116CHAPTER IX
Christopher continued to visit the Sartins and to find considerable pleasure in Sam’s companionship, who on his few holidays was only too glad to explore the grey river and its innumerable wharfs with Christopher. Sam was already a fair waterman; he at least spent all his scant leisure and scantier pennies in learning that arduous profession.
Once Mr. Aston visited Block D. with Christopher, and lingered behind gossiping to Mrs. Sartin while the boy went to meet Sam, expected home to tea. Sam got nothing out of his mother anent that conversation except the information that Mr. Aston was “a real Christian gentleman, who knew what trouble was, and don’t you make any mistake, but as ’ow Mr. Christopher was a lucky young gentleman.”
Mr. Aston also found time to visit Sam’s master, though on this occasion he was not accompanied by Christopher, who, indeed, chanced to be on the river with Sam Sartin that afternoon.
It must not be imagined that Christopher had no other friends than the humble Sartins. Besides the Wyatt household, half a dozen families with boys of his age welcomed him gladly enough, but though he was on good terms with these and though not one of the boys could afford to despise him as an antagonist in any sport, yet none of them contrived to have more than a very superficial idea of Christopher Aston. They took to him at once, but he remained just the good-natured, jolly acquaintance of the first day, never more, if never less. Christopher, indeed, though he confessed it to no one, not even to Aymer, felt a little cut off from this pleasant clan, who held the same traditions, the same experiences, and who went through117the same training at their various schools, who led indeed a life that differed essentially from Christopher.
He was never conscious of any lack of company. The Astons, old and young, were companions who answered to every need of his energetic mind. He made giant strides in his studies in these days and passed beyond the average into the class of those of real ability. All his well-earned holidays were spent at Marden, where there was always Patricia as a most admirable playfellow.
It was when Christopher was a little over fifteen and Patricia about the same age that the first definite result of their companionship came about.
On the other side of the lake at Marden Court the high road, sunk between a low wall on one side and the upsloping land on the other, ran directly eastward and westward, joining eventually a second Great Road of historic importance to Christopher Aston. The rough ground beyond the road was covered with low scrub, and dwarf twisted hawthorns, with a plentiful show of molehills. Here and there were groups of Scotch firs, and the crest of the hill was wooded with oaks and beeches and a fringe of larches, with here and there a silvery black poplar.
Christopher and Patricia were fond of this rough land that lay beyond the actual park. In early days it had made a glorious stage for “desert islanders,” with the isle-studded lake to bound it, whose further shore for the nonce melted into vague mistiness. Later on, when desert islands were out of fashion, it was still good ground to explore, and through the woods away over the hill one came to a delectable wide-spread country, where uncultivated down mingled with cornfields and stretches of clover, a country bounded by long, spacious curving lines of hill and dale, tree-capped ridges and bare contours, with here and there the gash of a chalk pit gleaming white.118
Just at a point where a stretch of down-land ran into a little copse, was a small barrow. A round green mound, memento of a forgotten history that was real and visible enough in its own day, as real as the two children of “the Now,” with whom the spot was a favourite camping ground.
Patricia, who knew all about barrows from Nevil, used to invent wonderful stories of this one, to which Christopher lent a critical attention, adding here and there a practical touch.
It was he who first suggested exploring the mound, and one day they dragged heavy spades thither and worked hard for an hour or two without great result, when suddenly Patricia began shovelling back her pile of brown earth with feverish haste.
“I don’t like it. It is horrid,” she panted in return to Christopher’s protests. The idea of desecration was so strong on her that when her companion still indignantly protested, the black passion leapt up to life and she flung round at him.
It was then that Christopher made his discovery. He saw the mad flare in her face and flung his strong arms round her from behind, and held her against him with her hands in his gripped fast to her breast.
“Steady on, Patricia,” he said sharply, “don’t get frightened. You aren’t going to get wild this time.”
There was no alarm or anger in his voice and a queer, new note of firmness and force. She struggled ineffectually a moment and then came the dangerous quietness that waited a chance.
He could feel her muscles strained and rigid still.
“Patricia,” he said quite loudly, “drop it. I won’t have it, do you hear? Youcanstop if you like now, and you’ve got to.”
She bent back her head and looked at him, her child face old and worn and disfigured with her still burning fury. She looked right in his eyes: his met hers steady119and hard as flints, and through the blind passion of her look he saw her soul leap up, appealing, piteous, and by heaven-taught instinct, he answered that.
“It’s all right, Patricia, you are safe enough. I’m not going to let you make a fool of yourself, my dear; don’t be afraid. Stop thinking. Look at the dark shadows over there—on the cornfield. They’ll cut that next week.”
Little by little he loosed his grasp on her as he felt the tension slacken, and presently she stood free, still dazed and bewildered. Christopher picked up a spade and whistled.
“All the same, you are right, Patricia,” he said thoughtfully, “it does seem a shame to disturb the old Johnny, and creepy too. I’ll fill up.”
He continued to work hard, watching her out of the corner of his eye, but talking cheerfully. Presently she took up her spade and made a poor pretence of helping him, but she said nothing till they had done and he suggested a return.
“Do you mind resting a bit, first?”
Her subdued voice called for a scrutinising glance. Then he dropped his spade and flung himself on the grass by her side. A little wind swept up the downland to them, making the brown benets nod in a friendly fashion. The purple scabious, too, nodded cheerfully. Patricia picked one and began stroking it with her fingers. Christopher lay on his back and whistled again softly, watching a lark, as he had watched one five years ago, when a small boy, by the side of the Great Road.
“Christopher, how did you do it?” demanded Patricia abruptly.
“Do what?”
“Stop me.”
“I didn’t. You stopped yourself.”
“I never have before.”120
“Then you ought to have. You see you can, if you only will think.”
“Ican’tthink.”
“But you did,” he insisted, with some reason.
“Because you made me. I’d have been much angrier with anyone else—it was like—like—holding on to a rock, when the water was sucking one away.”
“Bosh,” said Christopher, sitting upright suddenly.
“Look here, Patricia, it was only that I made you take time to think: no one, even you (he put in rudely enough), could be silly enough to make such a little idiot of yourself if youthoughta moment. Everyone seems to take it for granted you’ll go on being—stupid—or else they are afraid to stop you, and I—well I won’t have it, Patricia, that’s all. You must jolly well learn to stop.”
His boyish words were rougher than his voice, just as his real feeling in the matter was deeper than his expression of it, and secretly he was a little proud of his achievement and felt a subtle proprietorship over his companion that was not displeasing.
Patricia slipped her arm in his and leant her golden head against him.
“Christopher, I want to tell you all I can remember about it. I don’t know what anyone else has told you.”
“All right, fire away,” returned Christopher resignedly.
“The only thing I can remember at all about my father is seeing him get into rages like that with my mother. I can remember him quite well, at all sorts of times; he was very big and fair, and splendid, but always everything I remember ends in that. And I can remember getting in a rage when I was quite little and seeing my mother turn white, and she jumped up and ran out of the room crying out to Renata. My father was killed hunting when I was six years old and mother121died when I was nine years old. Renata was married then, you know, so I came to live with her and Nevil. But always I remembered when I was naughty like that, my mother used to look frightened and go away and our old nurse used to come and scold me and watch me till I could have killed her. Renata, darling Renata, used to talk to me after and make me promise to try and be good, but she, too, was really afraid when I was bad. I suppose they had both had so bad a time with father.” She stopped, gazing out at a misty half-understood tragedy, whose very dimness woke a faint echo of terror in her heart, for she was as surely the daughter of the woman who had suffered as of the man who had caused the suffering.
“That’s all,” said Patricia, with a sudden movement, “everyone always takes it as part of me. Nevil says I’ll outgrow it. I don’t—and Renata cries.”
“And I scold you. Anyhow, it isn’t part of you in my eyes, but just a beastly sort of thing which you let get hold of you, and then it isn’t you at all. It’s all rot inheriting things, though of course, if youthinkso––” this young philosopher on the much-debated subject shrugged his shoulders.
“But I don’t think so, I don’t want to think so,” cried poor Patricia; “it’s just because you don’t think it that you made me feel I can stop it. Oh, Christopher, go on believing I can help it, please.”
“But I do. Of course I do. It’s a beastly shame anyone ever suggested anything else to you. Come along home, Patricia, it will be tea-time.”
This was the establishing of a covenant between the two. Whether it was from the suggestion or the dominant will of the boy himself, or both causes combined, Patricia began to gather strength against her terrible inheritance and, at all events in Christopher’s presence, actually did gain some show of control over her fits of passion.122
The first of these times, about six months after the covenant on the barrow, Nevil was present. Renata and one of the children had been there also, but Renata had seen the queer pallor creep up in her sister’s face before even Christopher had guessed and had straightway hurried off with Master Max, a proceeding which usually precipitated events.
Then Christopher flung down his work and caught her clenched hand in his.
“Stop it, Patricia,” he said imperiously.
Nevil held his breath. It was a tradition in the Connell family that interference invariably led to a catastrophe. In his indolent way he had taken this belief on trust, the “laissez faire” policy being well in accordance with his easy nature.
However, tradition was clearly wrong, for after one ineffectual struggle, Patricia stood still and presently said something to Christopher that Nevil did not catch, but he saw the boy free her and Patricia remained silently looking out of the window. Christopher turned to pick up his book, and for the first time remembered Nevil was present and grew rather red. Nevil had watched them both with a speculative eye, for the moment an historian of the future rather than of the past. He said nothing, however, but having discoursed a while on the possibility of skating next day, sauntered away.
He came to anchor eventually in Aymer’s room, and sat smoking by the fire, his long legs crossed and the contemplative mood in the ascendency. His brother knew from experience that Nevil had something to say, and would say it in his own inimitable way if left alone.
“Christopher’s a remarkable youth,” he said presently.
“Have you just discovered it?” said Aymer drily.
“He is no respecter of persons,” pursued Nevil123quietly; “by the way, has it ever struck you, Aymer, that he’ll marry some day?”
“There’s time before us, yet. I hope. He isn’t quite sixteen, Nevil.”
“Yes, but there it is,” he waved his hand vaguely. “I think of it for myself when I look at Max sometimes.”
Aymer wanted to laugh out loud, which would have reduced his brother’s communicative mood to mere frivolity, and he wished to get at what lay behind, so he remained grave.
“There’s Patricia, too,” went on Nevil in the same vague way. “She, too, will do it some day. It’s lamentable, but unavoidable. And talking of Patricia brings me back to Christopher’s remarkableness.”
He related the little scene he had just witnessed in his slow, clear way, made no comment thereon, but poked the fire meditatively, when he had finished.
Aymer, too, was silent.
“You are her sole guardian, are you not?” he asked presently.
“With Renata. I wonder, Aymer, if anyone could have controlled that unhappy Connell?”
Aymer ignored the irrelevant remark.
“Renata does not count. Nevil, would you have any objections—as her guardian?”
Nevil strolled across to his brother and sat on the edge of his couch. He took up a sandy kitten, descendant of one of Christopher’s early pets, and began playing with it, attempting to wrap it up in his handkerchief.
“If you would mind, we will guard against the remote contingency at which you hint, by keeping Christopher away when he is a bit older,” said Aymer steadily.
“My dear Cæsar, it’s not I who might object—it’s you. You know what Patricia is, poor child. I124thought it might not fit in with your plans. She hasn’t a penny of her own, though, of course, Renata and I will see to that.” He knotted the handkerchief at the four corners and swung it to and fro to the astonishment of the imprisoned kitten.
“Christopher has nothing either,” said Aymer almost sharply, “and I shall see to that, with your permission, Nevil. That unfortunate kitten!”
Nevil released it. It scampered over the floor, hid under a chair and then rushed back at him and scrambled up his leg.
“Indeed, if things turn out as I hope, I shall have to provide for him,” went on Aymer steadily, “indeed I wish to do so anyway. It will mean less for Max, but––”
“What a beastly ugly kitten,” remarked Nevil suddenly with great emphasis, placing the animal very gently on the floor again.
“Don’t swear, Nevil,” retorted Aymer with a little ghost of a smile.
“Very well,” answered his brother meekly, “but it is. Aymer, don’t be an ass, old fellow—Max won’t want anything.”
He lounged out presently before Aymer could make up his mind to vex him further with the question of Max’s inheritance.
The property set aside for the use of the son and heir of the Astons provided a very handsome income, the original capital of which could not be touched. In early days Aymer had found the income barely sufficient for his wants. He spent it freely now—the Astons were no misers, but his father and he managed to nearly double the original capital and this was Aymer’s to do with as he would. Apparently he meant it for Christopher. It was one of Nevil’s little weaknesses that he could not endure any reminder of the fact that to him and his small son would the line descend,125and that his brother’s was but a life interest, and his position as his father’s heir a merely formal matter of no actual value. Poor Nevil, who was the least self-seeking of men, could not endure any reminder of his elder brother’s real condition of life.
126CHAPTER X
There was a certain princely building in Birmingham where all the business connected with the name of Peter Masters was transacted. On each floor were long rooms full of clerks bending over rows of desks, carrying on with automatic regularity the affairs of each separate concern. Thus on the ground floor the Lack Vale Coal Company worked out its grimy history, on the second floor the Brunt Rubber Company had command, on the fifth the great Steel Axle Company, the richest and most important of all, lodged royally. But on the very topmost floor of all were the offices devoted to the personal affairs of Peter Masters, and through them, shut in by a watchful guard of head clerks, was the innermost sanctum, the nest of the great spider whose intricate web stretched over so great a circumference, the central point from which radiated the vast circle of concerns, and to which they ultimately returned materialised into precious metal—the private office, in short, of Peter Masters.
The heads of each separate floor were picked men—great men away from the golden glamour of the master mind—each involved in the success or failure of his own concern, all partners in their respective firms, but partners who accepted the share allotted to them without question, who served faithfully or disappeared from the ken of their fellow-workers, who were nominally accountable to their respective “company,” but actually dependent on the word and will of the great man up above them. None but these men and his own special clerks ever approached him.127Some junior clerk or obscure worker might pass him occasionally in a passage, or await the service of the lift at his pleasure; they might receive a sharp glance, a demand for name and department, but they knew no more of this controller of their humble destinies.
It was a marvellous organisation, a perfected system, a machine whose parts were composed of living men.
The owner of the machine cared much for the whole and nothing for the parts. When some screw or nut failed to answer its purpose, it was cast aside and another substituted. There was no question, no appeal. Nuts and screws are cheap. The various parts were well cared for, well oiled, just so long as they fulfilled their purpose; if they failed in that—well, the running of the machine was not endangered for sentiment.
Apart from this business, however, Peter Masters was a man of sentiment, though the workers in Masters’s Building would have scorned the idea. He had expended this sentiment on two people, one, his wife, who had died in Whitmansworth Union, the other Aymer Aston, his cousin, who on the moment of his declared union with Elizabeth Hibbault, had fallen victim to so grim a tragedy. His “sentiment” had never spread beyond these two people, certainly never to the person of his unseen child, whom, however, he was prepared to “discover” in his own good time.
His wife had left him within a year of his marriage, and whatever investigations he may have privately made, they were sub rosa, and he had persistently refused to make public ones. She would come back, he believed, with an almost childish simplicity in the lure of his great fortune,—if she needed money,—or him. That she should suffer real poverty or hardship, lack the bare necessities of life, never for a moment occurred128to him. Why should she, when his whole fortune was at her disposal—for her personal needs?
People who knew him a little said he had resented the slight to his money more than the scandal to himself when Mrs. Masters disappeared. They were in the wrong. Peter’s pride had been very cruelly hurt: she had not only scorned his gold, but spurned his affection, which was quite genuine and deep so far as it went, but since he had never taken the world into his confidence in the matter of his having any affection to bestow, he as carefully kept his own counsel as to the amount it had been hurt, and continued his life as if the coming and going of Mrs. Masters was a matter of as little concern as the coming or going of any other of the immortal souls and human bodies who got caught in the toils of the great Machine.
As for the expected child, let her educate it after her own foolish, pretty fancy. When it was of an age to understand matters, the man of Power would slip in and claim his own, and he never doubted but that the dazzle of his gold would outshine the vapid illusions of the mother, and procure for him the homage of his offspring. Such was the mingled simplicity and cuteness of the man that he never for one moment allowed to himself there was any other possible reverse to this picture, this, the only thought of revenge he harboured, its very sting to be drawn by his own good-natured laugh at her “fancies.” So he worked on in keen enjoyment, and the dazzle of the gold grew brighter as the years passed away unnoticed.
Peter Masters sat in the innermost sanctuary of the Temple of Mammon. It was a big corner room with six windows facing south and east, with low projecting balustrades outside which hid the street far down below. The room had not a severely business-like aspect,129it rather suggested to the observer the word business was translatable into other meanings than work. Thus the necessary carpet was more than a carpet in that it was a work of Eastern art. The curtains were more than mere hangings to exclude light or draught, but fabrics to delight the eye. The plainness of the walls was but a luxury to set off the admirable collection of original sketches and clever caricatures that adorned them. One end of the room was curtained off to serve as a dining-room on necessity. No sybarite could have complained of the comfort of the chairs or the arrangement of the light. The great table at which Peter Masters sat, was not only of the most solid mahogany, but it was put together by an artist in joinery—a skilful, silent servant to its owner, offering him with a small degree of friction every possible convenience a busy man could need. The only other furniture in the room was a gigantic safe, or rather a series of little safes cased in mahogany which filled one wall like a row of school lockers, each labelled clearly with a letter.
Peter Masters leant back in his chair and gazed straight before him for one moment—just that much space of time he allowed before the next problem of the day came before him—then he rang one of the row of electric bells suspended overhead.
Its short, imperious summons resounded directly in the room occupied by the head clerk of the Lack Vale Coal Company, and that worthy, without waiting to finish the word he begun writing, slipped from his stool and hurried to the office door of his chief, where he knocked softly and entered in obedience to a curt order. The room was a simplified edition of the room on the top floor; everything was there, but in a less luxurious degree, and the result was insignificant. The manager of the Lack Vale Coal Company, who130sat at the table, was a hard-featured, thin-lipped man of forty-five, with thin hair already turning grey, and pince-nez dangling from his button hole.
“Mr. Masters’s bell, sir,” said the clerk apologetically.
Mr. Foilet nodded and his thin lips tightened. He gathered up a sheaf of carefully arranged papers and went out by a private door to the central lift.
Peter greeted him affably and waved his hand to the opposite chair.
“You have Bennin’s report at last?”
“Yes. He apologised for the delay, but thought it useless to send it until he had investigated the gallery itself.”
“That’s the business of his engineers. If he is not satisfied with them he should get others.”
Mr. Foilet bowed, selected a paper from the sheaf he carried and handed it over. Peter Masters perused it with precisely the same kindly smiling countenance he wore when studying a paper or deciphering a friendly epistle. It was not a friendly letter at all, it was a curt, bald statement that a certain rich gallery in a certain mine was unsafe for working, though the opinion of two specialists differed on the point. The two reports were enclosed, and when all three reports were read Peter asked for the wage sheet of the mine. There was no cause of complaint there.
“The articles of the last settlement between the firm and the men have been rigorously adhered to?” questioned Masters, flinging down the paper.
“Rigorously. I will say they have taken no advantage of their success.”
Peter smiled. “It is for us to do that. Mr. Weirs pronounces the gallery fit for working. The seam is one of the richest we have. What improvements can be done to the ventilation and propping before Monday are to be done, but the gallery is to be worked131then, until the new shaft is completed. Then we will reconsider it.”
Again Mr. Foilet bowed, but his hand fingered his glasses nervously.
“And if the men refuse?” he questioned in a low voice, with averted eyes.
Peter Masters waved his hand.
“There are others. Men who receive wages like that must expect to have a certain amount of danger to face. Danger is the spice of life.” He leant back in his chair, humming a little tune and watched Mr. Foilet with smiling eyes. Mr. Foilet was wondering whether his chief was personally fond of spice, but he knew better than to say more. He left the room with a vague uneasy feeling at his heart. “A nice concern it will be if anything happens before the New Shaft’s ready,” he muttered; “if it wasn’t for his wonderful luck, I’d have refused.”
So he thought: but in reality he would have done no such thing.
The manager of the Stormby Foundry, which was a private property of Mr. Masters’s, and no company, was the next visitor. He was a tall lank Scotchman with a hardy countenance and a soft heart when not fretted by the roll of the Machine. The question he brought was concerning the selling of some land in the neighbourhood of the works, for the erection of cottages.
“Surely you need no instructions on that point, Mr. Murray,” said Peter a little more curtly than he had spoken to Mr. Foilet.
“There are two offers,” said the Scotchman quietly. “Tennant will give £150 and Fortman £200.”
“Then there is no question.”
“Tennant will build decent cottages of good material and with proper foundations, and Fortman—well, you know what Fortman’s hovels are like.”132
“No, I don’t,” said Peter drily. “He has never been my landlord.”
Mr. Murray appeared to swallow something, probably a wish, with difficulty.
“They are mere hovels pretending to be villas.”
“No one’s obliged to live in them.”
“There are no others,” persisted Mr. Murray desperately, imperilling his own safety for the cause.
Masters frowned ominously.
“Mr. Murray,” he said, “as I have before remarked, you are too far-sighted. Your work is to sell the ground for the benefit of the company, which, I may remind you, is for your benefit also. You have not to build the cottages or live in them. If the people don’t like them they needn’t take them. I do not profess to house the people. I pay them accordingly. They can afford to live in decent houses if they like.”
“If they can get them,” remarked the heroic Mr. Murray.
Peter smiled, his anger apparently having melted away.
“Let them arrange it with Fortman, and keep your obstinacy for more profitable business, Murray, and you’ll be as rich as I am some day.”
There was nothing apparently offensive in the words, yet the speaker seemed a singularly unlovable person as he spoke them, and Murray did not smile at the compliment, but went out with a grave air.
Neither he nor his business lingered on Peter’s mind once the door had closed behind him. Peter got up and lounged to the window. He stood a while looking down into the street below with its crowd of strangely foreshortened figures. On the opposite side of the wide street was a shop where mechanical toys were sold, a paradise for boys. As Peter watched, a chubby-faced, stout little man with a tall, lanky boy at his side came to a stand before the windows. Peter133knew the man to be one of the hardest-headed, shrewdest men in the iron trade, and he guessed the boy was his son. Both figures disappeared within the shop, the elder with evident reluctance, the younger with assured expectation. Peter waited a long time—a longer period than he would have supposed he had to spare, had he thought of it. They emerged at last in company with a big parcel, hailed a hansom and drove away. Peter looked at the clock and chuckled. “To think Coblan is that sort of fool. Well, that youngster will add little to the fortunes of Coblan and Company. Toys!” He turned away from the window, and, seated again at his desk, began to scribble down some dates on a scrap of paper. Then he leant back in his chair thoughtfully.
“Hibbault says that boy has just got a rise in that berth of his in Liverpool. I’ll let him have a year or so more to prove his grit. I suppose Hibbault’s to be trusted, but I might write to the firm and ask how he gets on! However, Aymer’s boy shall have the vacancy!”
Therefore he took up his pen again and wrote the following brief letter:
Princes Building, Birmingham, April 10.
Dear Aymer:—
Are you going to ’prentice that boy of yours to me or not? I’ve an opening now in the Steel Axle Company, if you like to take it.
Yours,Peter Masters.
137CHAPTER XI
Despite his honest intention never to stand between Christopher and any fate that might serve to draw him into connection with his father, Aymer had a hard fight to master his keen desire to put Peter’s letter in the fire and say nothing about it. Surely, after all, he had the best right to say what his adopted charge’s future should be. It was he who had rescued him from obscurity, who had lavished on him the love and care his selfish, erratic father, for his own ambitious ends, denied him. Aymer believed, moreover, that a career under Peter’s influence would mean either the blunting if not the utter destruction of every generous and admirable quality in the boy, or a rapid unbalanced development of those socialistic tendencies, the seeds of which were sown by his mother and nurtured in the hard experience of his early days. Besides this, Peter’s interest in the boy was probably a mere freak, or at the best, sprang from a desire to serve his cousin, unless by any remote chance he had stumbled on a clue to Christopher’s identity.
This last suspicion wove itself like a black thread into the grey woof of Aymer’s existence. His whole being by now had become concentrated in the boy’s life. It was a renewal of youth, hopes, ambitions, again possible in the person of this child, and for the second time a fierce, restless jealousy of his cousin began to stir in the inner depths of Aymer’s being, as fire which may yet break into life beneath the grey, piled-up ashes which conceal it.
He sought help and advice from none and fought hard alone for his own salvation through the long138watches of a black night—fought against the jealousy that prompted him to hedge Christopher about with precautions and restrictions which, however desirable they might seem to his finite wisdom, yet were, he knew, only the outcome of his smouldering jealousy, and might well grow to formidable barriers for Christopher to climb in later years. Aymer fought, too, for that sense of larger faith that in the midst of careful action yet leaves room for the hand of God and does not confound the little ideas of the builder with the vast plan of the Great Architect.
So the letter—the little fact which stood for such great possibilities—was shown to Christopher, to whom it was a mere nothing, to be tossed aside with scorn.
“I don’t want to be under him,” he commented indignantly, “I don’t care about his old axles,” and then because Cæsar was silent and he felt himself in the wrong, he apologised.
“All the same, I don’t want to go to him unless you particularly wish it, Cæsar,” he insisted.
But Cæsar did not answer directly.
“You are certain you want to be an engineer?” he asked at length.
“Certain,—only—” Christopher stopped, went over to the window and looked out.
They were in London and it was an evening in early spring. There was a faint primrose glow in the sky and a blackbird was whistling at the end of the garden. The hum of the great town was as part of the silence of the room.
Now at last must come the moment when Christopher must speak plainly of his darling purpose that had been striving for expression these many months, that purpose which had grown out of a childish fancy in the long ago days when his mother and he toiled along the muddy wearisome roads, or wended painfully139through choking white dust under a blazing sun––
“Mother, how does roads get made here in the country, are they made like in London?”
“Yes, Jim, they were made somewhere by men, not over well, I think, for walkers such as we are.”
“I’ll make roads when I’m big,” announced Jim, “real good ones that you can walk on easily.”
So Christopher broke his purpose to Cæsar abruptly.
“I want to be a Road Engineer.”
“A what?”
“A Roadmaker. To make high roads,—not in towns, but across countries. Roads that will be easy to travel on and will last.” Again he stopped, embarrassed, for the vision before him which he only half saw, made him hot and confused. Yet it was a good vision, perhaps that was why—a picture of countless toiling human beings travelling on his roads all down the coming ages, knowing them for good roads, and praising the maker. But he was a boy and was abashed at the vision and hoped Cæsar did not guess at it. Cæsar, however, saw it all more clearly than Christopher himself and was not abashed but well content.
The boy went back to Cæsar’s side. The thing was done, spoken of, made alive, and now he could plead for it, work to gain his end,—also there was a glow in his face and a new eagerness in his manner.
“Oh, Cæsar, do say it’s possible. I always wanted to do it, even when I was a little chap, and watched men breaking stones on the road.”
“It’s quite possible, only it will want working out. You must go abroad—France—Germany—I must see where to place you.”140
“Yes, I must learn how they are made everywhere, and then—then there must be roads to be made somewhere—in new countries if not here.”
They talked it out earnestly; Cæsar himself caught the boy’s enthusiasm, and the moment Mr. Aston came in he too was drawn into the discussion and offered good advice.
Thus Christopher’s future was decided upon as something to be worked out quite independent of Peter Masters and his millions. Perhaps because he had seen the vision which covered Christopher with shy confusion, Aymer became very prosaic and practical over the details, and Mr. Aston was the only one of the trio who gave any more thought to the boy’s dream on its sentimental side. He used to sit in the evenings watching the two poring over maps, letters and guidebooks, thinking far thoughts for them both, occasionally uttering them.
“I wonder,” he remarked one night, “if you know what a lucky young man you are, Master Christopher, not only in having a real wish concerning your own future—which is none too common a lot—but in being free to follow it.”
Christopher looked up from the map he was studying.
“Yes, I know I’m lucky, St. Michael. It must be perfectly horrible to have to be something one does not want to be. I suppose that’s why lots of people never get on in the world. It seems beastly unfair.”
“Yet I’ve known men to succeed at work for which they had no original aptitude,” returned Mr. Aston quietly.
“Mightn’t they have succeeded better at what they did like?”
“That is beside the mark, so that they did not fail altogether. I knew a soldier once,” he went on dreamily, “just a private. A good chap. He was a141soldier because he was born and bred in the midst of a regiment, but his one passion was music. He taught himself a little instead of learning his drill. In the end he deserted and joined a German band. That argues nothing for his musical taste, you say. He just thought it a stepping-stone, but it was a tombstone. He was quite a smart soldier, too.”
“Well, I think it was jolly hard lines on him to have to be a soldier at all, if he didn’t like it. He wanted a Cæsar to help him out. I think all fellows ought to have a chance, there should be someone or something to say, ‘what do you want to be?’”
“You’d be surprised how few could answer. Prove your point yourself anyway, my dear boy. Succeed.”
“I mean to,” said Christopher with shut teeth and an intonation that reminded both men of Peter Masters himself.
“We are all of us Roadmakers of one kind or another,” went on Mr. Aston meditatively, “making the way rougher or smoother for those who come after us. Happy if we only succeed in rolling in a few of the stones that hurt our own feet.”
“Youarerather like a steam roller,” remarked Aymer quietly, “it hadn’t struck me before.”
Mr. Aston rumpled his hair distractedly and Christopher giggled.
“I wasn’t talking of myself at all,” said Mr. Aston hastily. “I was merely thinking of you making things smooth for Christopher. You are much more like a steam roller than I am. You are bigger.”
Christopher began to laugh helplessly, and Aymer protested rather indignantly.
“I deny the likeness. But if rolling has to be done, it is better to do it heavily, I suppose. Whose roads shall we roll, Christopher?”
Christopher looked up, suddenly grave.142
“What do you mean, Cæsar?”
“You say everyone should have a chance and my father insists we are bound by some unknown Board of Guardians to level our neighbours’ roads, so where will you start?”
“On Sam Sartin!”
He sat upright, his face glowing, looking straight at Cæsar. Cæsar’s tone might be flippant, but if he meant what Christopher supposed him to mean, he must not let the golden opportunity slip.
“I thought Sam was in a greengrocer’s shop,” said Cæsar in a drawling, indifferent manner.
“So he is. But would anyone be in a greengrocer’s shop if they could be in anything else? When we were kids, he and I, we used to plan we’d be Lord Mayors—A greengrocer!”
“An honest and respectable calling, if a little dirty,” murmured Mr. Aston. “The greengrocers, I mean not the Lord Mayors.”
“Sam’s got a head on his shoulders. He’s really awfully sharp. He could be anything he liked,” urged Christopher. “Could you help him, Cæsar?”
“You might if you liked.”
“Make what I like of him?”
“No. Most emphatically, no. Make what he likes of himself. A crossing sweeper, if he fancies that. Buy him a crossing and a broom, you know.”
“But really, what he likes; not joking?”
“Sober earnest. I’ll see to-morrow, and tell you. Now, will you kindly find that place you were looking for when we were so inopportunely interrupted with irrelevant moralisings.”
“I won’t do it again,” said his father deprecatingly. “I apologise.”
Aymer gravely bowed his head and the subject was dropped. But when they were alone that evening, Mr. Aston reverted to it.143
“What are you going to do with Sam Sartin?” he asked, “and why are you doing it?”
“Sam must settle the first question himself,” said Aymer, idly drawing appalling pictures of steamrollers on the fly-leaf of a book, “as to the second—” he paused in his drawing, put the book down and turned to his father.
“Christopher’s got the makings of a rabid socialist in him. If he’s not given good data to go on he will be a full disciple when he’s twenty-one, all theories and dreams, caught in a mesh of words. I don’t want that. It’s natural too, for, after all, Christopher is not of the People, any more than—than his mother was.” He examined his pencil critically. “She always credited them with the fine aspirations and pure passions of her own soul, instead of allowing them the very reasonable and just aspirations and ambitions that they have and should be able to reach. Sam may be an exception, but I don’t think he is. I’m quite ready to give Christopher a free hand to help him, provided he knows what he wants himself.”
“To provide an object lesson for Christopher?”
“Yes, precisely.”
“Is it quite fair on Sam?”
Aymer looked up quickly.
“He benefits anyway.”
“Possibly; but you do not care about that.”
“Christopherdoes.”
“Ah, yes. Christopher does. That is worth considering. Otherwise––”
“Otherwise?”
“How far are we justified in experimenting with our fellow-creatures, I wonder?”