Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker Part 49

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?"