It seemed to Christopher as he overhauled his long-suffering motor
preparatory to the new run, that a great gap of innumerable grey days
stretched between him and the moment he brought the car to a
standstill before the doors of the house, that had appeared to him to
be a Temple of Promise. It was in fact barely an hour and a half and
the greater part of that time had been occupied with lunch and a hasty
interview with Aymer. That shorter interlude in the orchard just over,
had already blotted out a golden landscape with a driving mist that
obscured all true proportion of time or space. He longed greatly, with
a sense of strange fatigue, to be sitting at Cæsar's side and to find
the restless discomfort evaporate as they talked, even as his boyish
troubles had melted in that companionship. That must come later: for
the present Fate--or Patricia--made a demand on him to which he was
bound to answer. Where a weaker nature would have said "impossible,"
he simply found an ordinary action rendered difficult by his own
private view of it, therefore it behooved him to close the shutters on
that outlook if he could, and ignore the difficulty.
Renata, who came out with Patricia, protested a little indignantly at
the latter's exaction.
"It is so inconsiderate of Patricia, just as you have had such a
journey. Why do you give in to her, Christopher?"
"To-day is as good as any day," he answered her, "perhaps the visitor
will have gone when we return."
"Oh, I hope so," said Renata fervently, and then blushed at her own
inhospitality. "I mean, Cæsar would rather have you to himself, I am
sure."
"And I would rather have Cæsar unaccompanied. So there is some use in
Patricia's fancy."
"Of course," put in that young lady, "there always is. Please do not
waste precious time talking. Tell me where I am to sit, Christopher."
"I'll take every care of her," said Christopher, looking at Renata,
"we'll be back in time for dinner. Be kind and get rid of Mr. Masters
by then."
"Like a dear little angel," concluded Patricia, kissing her; "think
how he bores Nevil, and don't be hospitable."
Christopher settled her in the seat beside him, tucked her in with
rugs, put up the front screen and started.
For a few short minutes the joy of having her there beside him, his
sole charge for some golden hours to come, his to carry in a mad rush
if he would to the ends of the earth, obliterated for a moment the
bewildering mist.
He drove for some way in silence. Patricia was too much absorbed in
the pleasures of swift motion to talk. Her first words, however, shut
down the mists on him again.
"Geoffry must have a car," she declared. "He must get one just like
this."
"I thought Geoffry was to be left behind this afternoon?"
"Oh, I suppose he was. I don't believe you are a bit pleased about it
really, Christopher."
He clutched at the truth as a plank of safety.
"Well, you can't expect me to be glad to lose your company, can you? I
shall never make a golfer now."
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 attitude 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 companionship 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 passing 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
fictitious control. Before the sun quenched itself in the sea they
stood on the Cliff Edge and looked out across the shining waters into
the great space, 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 space, 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 relinquishing 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
snatch 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
space, 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, surreptitiously 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 buttered
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 shivering 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 space 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 space 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 passion again, on fire with her
need of assurance, 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, bumped 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 passed 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.
The miles slipped by in unbroken silence. It was not till they were
nearly home that Christopher spoke.
"I thought that was all quite gone, Patricia."
"So did I," she returned wearily. "It's ages since I was so stupid.
It's generally all right if you are there."
"But I'm not always there anyhow."
"I don't mean there really. I just shut my eyes and pretend you are
and hold on. But just now I waited for you to do something. I forgot
you were driving."
"You mustn't rely on me to stop you now," he insisted, with new
gravity.
"Oh, yes, I do. It's always you if I stop in time; either you
actually, or thinking of you. Don't talk about it, Christopher dear,
it was too horrible."
She did not explain if she meant the danger or the cause, but he
obeyed and said no more. A terrible fear clamoured at his heart. Did
Geoffry Leverson know or did he not? and if he knew, would he even
understand? He tried to tell himself that if he could manage her, then
another, and that her acknowledged lover, could do so too, but he knew
this was false reasoning. Such power as he had over her lay in his
recognition that the irresistible inheritance was not an integral part
of Patricia, but was an exotic growth, foisted upon her by the
ill-understood laws of paternity, and finding no natural soil in her
pure self--something indeed, of a lower nature, that she must and
could override. He could have curbed it in the brief flash just over,
he knew, had his attention been free. It had died as it had come and
the penalty of the crushed fingers hurt him as unwarrantable, combined
with the peril they had run.
It was a fresh addition of cloud to the dimmed day to find Peter
Masters had not departed, but was staying the night.