventions."

"That is an excuse for sheer laziness on your part. And even if you are superior," she added, inconsequently, "I am not. What were you thinking about?"

"Shall I tell you of what you were thinking?"

"You can't."

"Out in the great s.p.a.ce you saw all the future days weaving for you a dress of blue and gold, of hopes and fulfilment. You saw how they smiled at you, you were glad of the love they bore you, the good they were bringing you. You felt in your own soul how you belonged to them, you were a part of all this dear living world."

"Don't, don't," she cried, half under her breath.

"Isn't it true?" he insisted.

"You have no business, no right to know. Christopher, how dare you."

Her face flushed with inward emotion, with some fierce resentment that laid hold of her senses without reason and dragged fear in its wake.

"I'm sorry," he said humbly. "I've often done it before and you never minded."

"It's quite different now. It's unbearable. I don't like it any more, I hate it. Do you hear, Christopher?"

"Yes. It was unpardonable. I am sorry, Patricia, I won't do it again."

"You won't try to understand me like that? Promise," she urged.

"I didn't try then. I only knew. I promise I won't tell you again."

"That's not enough," she persisted, twisting her fingers under cover of the long sleeves. "You mustn't know. You must not be able to do it.

I won't bear it. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"Then promise."

"I've promised all I can. I certainly won't try to know. I can't help it involuntarily."

"You must. I insist--Christopher, quick."

They were running at a great pace along a straight level piece of road with high banks on either side, and by the roadside at regular intervals were piles of broken granite. Christopher's attention was fixed on a distant speck that might be a danger-signal and he did not answer her or notice the nearer signal of danger in her white face.

She was in the grip of her old wild pa.s.sion again, on fire with her need of a.s.surance, and in a gust of anger she caught at the wheel that seemed to claim his mind. The car swerved violently, jolted up on to the turf, b.u.mped madly along at a dangerous tilt, swerved back into the road two feet clear of a grey pile of stone. Only then did Christopher know her fingers were gripped between his hands and the steel wheel. He brought the car to a standstill and her released hand fell white and numb to her side. She neither spoke nor moved, but gazed before her, oblivious even of her crushed fingers.

There was a running brook the other side of the hedge and a convenient gate. He soaked his handkerchief in it, came back to her and put the numbed hand on the cool linen. His grip had been like iron and the averted disaster so near as to be hardly pa.s.sed from his senses, yet he felt sick and ashamed at this almost trifling price they had to pay. He felt each bruised finger carefully and bound them up as best he could, and only then did he speak.

"I'm fearfully sorry, Patricia, I didn't know."

She looked vaguely at the white bound hand.

"My fingers? Oh, I'm glad. You shouldn't have tied them up."

He paid no heed, but having examined the car, climbed back to his place.

"We must go on," he remarked, "so it's no use asking you if you are too frightened, Patricia."

"You might put me out on the roadside," she suggested dully.

To that, too, he paid no heed and they started again.