Part 52 (1/2)
”I told him about it and he seemed surprised he hadn't been told before, and he hadn't really taken in what happened this afternoon at all. I expect he'll write to you.”
A faint ghost of a smile touched her white face.
”You are not really telling me what I want to know, Christopher.”
”There's nothing else. He hadn't got the real focus of the thing when I left.”
”I understand.”
She turned away and leant her arm on the mantelpiece, wondering in a half-comprehensive way why the stinging sense of humiliation and helpless shame seemed so much less since Christopher had come. What had been well-nigh unbearable was now but a monotonous burden that wearied but did not crush her: she feared it no longer. He stood looking at her a moment, gathering as it were into himself all he could of the bitterness that he knew she carried at her heart, and then turned away to the window, realising the greatness of her trouble and yearning to do that very thing which unconsciously by mere action of his receptive sympathy he had done already.
Presently she came to him and put her hand on his arm.
”You'll understand, anyhow, Christopher,” she said with a little sigh.
”We shall all do that here.”
”But Geoffry won't.”
”I suppose he can't.”
She recognised the hard note in his voice at once, and seating herself on the window-seat set to work to fathom it.
”It will help me if you can tell me exactly how he took it, Christopher. Was he angry, or sorry, or horrified or what?”
He had to consider a moment what, out of fairness to Geoffry, he must withhold, and choose what he considered the most pardonable aspect.
”I think he was frightened, Patricia, not at you, so much as at some silly ideas he's got hold of about heredity. Not his own: just half-digested ideas, and he probably finds it pretty difficult to listen to them at all. He just thinks he ought to, I suppose.”
Again the faint little smile in her face.
”You are a dear, Christopher, when you try to whitewash things. Listen to me. Whatever Geoffry said or does or writes, I've decided I will not marry him. I've written to say so and posted it before you came in, so he should know that nothing he had said or done influenced me in the slightest.”
Christopher gave a sigh of relief and she went on in the same deliberate way.
”And I shall never marry at all. I can't face it again. I'll tell Renata about Geoffry, and may I also tell her you will explain to the others if she can't satisfy them?”
”I will do anything you wish.” Then he suddenly claimed for himself a little lat.i.tude and spoke from his heart.
”Patricia, dear, I'm glad you've done it. It's the best and right thing, however hard, and if I could manage to take all the bother of it for you I would. Honestly, Geoffry wouldn't have been able to help you, I fear. But as to never marrying, you must not say that or make rash vows, and you must never, never let yourself think it isn't safe to marry, or that sort of nonsense. It's in your own hands. We are always strong enough for our own job, so Caesar says. Shall I find Renata and ask her to come to you?”
They stood facing each other, an arm's length separating them, and she looked at him across the little s.p.a.ce with so great grat.i.tude and affection in her eyes that he felt humbled at the little he offered from so great a store at his heart.
”Christopher, how do girls manage who haven't a brother like you? I've been fretting because I was all alone and no one to stand by me--will you forgive me that, dear?”
Her eyes were br.i.m.m.i.n.g with tears. She laid her hand on his arm again and drew nearer. Her entire ignorance of their true relations.h.i.+p to each other left her a child appealing for some outward sign of the one dear bond she knew between them.
Christopher recognised it and put his arm round her and she kissed him. ”I'll never forget again that I've got you,” she whispered, ”such a dear good brother.”
He neither acquiesced nor dissented that point, but very gravely and quietly he kissed her too, and she thought the bond of fraternity between then was sealed.