Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker Part 9

"Because he always does what he means to do, or gets it done; besides he is--just Caesar."

"It isn't bad," she said condescendingly, "perhaps I shall call him so myself. I do hope we are going to have tea in his room. It's such a lovely, lovely room."

"So it is in London. The beautifulest room I've seen."

"It's just as nice here," she maintained stoutly, "he planned how it was to be done, and Nevil saw to it. I like this best."

Christopher was too polite or too shy to insist, but he felt doubtful and became impatient to see for himself, so they went indoors to find Patricia's hopes were justified. Tea was served in "Mr. Aymer's"

room.

And Christopher was obliged to allow that Patricia had some ground for her statement. It was a smaller room than the one in London, and singularly like it, only the prevailing note was lighter and gayer in tone. Aymer was there, lying on a similar sofa to his usual one, with the familiar cover across his feet.

Renata was making tea, and making Caesar laugh also. Christopher was uncomfortably conscious it was all new to him and the familiarity only superficial, while it was a well-recognised phase in Caesar's life.

Even Nevil Aston seemed a different person in his easy country dress, and Christopher failed at first to connect the dark little lady at the tea table with him, and only noted she took Aymer his tea, which was his, Christopher's, special privilege, and treated him with a friendly familiarity that nearly bordered on contempt in Christopher's eyes.

Aymer saw the children and called to them. Patricia greeted him with the air of a young princess and drew herself up when he said she had grown, and would soon be a child instead of a baby. Then he faced Christopher round towards Renata, who had suddenly become grave and shy.

"Here is Christopher, so you can approve or condemn Nevil by your own judgment, Renata. Christopher, shake hands with Mrs. Aston."

Christopher did as he was told, but he realised they had been speaking of him and felt on the defensive. However, he sat down as near to Caesar as he could. They talked of all manner of people and things of which he knew nothing, traditional jokes cropped up, and Aymer's propensity for teasing a.s.serted itself in a prominent manner. Renata never failed to respond and never failed to claim Nevil's protection and to look delightfully shy and dignified and feminine. Presently the children were sent for. To Christopher's indignant amazement they were plumped down on Aymer and allowed to treat him much as if he was a new species of giant plaything. Charlotte, in her efforts to burrow under Aymer's arm, rolled off the edge of the sofa and was deftly caught by Christopher, who deposited her on the floor. She immediately tried to clamber up again, but Aymer could not second her efforts with his left arm.

"Put her up again, Christopher," he said.

But Christopher apparently did not hear, and Mr. Aston, who had been watching, came to the rescue. Christopher slipped away to the window.

"A question of a third baby, I think," said Mr. Aston softly as he rearranged Charlotte, and Aymer, looking sharply at Christopher, laughed.

When Christopher went to bid him good-night, he found Caesar alone, looking tired and doing nothing, not even reading.

Christopher said good-night gravely.

"It's not very late," remarked Aymer. "Stay with me a bit."

He patted the chair beside him. Christopher with rather a hot face obeyed.

"How do you like Marden?"

"I--I don't know yet. There seems to be a lot of people here."

"It's home, you see. We all come home when we want to see each other and have people round."

"Yes, I suppose everyone wants to see their people sometimes."

"Don't you like seeing people?"

"I haven't any of my own," said Christopher, without looking at him.

"That's unkind. You have us."

Christopher changed the subject.

"Do those--those little children live here?"

"Yes. It's their home. They are rather jolly little kids. What's the matter, Christopher?"

Christopher a.s.sured him nothing was the matter.

Aymer continued in his most matter-of-fact voice.

"I'm fond of those babies. To begin with they are Nevil's and they are the only youngsters I am likely to know well. But I'm a greedy person.

I had Nevil, Renata, the kiddies--and that delightfully odd Patricia, and it wasn't enough for me. They were all as good as could be to me, but I wanted to be more than an extra in someone's life, so I must needs enc.u.mber myself with a troublesome little boy who's even more greedy than myself, apparently."

Christopher sat with his curly head on his hands trying not to give in to the smile that was struggling to express some undefined sense of content which had sprung to life.

"You are a bad, silly boy to be jealous," said Aymer, watching him, half laughing, half affectionately, "you ought to have known for yourself, if they had been enough for me, you wouldn't be here at all."

CHAPTER V

Two events wrote themselves indelibly on Christopher's memory in connection with this first visit to Marden, while the one great matter that began there and influenced his whole after life merged itself into a general hazy sense of happiness and companions.h.i.+p. For it is given to few of us even when we have reached years of discretion to recognise those moments in our lives which are of real, supreme, and eternal importance: moments when the great doors of experience open slowly on silent hinges and we pa.s.s in, unconscious even that we have crossed the threshold. But all that happens to our familiar selves, that touches our well-known emotions, and rubs or eases the worn grooves of existence, is heavily underscored in our recollection, and not infrequently we take for mile-stones on the way what were but pebbles on the road.

The two events which Christopher carried in his memory were, however, not unimportant, for both bore on his relations.h.i.+p with the man who was moulding his life. The one episode turned Vespasian's bald statements into real emotional facts, and the other was the first serious collision between the far-off disastrous tutelage of Marley Sartin and the new laws of existence as propounded by Aymer Aston.

Christopher's education made vast strides during that winter. The season proved an unusually mild one. He was out the greater part of each day with Patricia, enduring with remarkable fort.i.tude her alternate contempt and despair over his ignorance of such everyday matters as horses, guns, dogs, desert island games, and such like.

When she laughed at him for not being able to ride he shut his teeth hard not to remind her he'd never possessed a shetland pony from birth as she had, also he rose at an unconscionable early hour and rode in the cold winter's dawn round and round the exercising yard with the young grooms, while Patricia was warm and fast asleep in bed.

But he had his reward when Mr. Aston, who had heard of his doings from the stud-groom, took him out with him on one of his rounds of inspection to outlying farms.

"The boy's got a good seat, and pluck, Aymer," reported Mr. Aston.

"It's more creditable to him because he has had to learn. It's not second nature to him."

It took him less trouble to learn how to handle a gun, and when "off duty" to Patricia, spent a vast amount of time in the electric plant house, learning the A B C of a big dynamo.

Aymer knew all this and made no mention of lessons, for Christopher was backward in more matters than booklearning and the life on a big estate, the infinite variety of interests was all good food for the boy's hungry brain and soul.

He grew apace. Mr. Aston declared he was a changeling and not the thin little urchin he had first encountered by the mile-stone on the Great Road. They never alluded to his life before that, though they all knew of it, and made their own private comparisons and observations.

Christopher became quite attached to the babies so long as they did not intrude on his own particular hours with Caesar, but he did not get over a certain shy reserve towards Renata.

"She slips into empty places," he said to Caesar once, and Caesar laughed at him and told Renata, who coloured and wrinkled her little forehead.

"He is a nice boy," she said, "and I love him for being so good to Patricia. There hasn't been a storm since he came."

One day, when it was too wet for even Christopher to be out, the two children amused themselves by turning out a cupboard in a disused room. It was a perfect stronghold of treasures. Old riding whips, Badminton Magazines (marked Aymer Aston, Christopher noticed), tennis b.a.l.l.s, cricket pads, a pair of fencing foils and mask and gloves, a host of sporting trophies from a hare's pad to a wolf's ear labelled "Kronigratz," and last of all a box full of photographs.

Patricia was called away before they could investigate this last treasure trove, and Christopher, not to be alone in the glory of discovery, carried it off to Caesar's room and lay on the hearth-rug enjoying it till Caesar, busy working out estate accounts for his father, was at liberty to look too. They were interesting photographs,--to a boy. Mostly of horses ridden, led, alone, jumping, horses galloping, horses trotting, and over and over again a picture of one horse, and rider, who never seemed to wear a hat and had a thick head of hair that looked as if it might be the same colour as Caesar's. At last he came to a bigger, more distinct photo of the same man and horse. The horse was evidently a polo-pony and was galloping and the man on it in white riding things, with his s.h.i.+rt open at the neck and was swinging a polo stick in his hand. There was no mistaking it this time: it was undoubtedly Caesar. Christopher gave a little gasp. Caesar like that, vigorous, active, panting,--Christopher could feel it so--with life and excitement. He scrambled to his knees with the picture in his hand.