Matters were made as easy for Patricia as the united efforts of those
who loved her could compass. Geoffry, in his gratitude for her
decisive action, which lifted the onus of a broken engagement from his
shoulders, found a substantial ground for his belief that they had
sacrificed themselves on the altar of duty. Mrs. Leverson sighed
profoundly with unconscious satisfaction over the highly heroic
behaviour of them both and yielded easily to Geoffry's desire to
travel. They eventually sold Logan Park, which they had purchased
about ten years previously, and passed out of the ken of the lives
that were so nearly linked with theirs.
Life renewed its wonted routine at Marden except that Christopher was
often absent for weeks together. The final experiments hung fire and
he had to seek new material and fresh inspiration further afield, but
never for long. The end of a set term would see him back by Aymer's
side sharing his hopes and disappointments impartially, always
declaring that nowhere could he work with better success than at
Marden Court. He was five years older than his natural age in
development and resource, and the dogged obstinacy that was so direct
a heritage from his father, stood him in good stead in his stiff fight
with the difficulties that stood between him and his goal. Peter
Masters made no sign and no greater success seemed to crown the other
workers' endeavours, but there was always the secret pressure of
unknown competition at work and it told on Christopher. He became more
silent and so absorbed in his task as to lose touch of outside
matters altogether. It was this absorption in his ambition that made
the daily intercourse with Patricia possible at all. Unsuspected by
her, his love, lying in abeyance, was but awaiting the growth in her
of an answering harmony that must come to completion before he could
make his full demand of it.
One day in March, when the land was swept with cold winds and beaten
with rain, Christopher came out of the little wooden building, where
he worked, and stood bareheaded a moment in the driving rain. First he
looked towards the house and then turning sharply towards the left
made his way once more to the edge of the last of the experimental
tracks that threaded that distant corner of the park like the lines of
a spider's web.
He stood looking down at the firm grey surface from which the pouring
rain ran off to the side channels as cleanly as from polished marble.
He walked a few yards down its elastic, easy-treading surface,
ruminating over the "weight and edge" tests that had been applied, and
on the durability trials from the little machine that had run for so
many long days and nights over a similar surface within the wooden
shanty.
It was morning now. His men, whose numbers had increased each month,
had gone to breakfast, and he was alone with his finished work.
The strain and absorption of the long months was over. He had at last
conquered the material difficulties that had been ranged against him.
The dream of the boy had become a tangible reality, ready by reason of
its material existence to claim its own place in the physical world.
This unnamed substance whose composition had awaited in Nature's
laboratory the intelligent mingling of a master hand, would add to the
store of the world's riches and the world's ease, and was his gift to
his generation.
As he stood looking down at the completed roadway, the Roadmaker
suddenly remembered his own slight years and the inconceivable
fraction of time he had laboured for so wide a result, and there swept
up to him across the level way a new knowledge of his relationship to
all the past--that he was but the servant of those who had preceded
him and had but brought into the light of day a simple secret matured
long ago in the patient earth.
It is in this spirit of true humility and in the recognition of their
actual place in the world that all Great Discoverers find their
highest joy. It is the joy of service that is theirs, the loftiest
ambition that can fire the heart of man, making him accept with
thankfulness his part as a tool to the great artifices and filling him
with love and reverence for the work he has been used to complete. As
Christopher stood bareheaded in the rain that windy March morning, his
heart swept clear for the time of all personal pride or
self-gratification, he offered himself in unconscious surrender again
to the Power that had used him, craving only to be used, divining
clearly that achievement is but the starting post to new endeavour.
At last he turned away, locked up the hut and went down towards the
house, and at the entrance of the little plantation between park and
garden he met Patricia.
They exchanged no greeting but a smile, and as he stood on the slope
above her, looking at her, he was aware of a great sense of peace and
rest, and on a sudden, her understanding leapt to meet his.
"It is done--you have finished it?" she cried, and her hands went out
to him.
"Yes," he said, quietly, freeing himself from the strange inward
pressure by the touch of that outward union. "This piece of work is
done, Patricia. The thing is there--my Road stuff. It's all right. It
will stand whatever it is asked to stand. It is ready to use if
anyone will use it."
"Oh, I'm glad--so glad!" she cried. "Christopher, it is just the best
thing in the world to know you have succeeded."
Her complete sympathy and generous joy seemed to open his mind to the
outward expression of the speaker, which of late, since the breaking
of her engagement with Geoffry, he had tried hard not to observe.
It seemed to him her face had lost a little of its childish roundness,
that there was something accentuated about her that was nameless and
yet expected. Also for the first time in his life he was conscious
that her presence by his side was helpful. He had been unaware till
she came that he needed any aid in what, to him, was a great moment in
his life, but he knew it was restful and good to walk by her, a
strange relief to tell her how the last difficulties that had arisen
on the heels of each other had finally been met: how strong had been
his temptation to give his discovery to the world before the tedious
tests had gone to the uttermost limits experimental trials could
reach.
"It's so simple really," he said, "just a question of proportions once
the material is there. I felt anyone might hit on it any day, and yet
it would have been such a sickening thing to have someone else
planting an improvement on the top of it within a few months. It may
need it now, but at least it would mean the test of years, and not
immediate improvement. Do you happen to know if Cæsar had a good night
or not?"
"You've got to have some breakfast yourself first. I don't believe you
remember you never came in to dinner last night at all."
"Didn't I? Breakfast must wait till I've seen Cæsar anyhow. He must
know before anyone else, and you'll never be able to hold your tongue
through breakfast, you know."
"But I'm first, after all." She tilted her chin a little with a
complacent nod at him.
He stopped with a puzzled expression.
"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 Cæsar. 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 passionate 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 attitude 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 grass 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 appetite 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
attitude, she now, as a natural consequence, could but see the view
offered from that comparatively lowly altitude, 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 passed 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 assist 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.
Cæsar 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 Cæsar'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 Cæsar." She got up and took a chair close to the sofa.
"Cæsar, 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 latitude 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 embarrassed 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.
Cæsar flung out "Christite" 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 Cæsar, 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.
"Why, yes. I've been wanting to have you a long time. You had better
come back to town with me to-morrow."
"I'd like it better than anything in the world," asserted Patricia,
fervently and truthfully.
"I wonder if people ever grow up at all here," Constantia said,
smiling, "you are all so preposterously young, you know."
"You were brought up here yourself."
Constantia laughed outright. "But I have been educated since I
married: that is when most people's education does begin. We are only
preparing for it before."
"And if one never marries, one remains uneducated, I suppose."
Constantia kissed her. "Your education is not likely to be neglected,
my dear. Go to bed now, we will settle with Renata to-morrow."