Although Christopher’s habit of acquisitiveness had given Aymer some uneasy moments, yet there had been so far no very serious conflict of the question of meum and tuum. Aymer had sought rather to overwrite the rude scrawl of Marley Sartin than to erase it. The most serious aspect that had shown itself hitherto was Christopher’s readiness to accept tips from over-generous callers and even to put himself to ingenious trouble to invite them. Constantia Wyatt was a great offender in this and brought down a severe scolding on her own head from her brother when he at last learnt of Christopher’s propensity.

“He does it so neatly and with such a charming, innocent face,” pleaded Constantia, half laughing; “it’s no harm, Aymer. All boys like tips: I know my boy does.”

But she rather libelled Master Basil Wyatt, who, though not averse to a donation, would have scorned to solicit it. Aymer had told Christopher that gentlemen did not do these things and had taken care to keep the boy out of the way of departing visitors. But this had been before his first lecture on the obligations of money, and Christopher had taken that lesson to heart and quite outgrown his childish and perfectly innocent habit of inviting tips.

Aymer was furiously angry with himself for the quick suspicion which connected the boy with the missing sovereign. He tried honestly to put it away from himself as unwarrantable and dangerous. But there it was, a wretched little poisonous thought, tugging at his heart, unreasonably coupled with a recollection of a conversation between Patricia and Christopher that he had overheard one afternoon at tea-time, 74 anent the construction of an amateur brickwork bridge across an inconvenient stream. Patricia had said they could buy bricks at the brick-yard, and Christopher had said he had no money left; it would cost lots and lots and they must wait till pay-day.

He mentioned the loss of the sovereign to Christopher and asked if he had dropped the money on the stairs, and Christopher had composedly answered in the negative, and had volunteered the remark that if it had been dropped in the room it could not have rolled far on the thick carpet. Aymer had been for the moment convinced of the injustice of his own suspicion. He made no attempt to discover any other solution to the problem; rather he evaded what might prove a difficult task, and contented himself with solemnly sending Renata a cheque for the remainder “with interest,” and neither Renata nor Nevil spoke of the matter again, at least to him. Nevil may have had his own opinions about it, and if he had they were quite certainly communicated to his wife. The worrying uncertainty, however, proved too much for Aymer, and the following evening when he was alone with his father he told him the story, half hoping to be scolded for harbouring uncharitable suspicions. Now, Mr. Aston had been scrupulous to a fault in avoiding the offer of any suggestions or advice on Christopher’s upbringing. He desired above all things to leave Aymer free in his chosen task, but he realised at once this was a point where Aymer was quite as likely to hurt himself as Christopher, and, therefore, that he, Aymer’s father, must make an exception to his rule and he did not like it. He began drawing vague lines on his shirtcuff with a pencil, an evil habit of his when uneasy in mind. Aymer watched him with disapproval.

“After all our efforts,” he sighed gravely, “you still persist in your old bad ways, sir. How often 75 have I entreated you to remember a poor valet’s feelings, and how often has Nevil begged you to recollect the sorrows of the washerwoman?”

Mr. Aston laughed and put away his pencil.

“Nevil once indited an ode to me entitled ‘The Lament of the Laundress.’ I fear I’m incorrigible.”

“What displeases you, sir?” demanded his son after a little pause; “it’s no use pretending there’s nothing wrong; you only do that when you want to say something you think won’t be acceptable.”

“Well, then, Aymer, I say this: Christopher is your concern. I don’t doubt your power to manage him, but I can speak of yourself, and I tell you it’s a very bad thing to live with an unsatisfied suspicion; particularly bad for you. If you don’t clear this up you will never feel quite at ease with the boy. It is so already, is it not?”

Aymer admitted reluctantly that it was indeed the case.

“Don’t let anything stand between you, Aymer. I am thinking of you, of course,” he added hastily.

“Are you sure you are not thinking of yourself?” returned his son, half laughing, half ruefully; and his father flushed a little.

“Perhaps I was,” he said humbly. “It would worry me if you were not happy with him.”

Aymer laughed outright at that and assured him he knew how to make allowances for his well-known selfishness. But he took his advice and grappled with the difficulty next afternoon. Christopher was mending a rod, seated on the floor as usual.

“We’ve not found that sovereign,” said CÆsar abruptly.

Christopher looked up quickly, and then went on with his work after a brief “Oh!”

“Did you take it, Christopher?”

He asked the question quite slowly and looked at 76 the boy, who got scarlet but went on tying his rod and appeared to be considering the question carefully, weighing it in his mind as it were, and when he answered, it was as deliberately as Aymer had questioned him.

“No, sir.”

Aymer felt a sudden sense of relief, for lying had not been one of Christopher’s faults. Then almost immediately he found himself wondering first, why the boy was not angry, and secondly, why it had taken so much thought to answer at all. However, he let the matter drop and told himself he was satisfied. Christopher finished mending his rod and then sat still considering deeply. Presently he took out a penny from his pocket and began rolling it on the thick carpet, and, as he had remarked to CÆsar, it did not roll far, try as he would. At last he jumped up with a satisfied mien and went out. CÆsar heard him whistling as he went down the passage and felt easier in his mind. Renata and the babies paid their usual visit after tea, and Miss Charlotte, after a brief conversation with her uncle, slid off the sofa and trotted away to the end window, where she appeared to be diligently playing hide-and-seek with herself. Suddenly her elders were startled with a prolonged cry of anguish and Renata flew to the rescue.

“I tan’t find it; naughty mousie taken my booful golden penny,” sobbed Charlotte in her mother’s arms. Renata could make nothing of her grief and persisted in thinking that she was hurt, and cuddling her. Aymer, listening attentively, said suddenly to Renata in his imperious way:

“Give Charlotte to me, Renata, and take baby away.”

Renata obeyed meekly. People had a weak way of obeying Aymer on occasions, even against their will.

“Now, Miss Charlotte,” said Aymer, when the 77 young lady was safely deposited by him, “tell me about it. What golden penny was it?”

But Charlotte got suddenly red and stopped crying.

“Were you playing with it yesterday in the window?” asked her uncle.

Charlotte nodded.

“Was it your penny or mine?”

“Wasn’t nobody’s, only mummy’s. You said they were for her. Charlotte wasn’t naughty.”

“Did you find it on the floor?”

“No.”

“Where then?”

“Dey was all in nice itty rows on the table. I only taken one pitty goldy penny. Mummy gives me goldy pennies always.”

“Sovereigns for playthings, Renata. That’s very immoral.”

“No, only new halfpennies. Charlotte didn’t know any better, Aymer.”

“And you played with it in the window there and left it there.”

“Is I naughty?”

“Not very naughty—if you tell me. Did you leave it there?”

Charlotte’s lip trembled. “I putted it to bed in the curtain by a mousehole, and it’s all gone, naughty mousie.”

“Go and see, Renata, if there’s a hole there.”

“Please,” said Charlotte gravely.

“Please what?”

“Please go and see.”

Aymer laughed. “I beg your pardon, Renata. Please will you mind looking for the mousehole?”

“I tan’t see the mousehole,” put in Charlotte, “I only ’tend it.”

But Renata looked all the same. There was no mousehole and no golden penny. 78

“It is all right,” explained Aymer in answer to his sister-in-law’s troubled look. “I know all about it. Don’t worry your little head. We will give Charlotte another golden penny, or a silver one. Only,” he added, regarding his small niece severely, “Charlotte must not touch anyone’s pennies again, not mummy’s or Uncle Aymer’s, or anyone’s. It is not dreadfully naughty this time, but it would be next time—dreadfully naughty.”

Charlotte opened her eyes very wide.

“Would you be dreffly angry?”

“Yes, and very unhappy. I shouldn’t let you come to see me any more.”

At that Miss Charlotte flung her arms round his neck, protesting she wasn’t naughty and Uncle Aymer must love her. Peace was at last restored and Aymer drew pictures of innumerable mice carrying off golden pennies and only sent the children away when Christopher came in.

He gave no hint to Christopher that he had solved the problem of the lost money and discovered the boy’s own compromise between truth and dishonesty. He was anxious to see whether Christopher’s moral standard was really satisfied with the same compromise or not. So he treated him as far as he could in his natural manner during the next few days, but found it a little difficult. Fond of Christopher as he was, this was just one of those points where the enormous difference between the child of one’s own self,—of self plus the unknown—and the adopted child of others, became visible. The fault was so inexplicable to Aymer, so utterly foreign to his whole understanding, that he had nothing but contempt for it, whereas, had Christopher been his own son, love would have overridden contempt with fear.

Christopher, with his uncanny, quick intuition of Aymer’s innermost mind, was not deceived by his ordinary 79 casual manner, and became, to Aymer’s secret satisfaction, a little suppressed and thoughtful.

It was at this point the boy had his first introduction to poor little Patricia’s temper.

The two children had been riding and returned home by way of the brook over which their ambitious dreams had already built a bridge. Patricia, who was in rather a petulant mood, reproached Christopher rather sharply for having got rid of his last month’s pocket money so prematurely. “Just like a boy,” she said, wrinkling her nose contemptuously. She had five whole shillings left of her money and when Christopher could double that they were to go to the brick-yard and bargain.

“Haven’t you any at all?” she questioned impatiently.

Christopher, who was examining the proposed site, did not answer at once, and she repeated her question.

“I have some,” he confessed unwillingly.

“Well, can’t we start with that. You said you hadn’t any on Monday. How much is it?”

But Christopher declined to answer.

Patricia persisted in her point. If Christopher had any money they could begin the bridge next day. Christopher said he’d see about it.

Patricia, much exasperated, said she should go home, and her companion proposed to make the ponies jump the brook. She was too angry to answer him, but she set her pony at it, and the pony, instead of rising to the jump on command, very cautiously stepped into the stream and splashed across. It is to be feared Christopher laughed. Patricia cantered on, having seen, with much satisfaction, the other pony behave in precisely the same way. But the end was not the same. Christopher wheeled the pony round and tried again, tried eight times and failed and succeeded at the ninth. It was characteristic of him that 80 he did not lose his temper, but had kept on with a sort of dull, monotonous persistence that must have been very boring to the equine mind.

Then he galloped after Patricia, and catching her up at the lodge gates retailed his triumph gleefully. Perhaps he was a shade too triumphant, for he was still in disgrace, and she had not spoken. At all events by the time they had dismounted and were returning to the house through the garden, she was in a fever of irritation, and Christopher, blissfully ignorant of the fact, was just a tiny bit inclined for private reasons of his own, to emphasise his own good spirits. He never noticed the clenching and unclenching of her small hands or saw the whiteness of her tense averted face, and he began teasing her about her pony and her weight. “Nevil must buy you a brand new one, up to your weight,” he suggested, “you’ve broken Folly’s spirit evidently.”

He was standing on the steps, just one step below her, and he looked back laughing. On a sudden, with no word or sound of warning, she turned and cut at him with her riding whip, her little form quivering with the grip of the possessing demon. The lash caught him across the face and he fell back against the wall gasping, with his hand up. Luckily it was but a light whip and a girl’s hand, but the sting of it blanched him for an instant. The flaming colour died from Patricia’s face as suddenly as it had come, and with it the momentary fury. She stood gazing at her companion a moment, and when he looked up half terrified, half angry, she turned quickly and ran down a grass path, dropping her whip as she went.

Christopher stood still, rubbing his smarting cheek gingerly, wondering vaguely what he would say if it showed. He had heard from others as well as from Patricia herself, of the child’s fearful paroxysms of rage and had rather scoffed at it—to her. But at this 81 moment he was far nearer crying, very near it, indeed, to be strictly truthful. He was really concerned for Patricia, and also he was a little—unnecessarily—ashamed of his own collapse under the sudden attack. Probably she thought it worse than it was. He walked slowly down the grass path between the yew hedges and picked up the whip as he went. Patricia was not on the tennis court nor in the summer-house, nor in the rose-garden, so he turned his steps to the wilderness, as the rough wooded slopes on the northern side of the garden were called. He knew her favourite spots here and presently came on her huddled up on an old moss-grown stone seat, her head in her arms. She was quite still, she was not even crying, and Christopher felt a little frightened. What if she were still angry like that? However, the chances were against it, so he went up and sat down by her.

“Patricia, don’t be silly,” he commanded. “What did you run off like that for? You didn’t hurt—not much,” he added truthfully—he had taken to being very exact about the truth of late.

“Go away,” said Patricia. “I don’t want you. I don’t want anyone. You don’t understand.”

“Well, someone’s got to understand,” persisted the boy in a high-handed way. “You aren’t going to be let get in tempers with me and then sulk about it afterwards. Don’t be silly. Sit up.” Patricia’s golden hair lay about her like a veil. He pushed it aside and tried to pull her hands away from her face, for he was getting really a little frightened at her manner. Some instinct taught him that her misery was as exaggerated and bad for her as her temper, and he was dimly afraid of leaving her alone, as was the custom of her little world after one of her outbreaks.

Patricia suddenly sat up. There were black rims round her great sad eyes already and her face was red and white in patches from the pressure of her hands. 82

“You said I hadn’t hurt you,” she gasped, gazing at the dull red mark of which Christopher was already almost unaware.

“Does it show? What a beastly nuisance. I said it didn’t hurt much, Patricia. Not at all now. I’m sorry I was such a baby.” He put his arm round her and she leant her head against him too exhausted to care whether he thought her a baby or not.

“It must be jolly exciting having a temper like that,” he said, thoughtfully. “It wouldn’t be half so bad if you meant it.”

She sat bolt upright and stared at him.

“Why?” she demanded breathlessly.

“Because if you meant it you could take care not to mean it, silly. You’d look out. But you don’t mean it. You didn’t mean to hurt me then till you did it. It’s much worse for you.”

She drew a long breath.

“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 83 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 assured 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 shifting 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 84 slowly down the corridor to CÆsar’s room. He had entirely forgotten about Patricia now and was taken aback by CÆsar’s abrupt inquiry about the mark or his face.

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

“CÆsar, I have something to give you.”

He held out his hand with a sovereign in it.

CÆsar 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, CÆsar. 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 CÆsar, desiring greatly to keep faith with his own integrity, though something in CÆsar’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?”

CÆsar’s face flushed a dusky red. He spoke in a hard, constrained voice.

“Charlotte took one of the sovereigns as a plaything when we were not looking and hid it under the curtain in the window. To her it was only a toy, but to you––”

He made a last effort to keep control of his temper and failed. The storm broke.

“But to you––” he repeated with a curiously stinging quality in his voice as if the words were whipped to white heat by inward wrath—“to you a sovereign is no toy, but a useful commodity, and your code of honour—do you call it that?—is doubtless a 85 very convenient one. It is far too subtle a code for my poor intellect, but since you appear able to justify it to yourself it is no concern of mine.”

Christopher stood still and white under this ruthless attack: all his energies concentrated in keeping that stillness, but at the back of his mind was born a dull pain and sharp wonder, a consciousness of the Law of Consequence by which he must abide, and henceforth accept as a principle of life. There was too great confusion in his mind for him to weigh his instinctive action and subsequent behaviour against what, to Aymer, was the one and only possible code of honour. For the present it was enough that in Aymer’s eyes that action was mean, despicable and contemptible. The Law of Consequence he dimly realised worked from the centre of Aymer’s being and not from the ill-trained centre of his, Christopher’s, individuality.

“In future,” went on Aymer, still too furiously angry to weigh his words or remember they were addressed to a child, “if I have occasion to make any inquiries of you we will have a distinct understanding as to whether we are speaking with the same code or not. You can go.”

Christopher turned blindly away, and was stopped at the door. “As for the sovereign, which must be very precious to you, considering the price you were ready to pay for it, I will have it pierced and put on a chain, so you can wear it round your neck. It would be a pity to lose anything so valuable.”

Christopher turned with indignant protest in every line. However Aymer might talk of their separate codes of honour, he was, nevertheless, dealing out a punishment adequate to the infringement of his own code, and to Christopher it appeared unjust and cruel. For the moment it was in him to remonstrate fiercely, but the words died away, for such a protest must of 86 necessity be based on an acceptance of this divided code, and to that he would not stoop. It was some poor consolation to pay the penalty of a higher law than he was supposed to understand. He turned again to the door and got away before a storm of tears swamped his brave control.

When Charles Aston returned that night he found Aymer in a very irritable mood. Nevil, in his gentle, patient way, had been doing his best to soothe him, but in vain. When Aymer was not irritated, he was bitter and sarcastic, even his greeting to his father was short and cold. It was clear some event in the day had upset his mental equilibrium, and Christopher’s absence (he did not even appear to say “good-night”) gave Mr. Aston a clue to the situation.

Nevil was wading through a book on farm management, which bored him considerably. His part was to read long extracts which Aymer was comparing with some letters in the “Field.” They continued their employment and Mr. Aston sat down to write a letter. From time to time he paused and heard Aymer’s sharp, unreasonable remarks to his brother. A memory of the old bad days came so forcibly to Mr. Aston that he laid aside his pen at last and sat listening with an aching heart. He knew those quick flashes of temper were a sign of irritation brought to a white heat. Presently, after one remark more unjustifiable than ever, Nevil looked across at his father with a little rueful grimace, and seeing how grave was Mr. Aston’s expression he made another valiant effort to keep peace and ignore the abuse, and went on reading. The subject under discussion was the draining of a piece of waste land, and when the long article came to an end, Nevil in his dreamy way summed up the matter by saying it was a very picturesque corner of the estate and a pity to spoil it.

Aymer flung the papers down violently. 87

“That’s all you care for, or are likely to care for,” he said brutally. “I know I might as well let the estate go to the dogs as try and improve it. Once my father and I are dead, you’ll turn it into a damned garden for your own use.”

For one second Nevil’s face was a study in suppression. He got up and walked across the room, his hands shaking.

Mr. Aston spoke sharply and suddenly.

“Aymer, pull yourself together. You are taking advantage of your position. What circumstances do you imagine give you the right to trample on other people’s feelings like this, whenever something or other has put you out? It’s outrageous! Keep your temper better in hand, man.”

It was so obviously deserved, so terribly direct, and at the same time so calculated to hurt, that Nevil turned on his father with reproachful eyes, and then perceiving his face, said no more.

Aymer became suddenly rigid, and lay still with waves of colour rising to and dying from his face, and his hands clenched.

Mr. Aston waited a moment and then said apologetically and hurriedly, “I’m awfully sorry, Aymer.”

“Oh, it had to be done,” responded Aymer, turning his face to him with a rueful smile. “I’m a brute. Nevil, old fellow, you ought to give him a V. C. or something; he is positively heroic.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” retorted his father, blushing for all his fifty-eight years, because of a grain of truth in his son’s words. For indeed it sometimes requires more courage to be brutal to those we love than to be kind to those we hate.

“Go away, Nevil,” continued Mr. Aston good humouredly, “I’ll look after Aymer.”

Nevil departed, with secret relief, the atmosphere was a little too electrical for his liking. 88

When he had gone, Mr. Aston went over to his elder son and sat on the edge of the sofa.

“What’s really the matter, old chap?” he asked gently.

Aymer related the whole history of the sovereign, Christopher’s confession and the subsequent events.

“I dare say he was quite honest about his point of view,” he concluded petulantly, “but because I could not see it I lost my temper with him.”

His father sat thoughtfully considering the carpet.

“It will be a little hard on Christopher,” he said at length, very slowly and without looking up, “if every time he has the misfortune to remind you of his father you lose your temper with him.”

Aymer turned sharply.

“What do you mean, sir?”

“I think,” went on the elder man steadily, “I think, Aymer, it was not only Christopher’s hazy ideas of honour and honesty that angered you, but he forced on your notice the fact that he was his father’s son, that he had in him the germs of that quality which has made his father what he is—a successful man. Isn’t it so?”

Aymer did not answer. It was true, he knew, however great his wish to disown it. Something of the self-dissatisfaction that had numbed poor little Christopher fell to his share. He felt his father was a little hard on him—he could not really understand his relationship to the boy.

“It is not quite fair on Christopher, is it?” said Mr. Aston very gently, “at least that is how it strikes me. I do not want to interfere between you, but I do want you to do yourself full justice in dealing with him.”

Aymer looked suddenly up at his father and laughed. “It is evidently not only Christopher who is in disgrace to-day,” he said ruefully. “I wish I could in 89 turn upbraid you with unfairness, but Christopher has the pull over me there.”

He held out his hand. It was a great concession in Aymer to show even this much demonstration of feeling unasked, and it was appreciated.

“You might say good-night to Christopher when you go upstairs,” Aymer said casually a little later, and his father nodded assent, by no means deceived by the indifferent tone. Both Aymer and Christopher slept the better for his ministrations that night.