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.