Part 14 (1/2)

”Oh, Christopher dear, how clever you are. No-one ever understood that before. They all say, 'well, anyhow, you don't mean it,' as if that made it better.”

”Stupid, of course it's harder to help what you don't mean than what you do.”

”But I can't help it.”

Christopher gave her a little shake. ”Don't be silly. You will have to help it, only it's harder. You can't go on like that when you are big--ladies don't--none I've seen. It's only----” he stopped.

”Only what?”

”Women in the street. At least--some, I've seen them. They fight and scream and get black eyes and get drunk.”

”Christopher, you are hateful!” She flared up with hot cheeks and put her hand over his mouth. ”I'm not like that, you horrid boy. Say I'm not.”

”I didn't say you were,” said Christopher with faint exasperation. ”I said it reminded me--your temper. Come along in.”

She followed very unwillingly, more conscious than he was of his disfigured face.

And Renata met them in the hall and saw it and got pink, but said nothing till Patricia had gone upstairs. Christopher was slipping away too--he never found much to say to Mrs. Aston--and of late less than ever. However, she stopped him.

”Have you been quarrelling, Christopher?” she asked deprecatingly with a little tremor in her voice.

Christopher a.s.sured her not.

”You have hurt your face.”

”The branch of a tree,” he began shamefacedly, and stopped lamely.

”I'm so sorry.”

No more was said. Renata was conscious of her own failure to get on with Christopher, but she put it down entirely to her own shyness, which interfered now in preventing her overriding his very transparent fib in Patricia's defence. She went away rather troubled and unhappy.

But Christopher, a great deal more troubled and unhappy, looked out of the hall window with a gloomy frown. His own words to Patricia that she had so sharply resented, about the women he had seen fighting in the street, had called up other pictures of the older life, pictures in which Marley Sartin figured only too distinctly. He felt uncomfortably near these s.h.i.+fting scenes. Like Patricia, he wanted to deny the connection between himself and the small boy following in the wake of the big man through crowded streets and long vistas of shops.

He did not wish to recognise the bond between little Jim Hibbault and Christopher Aston. But the pictures were very insistent and the likeness uncomfortably clear. At last, with no more show of emotion or will than if he were going on an ordinary errand, he walked slowly down the corridor to Caesar's room. He had entirely forgotten about Patricia now and was taken aback by Caesar's abrupt inquiry about the mark or his face.

”It was an accident,” he said hurriedly, and then plunged straight into his own affairs.

”Caesar, I have something to give you.”

He held out his hand with a sovereign in it.

Caesar took it and, after glancing at it casually, put it on the table, looking hard at Christopher, who got red and then white.

”It couldn't have been the sovereign you lost,” he said earnestly. ”I didn't take any of that money, really, Caesar. I found this on the floor by the window. It couldn't have rolled all that long way from here. It must be another.”

He was pleading with himself as much as with Caesar, desiring greatly to keep faith with his own integrity, though something in Caesar's face was driving him from his last stronghold.

”You didn't ask me if I'd found a sovereign,” he pleaded desperately, ”you asked me if I had taken one of Mrs. Aston's sovereigns, and I hadn't, because how could it have got to the window from here?”

Caesar's face flushed a dusky red. He spoke in a hard, constrained voice.