Christopher concluded his simple and direct account with these words, and waited vainly for a reply from his hearer, who stood by the window with his back to him.
"It"s so nearly a thing of the past, too, that it hardly seemed worth mentioning," he went on presently, an uneasy wonder at the silence growing on him.
At length Geoffry spoke, in a thick, slow way, like a man groping in darkness.
"You mean she did throw that stone deliberately, meaning to hit me?"
He had no sight at present for the wider issues that beset them or for Patricia"s story: his attention was concentrated on the incident immediately affecting him and he could see it in no light but that of dull horror.
"Deliberately tried to do it?" he repeated, turning to Christopher.
"There wasn"t anything deliberate about it. She just flung the stone at you precisely as you flung one at the rabbit. Sort of blind instinct. She does not know now she really hurt you."
He glanced at the crossing strips of plaster with which the other"s head was adorned on the right side.
"It"s horrible," muttered Geoffry, "I can"t understand it."
"It"s simple enough." There was growing impatience in Christopher"s voice. "She inherits this ghastly temper as I"ve told you. It"s like a sudden gust of wind if she"s not warned. It takes her off her feet, as it were, but she"s nearly learnt to stand firm. She has a wretched time after."
"It"s madness."
"It"s nothing of the kind. She wasn"t taught to control it as a child.
They just treated it as something she couldn"t help."
"By heavens, are you going to make out she can help it, and that that makes it better?"
Christopher faced him with amazed indignation. Geoffry"s whole att.i.tude and reception of his story seemed to him incredibly one-sided.
"Of course it"s better. A hundred times better. Do you mean you"d rather have her the victim of a real madness she could not control?
Think what you are saying, man."
"To me, it"s fairly unbearable if it"s something she can help and doesn"t."
Exasperation nearly choked the other. To have to defend Patricia at all was almost a desecration in his eyes, but he was her amba.s.sador and he stuck to his orders.
"She does help it. She"s nearly mastered it now."
Geoffry put his hand to his injured head and gave a short laugh.
Christopher got up abruptly.
"What am I to tell her, then?" he demanded shortly.
The real tenor of the discussion seemed to break suddenly upon Geoffry and he was cruelly alive to his own inability to meet it. He spoke hurriedly and almost pleadingly.
"Don"t go yet. I"ve got to think this out. Can"t you help me?"
"What"s there to think about? I"ve told you. I can tell you how to help her if you like."
"I"ve got to think of a jolly sight more than you seem to imagine,"
returned the sorely beset young man irritably, but unable to keep a touch of conscious superiority out of his voice, "a jolly sight more, if I marry her."
"If you marry her?" Christopher turned on him with blazing eyes.
"I"m not saying I shan"t--but it"s a pretty bad pa.s.s for us both. I know how she feels. Marriage isn"t just a question of pleasing oneself, you see. I must think it out for both of us."
Christopher began to speak and desisted. The other went on in an aggrieved tone.
"I ought to have been told. Heredity of that sort isn"t a thing to be played with, you know. Anything might happen. Why wasn"t I told?" He walked to and fro, and stopped by Christopher again.
"I wouldn"t mind a bit," he burst out, "if it were just a bad joke, if she flung at me in fun and didn"t expect to hit."
"She has a good aim as a rule," put in Christopher, too blind with fury now to realise the other"s unhinged condition, but Geoffry went on unheeding.
"But to do it in a rage, and for nothing. Just a cold-blooded attack and no warning. I can"t get over it. Anything might happen."
His first indignant pang that Christopher had been sent on this awkward errand had died out in the stress of the moment: he was ready to appeal for sympathy, for help, or even bare comprehension in the impossible situation in which he found himself, but Christopher had nothing to bestow on him but blind, furious resentment. He longed to be quit of his service and free to give way to his own wrath.
"There was plenty of warning for anyone with eyes and sense to use them, and there was nothing cold-blooded about it whatever, as I"ve told you fifty times. If you choose to make a mountain out of a molehill you must, but I"ll not help you. I would have done my best for both of you if you"d taken it decently."
"You? What concern is it of yours?" retorted the other, stung back to his original jealousy.
"It"s my concern so far as Patricia chooses it to be," he answered curtly. "I"m going now. You"d better write to her yourself, when you"ve decided if the risk is worth taking or not."
"It"s my risk at least, not yours--yet awhile," was the unguarded reply.
The young men faced each other for a moment with pa.s.sions at the point of explosion. It was Christopher who recollected his position of amba.s.sador first and turned abruptly to the door. In the hall he narrowly escaped encounter with Mrs. Leverson, Geoffry"s large and ample mother, but slipped out of a garden door on hearing the rustle of her dress. In the open air he breathed freely again and hastened to regain his motor, which he had left near the gates. Once outside Logan Park he turned the car northward along a fairly deserted high-road and drove at full pressure, until the hot pa.s.sion of his heart cooled and his pulse fell into beat with the throb of the engine, and he found himself near Basingstoke. Then he turned homeward, driving with greater caution and was able to face matters in a logically sane manner.
"They won"t marry and it"s a blessed thing for both of them," was the burden of his thoughts, though it mitigated not one bit his indignant att.i.tude towards Geoffry. Presently he turned to his own interest in the matter.
His first idea was that he was free to claim her who was his own at once, without loss of time, but that impulse died down before a better appreciation of facts. Patricia must be left free in mind to regain possession of every faculty, that was but common fairness: also he was by no means certain at this time what response she would make to his claim, and if it should be a negative his position at Marden would be difficult, and there was Aymer to consider. Quite slowly, and with no appreciable connection with the chief subject a recollection of that first journey with Peter Masters from London came to the surface of his mind, and written large across, in Peter"s own handwriting, were the words, "Aymer"s son."
He had put that idea deliberately behind his back, hidden it in the deepest recess of his mind, with a strange content and a germ of pride unconfessed and unacknowledged to himself. It remained a secret feeling that touched at no point his steady faith and devotion to his dead mother.
But Peter"s suggestion had utterly quenched his original intention of asking Mr. Aston or Caesar of his own origin, as he had intended to do at the time of his return from Belgium. The actual possibility or impossibility of the idea counted nothing so long as the faintest shadow of it lurked there in the background. If it were a fact, it was their secret, deliberately withheld; if it were not, he must be the last to give it life.
The incalculable power of suggestion had done its work and the suggested lie, taking root, had grown at the pace of all ill weeds and obscured his usually clear visions of essentials. The more he questioned the possible fact the denser seemed the screen between him and Patricia, until he called himself a fool to have dreamed she was ever his to claim at all.
It was in this wholly unsatisfactory mood he was called upon, on his return, to face Patricia and give his own account of the interview.
Patricia was lying in wait for him at the door of her own sanctum, which he had to pa.s.s on his way to his room. He would have gladly deferred the interview, but she summoned him imperiously.
"There"s a good hour till dinner, Christopher, and I must know what he said. How long you"ve been!"
He followed her in and closed the door behind him. The little white-panelled room was so perfect an expression of its owner that at all times Christopher felt a still wonder fall on him to find himself within its confines. It was singularly uncrowded and free, and the monotonous note of light colour was broken by splashes of brightness that were as an embroidery to the plain setting.
Patricia turned to him with questioning eyes and no words, and the difficulty of his task made him a little curt and direct in speech, for otherwise how could he avoid voicing the tenderness that flowed to her.