322CHAPTER XXIX
“It does not seem to me a very great thing to ask in the face of things.”
Mr. Saunderson dangled his eyeglasses and regarded Christopher with a dubious air.
“I want three days to consider the matter,” continued Christopher impatiently. “Where is the difficulty? You don’t seem to remember you are asking me to give up my chosen life and work and take on a job that I loathe.”
If Mr. Saunderson’s face had been capable of expressing more than displeasure, it would have done so, but he was of no plastic build, mind or body, and “displeasure” was the nearest he could get to active anger.
“You have a singular way of regarding what most men would think overpowering good luck, Mr. Masters.”
Christopher turned sharply.
“You at least cannot compel me to take that name. It has never been mine and never will be.”
“Gently, gently, young man. I am willing to make every allowance for your perturbation, but really, in speaking of my late client ...” he stopped with a shake of the head.
“I was speaking of a name, not of him, Mr. Saunderson. However, I apologise. Once more, will you let the whole matter stand still for three days. I don’t mean to accept the thing, you know, but I can’t argue it out now. I will meet you in town on Wednesday.”
“If you insist, there is nothing more to be said of course,” returned Mr. Saunderson, huffily. “As to323your refusing your own rights, that will be less simple than you imagine, but I shall hope you will soon view the matter in another light.”
“There was no provision made in case the inheritor should refuse or not be available?”
Christopher confronted him suddenly with the question, and the poor man, who was as completely off his balance by Christopher’s incomprehensible reception of his tidings, as that young man himself, was evidently confused.
“There were no instructions at all beyond the memorandum stating his wife and child were last heard of in Whitmansworth Union.”
“But in the former will, which you say was destroyed?”
“I am not at liberty to divulge anything that might be contained in that document.”
“There is nothing to prevent your acting on such instructions at your own prompting,” Christopher insisted bluntly.
Mr. Saunderson looked at him critically. “That is an ingenious suggestion Mr. ...” he paused.
“Aston,” said Christopher. “It’s the name those who have treated me as a son gave me, and I see no obligation to change it.”
The lawyer rose.
“Then we are to defer further discussion till Wednesday?”
“Until Wednesday. In town, not here.”
He left with Mr. Shakleton in his wake, and Christopher was at last alone and free to weigh if he would the weight of thisstupendousburden, which he resolutely decided was not his to bear. He stood looking out of the window at the still driving mist and had to drag his thoughts back from the external aspect of things to the inner matters he must face. But there was no lucidity in his mind, nothing was clear to him324but his fierce resentment against the dead man, and a passionate pity for a faded woman.
“It was the beauty of grace rather than feature....” He was stung with intolerable shame for the manhood he must share with one who had wrought such havoc in the woman he was most bound to protect from herself, as well as from the world. The risks and chances of those early days flickered before him. He had been abandoned to such for some vague ultimate good to the colossal idea of fortune which neither he nor its late possessor could spend. Was he more bound to take it and its cares to himself than its author was bound to care for his own flesh and blood? Anger clouded his reason and he knew it. Yet if he could not think coherently on the matter, of what use were the three days of grace he had claimed? He could not endure company at present, and the four walls of his room were as a prison. At last he sent a hasty message to the motor house, tossed a few necessaries into a bag and wrote a note to Cæsar. “Dear Cæsar, I’ve got to make up my mind about this and I must do it alone, so to come to some decision I’m going off in the car. I’ll be back when I’ve got the thing straight in my mind. Tell St. Michael and Nevil about it, but if you can help it don’t let anyone else know.—Christopher Aston.”
He drove slowly down the drive, out into the highroad and, turning westward, sped away into the misty distance.
A great stillness fell on Aymer when Christopher left him. He had lived so long under the shadowy fear of the thing that had now happened, that it was hard to credit the fear had passed in fulfilment. He had been forced back to face the past, and, behold, the terror of it was gone. He could only measure the full value of the effort he had made by the languor and listlessness that now wrapped him round, as a child325who had overtaxed his strength and must needs rest. A hazy doubt crept into his mind as to what it was he had so dreaded—the resuscitation of the past, or Christopher’s reception of it. In either case the fear had faded as some phantom form that melted in daylight.
He stumbled on one thought with vague wonder. No barrier had been raised between him and his adopted son: instead he found the only barrier had been erected by his own lack of strength to face that truth until the inexorable hand of God forced him to the issue.
As to the future he recognised that might be left to Christopher, whose whole life, since Aymer took him, had been a preparation for this situation. His long struggle to keep a grip on life was ebbing fast, it was good to leave decisions in another’s hands, to rest, and accept.
When Mr. Aston returned Cæsar gave him Christopher’s note with a brief remark.
“Saunderson has been.”
The note, short as it was, told the rest. Mr. Aston looked anxiously at his son, but Aymer met his eyes with a quiet smile.
“I’m glad you were away, St. Michael. You’ve had enough to contend with, and there was no need. There is nothing for either of us to do. It’s Christopher’s affair.”
Mr. Aston looked at the note again and reread the signature, then he gave it back, satisfied.
“What will happen if he won’t accept it?” he questioned thoughtfully.
“It is for him to decide.” Aymer’s tone was earnestly emphatic. “Father, we’ve done our part. We can’t alter it if we would. Leave him free.”
“It is the crown of your success that you can do so, my dear old fellow.”326
“The coronation has not taken place yet,” returned Cæsar, with a touch of dry humour that reassured his father more than any words that all was well with his son.
Meanwhile, hour after hour, Christopher’s car raced over the white roads. The twinkling lights in the villages through which he sped grew fewer and at last ceased. A more solid blackness was the only inkling of dwellings on either hand. Once the low, vibrating hum of the car seemed to bring a light to a high window, but it fell back into the dark before he had caught more than a faint glimmer on the blind.
He met nothing: the road for all he knew was utterly empty of life. In the silent, motionless darkness it was like a path into illimitable space. He knew every mile of it, yet in the night the miles stretched out and raced with him.
It was far from village or town when at last Christopher wrenched his mind from the mechanical power that held it prisoner, and realised that town or no town, bed or no bed, he must stop. He brought the car to a standstill under the lea of a low ridge of downs, at a point where an old chalk pit reared its white face, glimmering faintly in the darkness. He hazarded a fair guess as to his whereabouts. Whitmansworth must be fifteen or twenty miles ahead. It was nearly midnight now. He would get no lodging even if he went on. He backed the car off the road into the circle of the chalk pit, made as comfortable a resting place as he could with rugs and cushions between the motor and the white wall, and extinguished the lamps. The cool, still night had him to herself, and cradled him to sleep as a mother her child, under the folds of her dark mantle.
He woke when the first fingers of dawn busied themselves with the hem of that dusky cloak, and327sound as faint and tremulous as the light itself whispered across the earth. He watched a while to see the dim shapes reform under the glowing light, and the clouds that still curtained the sky, take on themselves a sombre grey uniform. But directly the line of white road took distinctness Christopher struck camp, and boldly raced to meet the full day. An early shepherd paused to watch him pass, returning impassively to work as he disappeared. Two or three labouring men also stared; one even commented to a fellow worker that “these yere motors take no more heed o’ decent hours than o’ natural distances. Five in the mornin’ weren’t part o’ the gentry’s day when I were a boy,” he grumbled, “and five miles were five miles, no more nor less. ‘Tisn’t more nor a mile now.”
At wayside farms life was in full swing. Dumbly impatient cows listened for the clatter of milk-pails, and solemn cart horses trudged to the upland fields. Presently he passed through a town where his own Patrimondi made pleasant, easy going. The town servants were cleaning the smooth, elastic surface with big jets of water. Christopher went slowly by with an eye on his handiwork. He fancied he saw a small defect at a turn and stopped to examine it. An indignant worker told him brusquely he needn’t try to pick holes in their roads because there weren’t any, and Christopher returned meekly he thought they looked good, but fancied the mark he examined was a flaw.
“It ain’t any business of yours, anyway,” was the angry retort, “the men who laid this knew what they was a-doin’.”
Another man had joined him who had worked on the new road when Christopher was to and fro there, and recognised him. He plucked the other by the sleeve.
“Shut up, you fool,” he growled, though not so low328but Christopher heard him. “It’s the Roadmaker himself. Mornin’, sir.”
Christopher gave him a few words of recognition and went on.
The slate roofs of Whitmansworth came into sight as the church clock struck six. He could see the white Union House high on the hill to the left, but he had no mind to halt there. He stopped the car at the gate of the town cemetery. It was not a beautiful place. Just a little square field with an avenue of young trees and an orderly row of green mounds and haphazard monuments, but in one corner amongst a row of unmarked graves was a white cross. “In remembrance of my mother,” was the sole inscription it bore. Christopher stood and looked at it gravely. The thought of another grave amongst the family tombs in the trim churchyard at Stormly crossed his mind. It was better here in the little, plain unpretentious cemetery amongst the very poor whose sorrows she had made her own. She would sleep more quietly so.
But he found no message from her here, nor had he expected it. Her actual presence had not consecrated the spot for him, and he was impatient to gain the road made sacred by reason of the tired, failing footsteps that made their last effort there: the Via Dolorosa of his mother’s life.
He passed the milestone where he had waited for his fortune fifteen years ago, and saw it in his mind’s eye hastening towards him from the east in the person of Charles Aston. That was thetrueFortune,—this spurious thing they were trying to harness to his back was evil to the core. Had not that been the very meaning of those painful steps that had struggled away from it along this very road—the meaning of the lonely grave amongst the broken-down poor of Whitmansworth Union?
He stopped the car near a little bridge where a thin329brooklet made a noisy chatter, and sat still, his chin on his hand, thinking deeply.
This was the spot for which he had raced all these hours, for here he and she had rested that terrible night to gather strength for the last mile that lay between the woman and rest.
“It’s better to be tired and hungry oneself, Jim, than to make other people so. Don’t forget that.”
“I am not really tired,” the child maintained stoutly, “but it’s going to rain again. Can’t you come on?”
“Presently.”
“You think it is the right road?”
“I don’t know, Jim. I was sure of it at first, but I’m sure of nothing now.”
The words and scene were as clear to him as the day they happened. He saw in it now a deeper significance, a possible meaning that was the last note of tragedy to his mother’s story. For that note is reached only when the faith in which we have lived, acted and endured, fails us. That is the bitterness and foretaste of death. Then only can the shadow of it fall on us, and in great mercy gather us into its shade.
The Right Road! There was no doubt or shadow for Christopher yet. He had taken the first step on the Road he had chosen, and he would not look back. He would not stultify his mother’s sacrifice. Such faint echoes as he heard calling him back were temptations to which he must turn a deaf ear. He would go forward on his chosen path, and Peter Masters’ millions must look after themselves.
That was the final decision. Yet he sat there, still figuring the persons of the woman and the child trudging330down the road towards him, and as he gazed, without conscious effort, the forms changed. The boy grew to manhood: the woman took to herself youth, youth with a crown of golden hair and the form of Patricia.
A throb of exultation leapt through him. Here were the real riches and fulness of life within his grasp and he, in blunt stupidity, had not chosen to see, had set material good and vague uncertainties before his own incomparable gain and happiness. Whatever had held him back before, the clouded life or personal ambition, or Cæsar’s need, it was swept away now like some low-lying mist before the wind, and left the clear vision, the man and the woman together on the long, smooth Road he would lay for her tender feet.
There should be no more delay than the needed time to race from here to her. Twenty-five miles of country that his car was eager to devour. He slipped away swiftly from the past as he had done before on this very road—to a new future.
331CHAPTER 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 two332shuttlecocks 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.”
He went upstairs two steps at a time, and along the familiar corridor, and outside the door paused for the333first moment since he had seen his vision on the highroad.
The corridor was already dark, but when he entered in obedience to her languid “Come in,” the fire light made a rosy glow and filled the quiet space with tremulous light.
Patricia sat facing the fire, with her back to the door. He could see her golden head over the back of the chair, and his heart beat quickly.
“May I come and talk to you, Patricia?”
For the moment she did not answer or move. She was almost in doubt if she could accept his presence just now, until he was actually standing on the rug before her, looking down at her with keen, searching eyes, before which all her wild thoughts sunk back into oblivion, and a sense of quiet content and security stole over her.
“What have you been doing?” he demanded. “You look very tired.”
“The result of laziness,” she rejoined, and then was angry with herself for allowing an opening for mere trivialities.
“No, that’s not true, Christopher. It’s a bad day with me. I’m afraid to face anyone, even my own maid.”
With no one else in the world could she have owned so much, and the keen pleasure of exercising her right to open dealing with him, outweighed the humiliation of her avowal.
Christopher seemed intent on his own affairs, however, for he asked her abruptly if St. Michael or Cæsar had told her the news.
“What news?”
“Something rather disconcerting has happened to me,” he said slowly, “but I’ll tell you that presently. The most important thing now is that I want to get married.”334
All the cold waters of the world closed over her head for a moment. It was as if he had wrenched a plank from one drowning. She answered him, however, in a low, mechanical voice:
“Soon, Christopher?”
“That will be for her to say, if she will have me at all.”
“You have not asked her yet?”
“I am asking her.”
She looked up at him, puzzled and incredulous of the apparent meaning. Then suddenly he was on his knees by her side, with his strong arms round her.
“My dear, my dear, surely you must know. Is there need for any words between us? I’ve known so long all you must mean to me. Listen, Patricia, you will have to forgive me a great thing. I’ve let outside considerations, absurd ambitions, and the shadow of a lie, stand between us. I’ve waited when I should have spoken. Youwillforgive me that, my dear one, will you not? I’m not humble a bit in asking. I am so proud of the one great thing, thatIcan give you, Love,—can hold you and wrap you in it, so that nothing can hurt you any more. You understand, you recognise my right, Patricia?”
She could say nothing, understand nothing, but the great peace of perfect security. She let him hold her still, with her head against his shoulder and his dear face near, so near she seemed to lose sense of her own identity. All the answer to her life’s riddle lay there, behind the love that emptied her soul of need. Out of the blissful unspeakable light some words vibrated into new meaning.
“There shall be no more sea.”
It meant this then, this experience that was theirs. For him and her there was no more tempest, no more restless craving or peril, all had passed with the old incompleteness.335
Still, she had not spoken audibly to him nor had he pressed her to do so. Words were too imperfect a medium. But presently, when all had been said in the silence that could be said, he touched her hair with caressing hand and reminded her:
“You have never answered me, sweet.”
She put her hand on his as it held her and whispered, “Have I not, Christopher?”
And then he kissed her.
Afterwards as they sat watching the red fire, it seemed to her there was no problem in all the world he could not solve, no struggle in which he would not prove victor, nor any knowledge too deep to reach. In the illumination of their great love the gates of life became visible and open, never to be quite closed again.
She spoke at last slowly and quietly.
“Christopher, I am not going to ask you if you are afraid or have counted the risk you run, I being what I am. I know what you would say and I love you so well that now at this moment I have no fear either. But it will come nevertheless. Others will point out to you that it is a mad thing to do, and I shall say it too. It is then you must hold me, Christopher, against my will and against myself. For this is my clear sane hour, when I really know, and I know it means my salvation. Only when that certainty slips from me you must keep and save me yourself, dearest.”
He held her hands against him and looked down into her eyes. “As I would keep and save myself, beloved.”
She smiled a little, understanding to the finest shade his meaning, and then a quiver of weakness touched her.
“I should die if you let me slip, Christopher.”
“You are going to live,” he said firmly, and kissed her again.
336CHAPTER XXXI
Christopher entirely forgot to tell Patricia of his fortune or parentage. He remembered that little omission as he went down to dinner and looked back to see if she were visible, but she was not in sight, and as he was already late he had to go in without her.
She came down still later, looking so beautiful with such a touch of warm colour in her face, and so sweet a light of wonder in her eyes that even Nevil regarded her with speculative interest.
Aymer had long given up dining with them, and no one spoke of the lawyers’ visit or of Christopher’s rapid flittings, or indeed of any of the subjects on which their minds were really intent. But there seemed a tacit understanding amongst them that dinner must not be a long affair and was a prelude to something yet to happen.
They went out together and Christopher delayed Patricia in the hall.
“I must see Nevil and Cæsar and tell them at once,” he said hurriedly, “then I want you, my dearest. I’ve news for you, which I forgot just now. You must know it, though it makes no difference to us.”
Nevil came out at that moment and she slipped away after Renata with curiosity wide awake.
“Am I to congratulate you as a millionaire or commiserate with you as a bearer of burdens, old fellow?” asked Nevil, flinging himself into a big chair.
“You will congratulate me, I hope, but not about that confounded money though. Nevil, you are Patricia’s guardian. Will you and Renata give her to me?”337
He spoke abruptly and without any preamble, gripping the back of a chair in his hands. A sudden doubt as to the family acceptance of what was an unquestionable matter in his eyes suddenly assailed him.
“You want to marry Patricia?”
Christopher nodded. “You can hardly urge we have not had time to know our own minds,” he said, smiling a little.
“No,” Nevil admitted, and then added rather distractedly, “What ought I to urge, though, Christopher? Of course it’s the greatest possible thing that could happen to Patricia, but for you?”
“I’m appealing to Patricia’s guardian, who has only her interests to consider. I’ll look after my own. However,” he went on hastily, “it’s only fair to tell you, Nevil, I don’t mean to take either the fortune or the name. So long as you’ll lend me your own I’ll stick to it. Failing that, my mother’s will serve me.”
Nevil made no comment beyond a nod. The younger man waited with what patience he could command.
“Does it seriously affect the matter?” he asked at last, “my refusing the beastly money?”
Nevil got up slowly and shook himself.
“It affects Patricia’s guardians not one bit. It’s not as if it were that, or nothing.”
“No, I’ve enough. Of course if I hadn’t I might feel differently about it. I can keep her in comfort, Nevil.”
Nevil got up deliberately and altered the position of a bronze on the high mantelshelf.
“It’s not Patricia I’m thinking about,” he said in his slow way, “but hang it all, you belong to us, Christopher. We must think of you! Have you counted the risks?”
“I probably understand them better than anyone.”
“Then I dismiss further responsibility. I’m really338more pleased than I can say, Christopher. Poor little Patricia! What fortune forher!”
“You clearly understand there won’t be any fortune?” persisted the other bluntly.
“Oh, Peter’s fortune? Of course not. Where’s the obligation? I’ll go and tell Renata.”
He strolled off and Christopher hurried to the West Room, where he found Aymer and Mr. Aston waiting expectantly. Christopher came to a standstill by the fireplace and to his amazement found his hands shaking. He had never imagined there would be any difficulty in this interview, yet he found himself unaccountably at a loss before these two men. The absurdly inadequate idea that they might consider it unjustifiable greed in him to grasp so great a prize as Patricia Connell when they had already given him so much assailed him.
Both men were aware of his unusual embarrassment and neither of them made the slightest attempt to help him out, for Mr. Aston had a very fair idea of what had happened, and had conveyed his suspicions to Aymer. They both found a certain amusing fascination in seeing how he would deal with the situation, and it was a situation so pleasing to them both that they failed to realise it might present real difficulties to him.
He faced them suddenly, and plunged into the matter in his usual direct way.
“Cæsar and St. Michael, I’ve something to tell you both. I am not sure if it will be news to you or not, but Patricia has said she will marry me.”
He came to an abrupt stop, and turned away again towards the fire.
“It’s very good news,” said Mr. Aston quietly, “if in no way surprising.”
“You don’t think I’m asking too much when I’ve had so much given me? I feel abominably greedy.”339
“You might think of me in the matter,” protested Aymer, plaintively. “What on earth does it matter if you are greedy so long as you provide me with a real interest in life. I began to think you meant to defraud me of my clear rights.”
A very grateful Christopher crossed the room and took his usual seat on the sofa.
“I’ve been a blind idiot,” he admitted, “or rather an idle one. I’ve known for years it must be Patricia, and left it at that.”
“Why?” demanded Aymer.
But that he could not or would not tell them.
Mr. Aston then suggested Christopher should explain what he meant to do concerning his inheritance.
“Which you have treated so far with scandalous disrespect,” put in Aymer.
“I can’t touch it. It would be treason to—to my mother. And I don’t want it. I hate it, the way it’s done, the caring for it.”
There was something so foreign to Christopher’s usual finality of statement in this, that the two older men looked at each other with sudden apprehension and then avoided the other’s eye. For in their secret hearts they both knew that Christopher must presently arrive at the unconfessed certainty that had come to them, that this was not a matter in which he was free to act as he would. The call had come for him to take up a burden he disliked and sooner or later he would hear the voice and recognise the authority to which he had been taught to bow his own will. Yet both of them, without consultation or any word, knew it was not for them to interpret the call for him. Their work was over now. If they had taught him to set no value on the prizes of the world and to regard the means as of equal importance to the end, they had also taught him that duty may come in many disguises, but once recognised, her sway must be absolute.340Christopher would discover her in time, but they must hold their peace lest conflicting motives should hamper his surrender to her call.
“I’m going to meet Mr. Saunderson in town to-morrow,” Christopher went on, “I am not quite clear yet how it’s to be worked. I am only clear I won’t touch money of that sort. It costs too much. I feel pretty certain Mr. Saundersonhasinstructions what to do, if I refuse it.”
He looked at Mr. Aston with an unusual desire for confirmation of his hope and his decision. A strong inclination to appeal for such support pressed him sorely. But he knew it was only confirmation of his own determination he sought, and his ingrained independence of mind shrank from such a proceeding.
“If you know what you want to do and what you ought to do, why appeal to me?” Cæsar had repeatedly told the small boy he was fitting out for life: yet who so kind or patient when the decision still hung in the balance and uncertainty held the scales? There was no uncertainty now, Christopher told himself, and allowed none either to himself or to them. One concession only did he permit himself. He turned to Mr. Aston a little shyly.
“Would you go with me, St. Michael? I am afraid of Mr. Saunderson’s wrath if I am unprotected.”
Mr. Aston gravely expressed his willingness to hold his hand and see him through. After which Christopher went out to fetch Patricia. He found her sitting on the floor at Renata’s feet, the latter fussing over her with matronly joy and sisterly love, and talking inconsequently between times of Charlotte, with what would appear to an outsider irrelevance of the first order.
“Charlotte will be a most desirable bridesmaid,” Christopher remarked after he had listened a moment,341whereupon Renata became greatly confused and Patricia laughed without any embarrassment whatever.
“Charlotte has not yet had time to signify her approval,” she said. “I rely on her judgment to a great extent, you know. If she offers any objection we shall have to reconsider it.”
“I’m not afraid. Charlotte has always approved of me,” asserted Christopher cheerfully.
“Of course Charlotte will be pleased,” put in that young lady’s mother, quite seriously. “What nonsense you are talking, Patricia.”
She got up and offered a transparent excuse to slip away and leave the lovers alone.
Patricia, still kneeling by the fire, leant her head against Christopher.
“I used to try and make up my mind you would marry Charlotte when she grew up,” she said dreamily.
“How ingenious of you. Unfortunately, it was my mind, not yours, that was concerned, and that had been made up when Charlotte was in pinafores. Now come and talk business, dear.”
So at last he told her the news he had been so tardy in delivering, told her the whole story very simply and as impersonally as he could, but Patricia’s heart brimmed over with pity for him. She divined more clearly than the men the strength of his hatred for the burden with which he was threatened, and the burden of past memories in which that hatred had its root. In the fulness of her love she set herself the future task of rooting out the resentment for another’s sorrows, which she knew must be as poison to his generous soul. At length Christopher, having read in her love the confirmation for which he so childishly longed, took her away to be introduced to Cæsar in her new character as his promised wife. She waited for no such introduction whatever, but seated herself on the big hassock by the sofa that was still Christopher’s342privileged seat and leant her head against the edge of Cæsar’s cushions, but she failed to find anything to say and Christopher was so occupied in watching her as to forget to speak.
“It’s taken him a long time to recognise his own privilege, hasn’t it, Patricia?” said Cæsar, gently putting his hand on hers. “I was getting impatient with him. It was time he grew up.”
“You aren’t disappointed then?” she asked with a little flush of confusion. “Mrs. Sartin will be. She always expects him to marry a duchess at least. She is so insufferably proud of him.”
“She does not know him so well as we do, that’s why.”
“I’ll not stay here to be discussed,” remarked Christopher decidedly, “you can pull my character to pieces when I’m away. When did you last see Mrs. Sartin, Patricia?”
“Last Thursday. She comes to tea every week with Maria.”
Maria was Mrs. Sartin’s second daughter, midway between Sam and Jim, and was just installed as second lady’s-maid to Mrs. Wyatt.
“Is Sam more reconciled to her going out?”
“Not a bit. You know he wanted to send her to a Young Ladies’ Academy in Battersea. I know he’d have done it but for Martha, who has more sense in her fingers than he has in his whole head.”
“Hadn’t Maria anything to say in the matter?” This from Cæsar.
“No one has much to say when Sam and his mother dispute,” said Christopher, shaking his head. “Sam would be a tyrant, Cæsar, if he could. He always wants to push people on in his own way.”
“Sam is not singular,” put in Mr. Aston, in his meditative way, “character is all more or less a question of degree. There are the same fundamental instincts343in all of us. Some get developed at the expense of others, that’s all.”
“There but for the grace of God goes ...” said Patricia, laughing.
Christopher felt in his pocket and produced a coin.
“Apropos of which, Cæsar,” he said with a flicker of a smile, “I found this, the other day rummaging in an old box.”
He tossed it dexterously to Cæsar. It was a sovereign with a hole in it and the broken link of a chain therein. Cæsar looked at it and then slipped it in his own pocket.
“It’s mine, at all events,” he said shortly, “and we are all talking nonsense, especially Christopher.”
But Christopher shook his head.
“Mayn’t I understand all this?” demanded Patricia.
“No,” returned Cæsar, before Christopher could speak. “It’s not worth it. John Bunyan was a fool.”
“Not at all, but the other man might have retorted, ‘there with the grace of God goes I.’”
This was from Mr. Aston, and Christopher gave him a quick look of comprehension.
“The Court is with you, sir,” said Aymer languidly. “Let us discuss wedding presents.”
344CHAPTER XXXII
At eleven o’clock on Wednesday, Mr. Aston and Christopher were ushered into Mr. Saunderson’s office by a discreetly interested clerk. The bland and smiling lawyer advanced to meet them with that respect and courtesy he felt due to the vast fortune they represented. His table was covered with orderly rows of papers, and the door of the safe, labeled P. Masters, Esq., stood open.
“Punctuality is the essence of good business,” said Mr. Saunderson, with effusive approval as he indicated two lordly armchairs placed ready for his visitors. Mr. Aston and Christopher had both a dim, unreasonable consciousness of dental trouble and exchanged glances of mutual encouragement.
Mr. Saunderson blinked at them genially behind his gold-rimmed glasses and spoke of the weather, which was bad, dilated on the state of the streets, lamented the slowness of the L. C. C. to enforce the use of Patrimondi beyond the limits of Westminster, and as the futile little remarks trickled on they carried with them his complacent smile, for in every quiet response he read Christopher Masters’ fatal determination, and prepared himself for battle. It was Christopher, however, who flung down the gauntlet. He answered the question anent the use of Patrimondi in the metropolis, and then said directly:
“Mr. Saunderson, I’ve considered the matter of this fortune you tell me I’ve inherited, and I do not feel under any obligation to accept it or its responsibilities. It’s only fair to let you know this at once.”
Mr. Saunderson leant back in his chair and rubbed345his chin, and his eyes wandered from one to the other of his visitors thoughtfully.
“The matter is far too complicated to be disposed of so lightly, I fear,” he remarked, shaking his head. “Let me place the details of the thing before you and as a business man you can then judge for yourself.”
He had at least no fault to find with the grave attention they paid him, indeed, the entirely unemotional attitude of the younger man was to the lawyer’s mind the most alarming symptom he had noted. Still he could not allow to himself that his task presented more than surmountable difficulties, for Mr. Saunderson had no real knowledge of the forces at work against him, of the silent, desperate woman who had given her life for her faith, who had once been beautiful, and whose worn body slept in the little dull cemetery at Whitmansworth.
“I believe you are acquainted with the great premises known as Princes Buildings,” began Mr. Saunderson, “that simplifies my task. For the whole affair is so amazingly managed that I can offer you no precedent with which to compare it. There are seven floors in that building, and on each floor the affairs of the six great concerns in which Mr. Masters was interested, are conducted. Such an arrangement was only carried out at enormous expense and trouble. I may tell you, however, that the condition of Mr. Masters’ interesting himself in either of the companies, was their domicile beneath this one roof. Now in five of these big concerns he occupied merely the place of a director, with no more official power than any other director might have. Yet in every case, I think I may say, no decision of any importance would have been taken by the company in opposition to his advice, and he was the financial backbone of each. On the two top floors of these great premises we have a rather different state of things. For here are the346offices of the three smaller companies which were directly under the control of Mr. Masters, and which are the original source of his fortune. I allude to the Steel Axle Company, the Stormly Mine and the Stormly Foundry Companies. These affairs he continued to keep under his own eye, never relaxing his attention, or the excellent system he had established, under which the whole great affair worked with such marvellous smoothness and success. I beg your pardon, did you say anything?”
Christopher shook his head. Mr. Saunderson resumed.
“You will understand Mr. Masters’ wealth was directly drawn from these companies, bringing him an income of roughly £130,000 a year. The administration of this income, of which he spent about one-fourth on himself, was the occupation of the offices on the top floor of Princes Buildings. A certain proportion of income was regularly reinvested in concerns in which Mr. Masters took no active part, and was accumulative. It is this reserve fund which has brought the actual fortune to such high figures as I have quoted you, nearly £4,000,000. A great deal of money also has been devoted to the purchase of freehold property. You would be surprised how great an area of Birmingham itself belongs to Mr. Masters.”
Christopher gave an involuntary movement of dissent, and the lawyer hurried on.
“Not perhaps districts that it would be interesting to visit now, but which will undoubtedly be of vast interest to your heirs. They represent enormous capital and of course will eventually be a source of colossal wealth.
“Now, so perfect is the machinery and system under which all these giant concerns are worked, that they will run without difficulty on their present lines until you have mastered the working thoroughly, and347are able, if you should wish it, to make your own plans for future greatness. I say this, because it seems to me you are inclined to overrate the difficulties of your position. I do not say, mind you, matters could go on indefinitely as they are, but you are a young man of intellect and capacity, you have only to step into the place of one who has set everything in order for you, and before two years are up you will have the details of the system by heart, and will, I am convinced, be recognised as an able successor to your father.”
Christopher’s mouth straightened ominously. It was an unlucky slip on Mr. Saunderson’s part, but he was oblivious to it. He was indeed incapable of appreciating the sentiment towards his late client, which was playing so large a part against him in this tussle of wills.
Christopher heard in every word that was spoken the imperious Will that would force him to compass its ends, even from the land of Death. It was not wholly the unsought responsibility, the burden of the wealth, the memory of his mother that buttressed his determination to refuse this stupendous thing, it was also his fierce, vehement desire to escape the enforced compliance with that still living Will-power. Peter Masters’ unwritten and unspoken word was, that he, Christopher, should succeed him. He had left him no directions, no choice, no request, he had relied on the Greatness of the Thing which Christopher loathed with his whole soul, he had claimed him for this bondage with an unuttered surety that was maddening. Minute by minute Christopher felt his former quiet determination rise to passionate resistance and denial of the right of that Dominant Will to drag his life into the vortex it had made.
Quite suddenly Mr. Saunderson was aware of the strength of the antagonism that confronted him. Unable348to trace the reason of it, he blundered on hopelessly.
“Mr. Masters was, I should say, quite aware of your natural ability. He has had more regard for your fortunes than you probably suspect. I have letters of his to various men concerning the starting of this ingenious invention of yours, Patrimondi.” He bustled over some papers on the table as if searching, and did not see Christopher’s sudden backward movement: but Mr. Aston bent forward and put his hand as if accidentally on Christopher’s shoulder as he spoke:
“Never mind them, now, Mr. Saunderson. Mr. Masters was, we know, naturally interested in that affair, but to continue your account, what will happen if Mr. Aston refuses to accept his position? Let us suppose for a moment there had been no clue left. What would you have done?”
Mr. Saunderson brought the tips of his red, podgy fingers together with great exactness.
“That is a supposition I should be sorry to entertain, sir,” he said deliberately.
“I am afraid you must entertain it,” put in Christopher, suddenly, his resolution to escape urging him to curt methods.
The light eyes of the lawyer rested on him with something very like apprehension in them.
“In the case of there being no direct heir the money would go to the nearest of kin.”
“We will pass that over,” Mr. Aston said quietly. “I am the nearest relative Peter had, after Christopher, and I decline it at all costs.”
“Unclaimed and unowned money would fall to the Crown, I suppose. It is impossible to imagine it.”
“The Crown would see no difficulty in that, I expect,” put in Christopher. “How could you stop the Thing going on, that’s what I want to know?”349
“You could give the money to Charities and shut down the works and leave thousands to starve.”
Christopher moved impatiently.
“The money invested in each company could be divided amongst the shareholders, I suppose, or in the case of the Stormly Mines amongst the work-people.”
“If you want to ruin them.”
“Mr. Saunderson, I am not going to accept this fortune. I don’t like the way it was made, I don’t want it, I won’t work for it.”
“Why should you work for it, after all? You can go on with your own life and delegate your powers to another or others, and let all continue as it is. The income would be at your disposal to save or spend. You need never enter Princes Buildings if that is what troubles you. You can spend the money in philanthropy, or gamble it away at Monte Carlo, or leave it to accumulate for your heirs. If you’ll do that I’ll undertake to find suitable men to carry on the affairs.”
Christopher’s face flushed angrily, but he made an effort to control himself, however, and answered quietly.
“I cannot take money I’ve not earned, Mr. Saunderson.”
Mr. Saunderson made a gesture of despair.
“All you have to do,” went on Christopher, watching him closely, “is to act as if that clue had never fallen into your hands or as if when you followed it up you found I was dead. Do you mean to say Mr. Masters did not provide for that contingency?”
“As I have told you before, Mr. Masters provided for no such contingency,” snapped the lawyer; “he never entertained such a preposterous idea as your refusing.”
“To conform to his will,” concluded Christopher drily.
The three men were silent a while, each struggling350to see some way out of the impasse into which they had arrived.
“You say the various companies are entirely distinct from each other?” queried Mr. Aston thoughtfully, more for the sake of starting a line of inquiry than because he saw any open door of escape.
“Entirely unconnected, but Mr. Masters, or his successor, holds the ends of the various threads, so to speak. Apart from him each affair has a multitude of masters and no head. If the money left in each company were divided as a bonus—a preposterous suggestion to my mind—they would each be free and would presumably find a head for themselves.”
“Then you had better work out some such scheme, and once free of the source of the money we can deal with what’s left at leisure. The Crown will make no difficulties over its share and we can set the London hospitals on their feet or establish a Home for Lost Cats.” He got up and walked across the big room to the window, looking moodily into the street.
Mr. Saunderson looked genuinely pained and cast appealing glances at Mr. Aston, who only shook his head.
“It is a matter for Christopher to decide for himself, Mr. Saunderson. I cannot and may not influence him either way.”
“There is not the smallest doubt of his parentage,” said the lawyer in a low voice, “one can hear his father in every sentence.”
“It is unwise to remind him of it.”
The other looked astonished. “Indeed, you surprise me. Yet he is really deeply indebted to his father for the success of his own invention.”
“Still more unwise to insist on that. You must remember he had a mother as well as a father.”
Mr. Saunderson opened his mouth to say something and closed it again. Presently he opened a folded351paper and, having perused it, laid it back in a drawer. Christopher rejoined them.
“Mr. Saunderson,” he said frankly, “I fear I’ve spoken in an unseemly manner, and I beg your pardon. I can quite understand I must seem little short of a madman to you, but I’ve perhaps better reasons for my refusal than you think. Put it, if you will, that I feel too young, too inexperienced to deal with this fortune as Mr. Masters meant it to be dealt with, and on those grounds I ask you to devise some scheme for breaking it up without letting the workers suffer. I’ll subscribe to any feasible plan you suggest. Will you undertake this for me?”
“It will take time.” Mr. Saunderson regarded him watchfully, as he spoke, “a great deal of time.”
“How long do you ask?”
“Two years.”
“Then in two years’ time, Mr. Saunderson, send me your scheme, and I’ll be your debtor for life.”
Mr. Saunderson smiled faintly.
But on that understanding they ultimately parted.
“My own belief is,” said Mr. Aston when he was giving an account of the interview to Aymer, “that Mr. Saunderson means to do nothing at all and is only giving Christopher time. Also, though he persistently denies it, I believe hehasinstructions behind him. We know Peter had an immense belief in Time and never hurried his schemes.”
Aymer moved restlessly.
“And you share his belief?”
“I believe in the long run Christopher will do the thing he is meant to do and neither you nor I, old fellow, can say what that is. You have taught him to follow the highest Road he can, see, and I tell you again, as I have before, you must leave it at that.”