“Oh, Christopher, Christopher,” Patricia cried, holding out both hands. “How long you have been! I began to think you never would come again!”
Christopher, taking her hands, felt it was a long two years since they parted and that time had made fair road here meanwhile. His thoughts outpaced his feet no longer, but kept decent step with the light footfall beside him.
Mr. Aston, following, noted it all, and first smiled and then sighed a little. The smile was for them and the little sigh for Aymer waiting within.
He found, however, little reason to repeat his sigh during the next few weeks, for Christopher was in constant attendance on Aymer, and gave but the residue of his time to the rest of the little world. His suspicions as to Aymer’s well-being vanished away, for the latter betrayed by no outward sign the sleepless nights and long days spent in wrestling with intangible dread of impending evil and the return of almost forgotten black hours. Indeed, Christopher’s steady dependable strength and vigorous energy seemed to renew belief and confidence in the man with whom life had broken faith. He was jealously greedy of Christopher’s company, though he sought to hide this under a mask of indifference, and he made a deliberate attempt to keep him near him by the exercise of 167 every personal and social gift he possessed. It was not enough for him to hold his adopted son’s affection by the bond of the past, it was not enough to be loved by force of custom, his present individuality struggled for recognition and won it. Deliberately, skilfully and successfully he bound Christopher to him by force of personality, by reason of being what he was as apart from all he had done.
None of the household grudged him his triumph or resented their own dismissal from attendance in the West Room. The women-kind once more superfluous to Cæsar’s well-being, resumed their wonted routine with generous content.
Patricia’s routine appeared to consist very largely of golf in which she and Geoffry Leverson could undoubtedly give Christopher long odds. Christopher, however, was undaunted, and the few hours he did not spend in Aymer’s company, he spent toiling round the links points behind Patricia, play she never so badly. Geoffry complained bitterly to Patricia in private that she was spoiling her game, but she, indifferent to her handicap, continued to play with Christopher and to ignore promised matches with Geoffry whenever her old playmate chose to set foot on the green.
At length Geoffry could stand it no longer and protested loudly when Christopher challenged her, that it was the third time she had put off a return match. Christopher withdrew his challenge at once and declared he would infinitely rather watch a match. Patricia demurred and pouted, whereupon he sternly insisted that promises must be kept.
She played Geoffry and beat him by one point, secured by a rather vicious putt, then lightly requesting him to take her clubs back to the Club House with his, she summoned Christopher to take her home. Geoffry had not protested again. He took early opportunity 168 to challenge Christopher instead and reaped a small revenge of easy victories, half embittered, half enhanced by Patricia’s plainly expressed annoyance with the vanquished one. He knew she would have condoled with him had he lost.
So the weeks slipped by unnoticed and autumn merged into winter. Christmas came and went—with festivities in which both Patricia and Christopher took active part.
Christopher read and studied, but did nothing definite, and the New Year slipped along with rapid, silent foot. It was Cæsar who at length broke up the pleasant drifting interlude and he did it as deliberately as he did everything else, urged by his haunting desire to see Christopher finally committed to the future he had chosen.