Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker Part 53

"So you are. It never struck me--but--but," he hesitated, unable to read his own hazy idea, and concluded, "but, you are only a girl, so it doesn't matter."

The look in his eyes atoned for the "only," and she bore no resentment, for she had met his look and read there the thought he could not decipher, and it sunk deep into her heart, with illuminating power.

At the garden door, where the paths branched, she stood aside.

"Go and tell Aymer and get your breakfast."

"You are not going to stay out in this rain?"

"You know I love rain, and I've had breakfast."

Before he could stop her she had turned and disappeared up the winding path that led out eventually on to the open down.

Christopher looked after her a moment doubtfully, but her strange fondness for walking in the rain was well known and he had no reason or right to stop her. So he went indoors to Caesar. But Patricia walked on with rapid steps, never pausing till she was well outside the confines of the park amongst the red ploughed fields and bare downs.

The rain swept in her face and the wind rushed by her as she walked with lifted head and exultant heart, hearing the whole chorus of creation around her, conscious only of the uplifting joy of the great light that had broken in on her. At last she stopped by a gate that led into a field of newly-turned earth--downland just broken by the plough, lying bare and open to the breath of heaven, and beyond, the swelling line of downs was blurred with misty rain and merged into the driving grey clouds above. Behind her in an oak tree a robin was singing with pa.s.sionate intensity. She drew a deep breath and then held out her arms to the world.

"I understand, I understand," she whispered. "Love and Christopher.

Love and Christopher, there is nothing else in the whole world."

She had accepted the revelation without fear, without question, without distrust. She gave no thought at all at present as to Christopher's att.i.tude to her, as to whether he had anything to give in return for her great gift of herself. She gave herself to Love first, to him after, if such were Love's will. But it made no difference whether he knew or not, she was his, and the recognition drowned all lesser emotion in the great depth of its joy. She wasted no time in lamenting her blindness or the interlude with another lesser love: it troubled her not at all, for by such steps had she climbed to this unexpected summit. Just at present the glory of that was all-satisfying, so much more than she had ever looked for or imagined possible, that to demand the uttermost crown of his returning love was in these first moments too great a consummation to be borne.

She stood there with her hands clasped and the only words she found were, "Christopher and Love," and again, "Love and Christopher," as if they were the alphabet of a new language.

Quite slowly the physical horizon crept up to this plane of exultant joy and claimed her, but even as she recognised the claim she knew the familiar world would bear for her a new aspect, and found no resentment, only a quiet relief as it closed her in. The languor and fatigue of the backward journey did not distress her, every step of the way she was studying the news.

Every blade of gra.s.s and every twig spoke of this new language to her, proclaiming a kinship that made her rich in sympathy and comprehension of all humble lovely things.

She was seized with fear when she reached home that she would encounter Christopher in the hall before she was prepared to accept him as the most unchanged point of her altered world. Instead she met Constantia Wyatt, who was at Marden with her family for Easter, just coming down, who asked her if she had been having a shower bath.

Now Constantia felt a proprietary right over Patricia by reason of her knowledge of Christopher's sentiments, and her own prophetic instincts. She had most carefully refrained from interference in their affairs, however, and accepted the post of lookeron with praiseworthy consistency. But she looked on with very wide-opened eyes, and this morning when Patricia answered with almost emphatic offhandedness that she had only been for a solitary walk in the rain, she could not refrain from remarking that she appeared to have gathered something more than raindrops and an appet.i.te on her walk, and only laughed when Patricia, betraying no further curiosity, hurried on.

"Something has happened," she thought to herself. "Patricia's eyes did not look like that last night. She is grown up."

But her rare discretion kept her silent, and when later on she was confronted with the news of Christopher's victory she guessed one-half of the secret of Patricia's shining eyes.

Patricia exchanged her dripping garments for dry ones and curled herself up on the sofa in her own room before the fire, with full determination to fathom her growing unwillingness to meet Christopher, and to accommodate herself to the new existence, but the gentle languor of mental emotion and physical effort took the caressing warmth of the fire to their aid and cradled her to sleep instead, till the balance of nature was restored.

It was in this manner that Patricia and Christopher arrived at the same cross roads of their lives, where the devious tracks might merge into one another, or, being thrust asunder again by some hedge of convention, continue by a lonely, painful and circuitous route towards the destined goal.

The matter lay in Patricia's hands, little as either she or Christopher suspected it, and poor Patricia was hampered by a power of tradition and a lack of complete faith of Christopher's view of her inherited trouble.

Ever since the broken engagement with Geoffry, she had bent in spirit before her own weakness, withstanding it well, and yet a prey to that humiliation of mind that accepts the imperfect as a penalty, instead of claiming the perfect as a birthright. Having given in to this att.i.tude, she now, as a natural consequence, could but see the view offered from that comparatively lowly alt.i.tude, and that shut her in with the belief her duty lay in renouncing marriage, and also, more limiting still in its effect, the idea that Christopher also held this view in his secret heart.

She wasted no time in the consideration as to whether he loved her or not: she was sure of that much crown to her own life; but slowly the false conviction thrust itself upon her that had he thought otherwise the long, empty months that had pa.s.sed would not have been possible.

She was too young a woman to balance correctly the power of strenuous occupation on a man as weighed against the emotion to which a woman will yield her whole being without a struggle. Looking back on the long days that had elapsed since the affair by the little chalk pit on the downs, it seemed to her clear that Christopher had avoided her, and there was sufficient truth in this to make it a dangerous lever when handled in connection with the fear of her mind.

It was, therefore, by a quite natural following-out of the mental process that she ultimately arrived at the conclusion it was her duty to a.s.sist Christopher to renounce herself, and for that purpose, that she might less hamper his life, she must leave Marden Court.

The decision was not arrived at all at once. The day wore on and the natural order of things had brought her and Christopher face to face at a moment when she had forgotten there was any difficulty about it.

Caesar had issued invitations to a family tea in his room in honour of Christopher's achievement, as was a time-honoured custom when any of the members of the family distinguished themselves in work or play.

Christopher served tea, as it was Caesar's party, and it was not until he gave Patricia her cup that he recollected she had not crossed his path since that morning in the rain.

"Where have you hidden yourself?" he demanded severely.

"You said I could not hold my tongue, so I determined I'd prove you false," was her flippant rejoinder.

"At the cost of self-immolation. I think it proves my point."

"I appeal to Caesar." She got up and took a chair close to the sofa.

"Caesar, I wish you'd keep that boy of yours in order. He is always so convinced he is in the right that he is unbearable."

"Allow him lat.i.tude to-day. He'll meet opposition enough when he tries to foist this putty-clay of his on the world. By the way, what are you going to call it, Christopher?"

Everyone stopped talking and regarded the Discoverer with critical anxiety. He looked slightly embarra.s.sed and offered no suggestion, and it was Constantia who insisted airily that they should all propose names and he should choose from the offered selection.

Christopher was made to take a chair in the midst of the circle and to demonstrate in plain terms the actual substances of which the "Road-stuff," as he inelegantly termed it, was made.

The younger members of the family called pathetically for some short, ready name that would not tax pen or tongue. After a long silence Nevil, modestly suggested "Hippopodharmataconitenbadistium."

This raised a storm of protests, while Constantia's own "Roadhesion"

received hardly better support.

Caesar flung out "Christ.i.te" without concern, and demanded Patricia's contribution.

"Aymerite," she ventured.

Christopher's glances wandered from one to the other. She was seated on his own particular chair close to Caesar, in whose company she felt a strange comfort and protection, a security against her own heart that could not yet be trusted to shield the secret of her love.

Mr. Aston was called on in his turn and he looked at Christopher with a smile.

"I think we are all wasting our time and wits," he said placidly.

"Christopher has his own name ready and your suggestions are superfluous."

They clamoured for confirmation of this and Christopher had to admit it was true.

"I call it Patrimondi," he said slowly, his eyes on Patricia, "because it will conquer the country and the world in time."

Which explanation was accepted more readily by the younger members of the party than by the elder.

But "Patrimondi" it remained, and if he chose to perpetuate the claims of the future rather than the past in this business of nomenclature, it was surely his own affair. Patricia, at all events, made no objection. She had recovered her equilibrium to find the relationship between them was so old that it called for nothing but mute acceptance on her part: the only thing that was new was her recognition of the barrier between them, whose imaginary shadow lay so cold across her heart.

Constantia offered a refuge. Her watching eyes divined something of Patricia's unrest. She visited her that night at the period of hair-brushing and found her dreaming before a dying fire.

"You get up too early," Constantia remonstrated, "it's a pernicious habit. If you would come and stay with me in London, I would teach you to keep rational hours."

"Would you have me, really?" cried Patricia, sitting bolt upright, with every sense alert to seize so good an opportunity of escape.