CHAPTER XXX
Patricia sat by the fire in her little sitting-room seeking for a plausible excuse to return to Constantia as soon as might be. The grey weather, the strange sense of impending events weighed on her, she knew. She was in the mood when the old evil might flash up again, and for this reason she kept away from her sister a while, hoping to nurse herself into a better mind before evening. Christopher had gone again in his usual abrupt way. Presumably Cæsar understood, but she found herself wishing she also held his confidence. She was hungry for a repetition of that first evening as a starved child is hungry for a crust, when the better things seem as far away as heaven. She must go back to Constantia when she could frame a suitable reason for her capricious movements. She was much safer there, beside the considerate friend, who kept the surface of life in a pleasant ripple, and never seemed to look into the depths or ask her what she found there to trouble her, as dear little sympathetic Renata did occasionally. Yet how could she go if Christopher were really coming back to-day, as St. Michael said, and the future held any possibility of another golden hour? The force of her deep love turned back on herself, broke through spirit and heart and let loose in her mind strange imaginings, alternate glimpses of a heaven or hell that had no relationship with tradition. She put her hands over her face and kept quite still in the grip of a sudden agony that made her physically cold and faint and exhausted. It would pass as it had passed before, yet was she forever to be at the mercy of this torturing realisation of empty years and eternal loss? Did Christopher love her or not? The assured “yes” and the positive “no” were as two 332 shuttlecocks tossed over her strained mind by the breath of circumstance. Her own erroneous idea that her still unconquered passion kept them apart was breeding morbid misery for her, as all false beliefs must do. She had kept herself under control to-day by dint of isolation, and the inadequacy of that course filled her with self-contempt. In her solitary fight against the life forces within and without, she was getting worsted. She knew she resisted the invasion of their hours of depression with less courage than of old. It did not seem to matter so greatly if there were nothing to be won from life, and she was very tired. It had been a mistake to come to Marden at all, there was too much time to think there. She returned to that fact eventually. The afternoon wore on and she fell into a lethargy with no desire to escape it, and did not hear Christopher’s motor arrive.
Christopher for once paused in the hall, instead of going straight to Aymer’s room, as was the invariable rule, after even a day’s absence.
“Where is Mrs. Aston?” he asked the footman, who replied vaguely, when Renata herself appeared. But it was not Renata that Christopher wanted.
“Where is Patricia?” he questioned with more truth.
“Upstairs in her room, I think. She seems rather worried and tired, Christopher. Do you want her?”
There was a note of anxiety in Renata’s gentle voice. She was always nervous and anxious if she fancied Patricia was worried, struggling to stand between her and the petty annoyances which were supposed to be so irresistibly maddening to a true Connell.
“Yes, I want her.” He smiled as he said it. “But I’ll go to her. Don’t trouble.”