287CHAPTER XXVI
Matters were made as easy for Patricia as the united efforts of those who loved her could compass. Geoffry, in his gratitude for her decisive action, which lifted the onus of a broken engagement from his shoulders, found a substantial ground for his belief that they had sacrificed themselves on the altar of duty. Mrs. Leverson sighed profoundly with unconscious satisfaction over the highly heroic behaviour of them both and yielded easily to Geoffry’s desire to travel. They eventually sold Logan Park, which they had purchased about ten years previously, and passed out of the ken of the lives that were so nearly linked with theirs.
Life renewed its wonted routine at Marden except that Christopher was often absent for weeks together. The final experiments hung fire and he had to seek new material and fresh inspiration further afield, but never for long. The end of a set term would see him back by Aymer’s side sharing his hopes and disappointments impartially, always declaring that nowhere could he work with better success than at Marden Court. He was five years older than his natural age in development and resource, and the dogged obstinacy that was so direct a heritage from his father, stood him in good stead in his stiff fight with the difficulties that stood between him and his goal. Peter Masters made no sign and no greater success seemed to crown the other workers’ endeavours, but there was always the secret pressure of unknown competition at work and it told on Christopher. He became more silent and so absorbed in his task as to lose touch of outside288matters altogether. It was this absorption in his ambition that made the daily intercourse with Patricia possible at all. Unsuspected by her, his love, lying in abeyance, was but awaiting the growth in her of an answering harmony that must come to completion before he could make his full demand of it.
One day in March, when the land was swept with cold winds and beaten with rain, Christopher came out of the little wooden building, where he worked, and stood bareheaded a moment in the driving rain. First he looked towards the house and then turning sharply towards the left made his way once more to the edge of the last of the experimental tracks that threaded that distant corner of the park like the lines of a spider’s web.
He stood looking down at the firm grey surface from which the pouring rain ran off to the side channels as cleanly as from polished marble. He walked a few yards down its elastic, easy-treading surface, ruminating over the “weight and edge” tests that had been applied, and on the durability trials from the little machine that had run for so many long days and nights over a similar surface within the wooden shanty.
It was morning now. His men, whose numbers had increased each month, had gone to breakfast, and he was alone with his finished work.
The strain and absorption of the long months was over. He had at last conquered the material difficulties that had been ranged against him. The dream of the boy had become a tangible reality, ready by reason of its material existence to claim its own place in the physical world. This unnamed substance whose composition had awaited in Nature’s laboratory the intelligent mingling of a master hand, would add to the store of the world’s riches and the world’s ease, and was his gift to his generation.289
As he stood looking down at the completed roadway, the Roadmaker suddenly remembered his own slight years and the inconceivable fraction of time he had laboured for so wide a result, and there swept up to him across the level way a new knowledge of his relationship to all the past—that he was but the servant of those who had preceded him and had but brought into the light of day a simple secret matured long ago in the patient earth.
It is in this spirit of true humility and in the recognition of their actual place in the world that all Great Discoverers find their highest joy. It is the joy of service that is theirs, the loftiest ambition that can fire the heart of man, making him accept with thankfulness his part as a tool to the great artifices and filling him with love and reverence for the work he has been used to complete. As Christopher stood bareheaded in the rain that windy March morning, his heart swept clear for the time of all personal pride or self-gratification, he offered himself in unconscious surrender again to the Power that had used him, craving only to be used, divining clearly that achievement is but the starting post to new endeavour.
At last he turned away, locked up the hut and went down towards the house, and at the entrance of the little plantation between park and garden he met Patricia.
They exchanged no greeting but a smile, and as he stood on the slope above her, looking at her, he was aware of a great sense of peace and rest, and on a sudden, her understanding leapt to meet his.
“It is done—you have finished it?” she cried, and her hands went out to him.
“Yes,” he said, quietly, freeing himself from the strange inward pressure by the touch of that outward union. “This piece of work is done, Patricia. The thing is there—my Road stuff. It’s all right. It will290stand whatever it is asked to stand. It is ready to use if anyone will use it.”
“Oh, I’m glad—so glad!” she cried. “Christopher, it is just the best thing in the world to know you have succeeded.”
Her complete sympathy and generous joy seemed to open his mind to the outward expression of the speaker, which of late, since the breaking of her engagement with Geoffry, he had tried hard not to observe.
It seemed to him her face had lost a little of its childish roundness, that there was something accentuated about her that was nameless and yet expected. Also for the first time in his life he was conscious that her presence by his side was helpful. He had been unaware till she came that he needed any aid in what, to him, was a great moment in his life, but he knew it was restful and good to walk by her, a strange relief to tell her how the last difficulties that had arisen on the heels of each other had finally been met: how strong had been his temptation to give his discovery to the world before the tedious tests had gone to the uttermost limits experimental trials could reach.
“It’s so simple really,” he said, “just a question of proportions once the material is there. I felt anyone might hit on it any day, and yet it would have been such a sickening thing to have someone else planting an improvement on the top of it within a few months. It may need it now, but at least it would mean the test of years, and not immediate improvement. Do you happen to know if Cæsar had a good night or not?”
“You’ve got to have some breakfast yourself first. I don’t believe you remember you never came in to dinner last night at all.”
“Didn’t I? Breakfast must wait till I’ve seen Cæsar anyhow. He must know before anyone else,291and you’ll never be able to hold your tongue through breakfast, you know.”
“But I’m first, after all.” She tilted her chin a little with a complacent nod at him.
He stopped with a puzzled expression.
“So you are. It never struck me—but—but,” he hesitated, unable to read his own hazy idea, and concluded, “but, you are only a girl, so it doesn’t matter.”
The look in his eyes atoned for the “only,” and she bore no resentment, for she had met his look and read there the thought he could not decipher, and it sunk deep into her heart, with illuminating power.
At the garden door, where the paths branched, she stood aside.
“Go and tell Aymer and get your breakfast.”
“You are not going to stay out in this rain?”
“You know I love rain, and I’ve had breakfast.”
Before he could stop her she had turned and disappeared up the winding path that led out eventually on to the open down.
Christopher looked after her a moment doubtfully, but her strange fondness for walking in the rain was well known and he had no reason or right to stop her. So he went indoors to Cæsar. But Patricia walked on with rapid steps, never pausing till she was well outside the confines of the park amongst the red ploughed fields and bare downs. The rain swept in her face and the wind rushed by her as she walked with lifted head and exultant heart, hearing the whole chorus of creation around her, conscious only of the uplifting joy of the great light that had broken in on her. At last she stopped by a gate that led into a field of newly-turned earth—downland just broken by the plough, lying bare and open to the breath of heaven, and beyond, the swelling line of downs was blurred with misty rain and merged into the driving292grey clouds above. Behind her in an oak tree a robin was singing with passionate intensity. She drew a deep breath and then held out her arms to the world.
“I understand, I understand,” she whispered. “Love and Christopher. Love and Christopher, there is nothing else in the whole world.”
She had accepted the revelation without fear, without question, without distrust. She gave no thought at all at present as to Christopher’s attitude to her, as to whether he had anything to give in return for her great gift of herself. She gave herself to Love first, to him after, if such were Love’s will. But it made no difference whether he knew or not, she was his, and the recognition drowned all lesser emotion in the great depth of its joy. She wasted no time in lamenting her blindness or the interlude with another lesser love: it troubled her not at all, for by such steps had she climbed to this unexpected summit. Just at present the glory of that was all-satisfying, so much more than she had ever looked for or imagined possible, that to demand the uttermost crown of his returning love was in these first moments too great a consummation to be borne.
She stood there with her hands clasped and the only words she found were, “Christopher and Love,” and again, “Love and Christopher,” as if they were the alphabet of a new language.
Quite slowly the physical horizon crept up to this plane of exultant joy and claimed her, but even as she recognised the claim she knew the familiar world would bear for her a new aspect, and found no resentment, only a quiet relief as it closed her in. The languor and fatigue of the backward journey did not distress her, every step of the way she was studying the news.
Every blade of grass and every twig spoke of this new language to her, proclaiming a kinship that made293her rich in sympathy and comprehension of all humble lovely things.
She was seized with fear when she reached home that she would encounter Christopher in the hall before she was prepared to accept him as the most unchanged point of her altered world. Instead she met Constantia Wyatt, who was at Marden with her family for Easter, just coming down, who asked her if she had been having a shower bath.
Now Constantia felt a proprietary right over Patricia by reason of her knowledge of Christopher’s sentiments, and her own prophetic instincts. She had most carefully refrained from interference in their affairs, however, and accepted the post of lookeron with praiseworthy consistency. But she looked on with very wide-opened eyes, and this morning when Patricia answered with almost emphatic offhandedness that she had only been for a solitary walk in the rain, she could not refrain from remarking that she appeared to have gathered something more than raindrops and an appetite on her walk, and only laughed when Patricia, betraying no further curiosity, hurried on.
“Something has happened,” she thought to herself. “Patricia’s eyes did not look like that last night. She is grown up.”
But her rare discretion kept her silent, and when later on she was confronted with the news of Christopher’s victory she guessed one-half of the secret of Patricia’s shining eyes.
Patricia exchanged her dripping garments for dry ones and curled herself up on the sofa in her own room before the fire, with full determination to fathom her growing unwillingness to meet Christopher, and to accommodate herself to the new existence, but the gentle languor of mental emotion and physical effort took the caressing warmth of the fire to their aid and294cradled her to sleep instead, till the balance of nature was restored.
It was in this manner that Patricia and Christopher arrived at the same cross roads of their lives, where the devious tracks might merge into one another, or, being thrust asunder again by some hedge of convention, continue by a lonely, painful and circuitous route towards the destined goal.
The matter lay in Patricia’s hands, little as either she or Christopher suspected it, and poor Patricia was hampered by a power of tradition and a lack of complete faith of Christopher’s view of her inherited trouble.
Ever since the broken engagement with Geoffry, she had bent in spirit before her own weakness, withstanding it well, and yet a prey to that humiliation of mind that accepts the imperfect as a penalty, instead of claiming the perfect as a birthright. Having given in to this attitude, she now, as a natural consequence, could but see the view offered from that comparatively lowly altitude, and that shut her in with the belief her duty lay in renouncing marriage, and also, more limiting still in its effect, the idea that Christopher also held this view in his secret heart.
She wasted no time in the consideration as to whether he loved her or not: she was sure of that much crown to her own life; but slowly the false conviction thrust itself upon her that had he thought otherwise the long, empty months that had passed would not have been possible. She was too young a woman to balance correctly the power of strenuous occupation on a man as weighed against the emotion to which a woman will yield her whole being without a struggle. Looking back on the long days that had elapsed since the affair by the little chalk pit on the downs, it seemed to her clear that Christopher had avoided her, and there was sufficient truth in this to295make it a dangerous lever when handled in connection with the fear of her mind.
It was, therefore, by a quite natural following-out of the mental process that she ultimately arrived at the conclusion it was her duty to assist Christopher to renounce herself, and for that purpose, that she might less hamper his life, she must leave Marden Court.
The decision was not arrived at all at once. The day wore on and the natural order of things had brought her and Christopher face to face at a moment when she had forgotten there was any difficulty about it. Cæsar had issued invitations to a family tea in his room in honour of Christopher’s achievement, as was a time-honoured custom when any of the members of the family distinguished themselves in work or play. Christopher served tea, as it was Cæsar’s party, and it was not until he gave Patricia her cup that he recollected she had not crossed his path since that morning in the rain.
“Where have you hidden yourself?” he demanded severely.
“You said I could not hold my tongue, so I determined I’d prove you false,” was her flippant rejoinder.
“At the cost of self-immolation. I think it proves my point.”
“I appeal to Cæsar.” She got up and took a chair close to the sofa.
“Cæsar, I wish you’d keep that boy of yours in order. He is always so convinced he is in the right that he is unbearable.”
“Allow him latitude to-day. He’ll meet opposition enough when he tries to foist this putty-clay of his on the world. By the way, what are you going to call it, Christopher?”
Everyone stopped talking and regarded the Discoverer296with critical anxiety. He looked slightly embarrassed and offered no suggestion, and it was Constantia who insisted airily that they should all propose names and he should choose from the offered selection.
Christopher was made to take a chair in the midst of the circle and to demonstrate in plain terms the actual substances of which the “Road-stuff,” as he inelegantly termed it, was made.
The younger members of the family called pathetically for some short, ready name that would not tax pen or tongue. After a long silence Nevil, modestly suggested “Hippopodharmataconitenbadistium.”
This raised a storm of protests, while Constantia’s own “Roadhesion” received hardly better support.
Cæsar flung out “Christite” without concern, and demanded Patricia’s contribution.
“Aymerite,” she ventured.
Christopher’s glances wandered from one to the other. She was seated on his own particular chair close to Cæsar, in whose company she felt a strange comfort and protection, a security against her own heart that could not yet be trusted to shield the secret of her love.
Mr. Aston was called on in his turn and he looked at Christopher with a smile.
“I think we are all wasting our time and wits,” he said placidly. “Christopher has his own name ready and your suggestions are superfluous.”
They clamoured for confirmation of this and Christopher had to admit it was true.
“I call it Patrimondi,” he said slowly, his eyes on Patricia, “because it will conquer the country and the world in time.”
Which explanation was accepted more readily by the younger members of the party than by the elder.
But “Patrimondi” it remained, and if he chose to perpetuate the claims of the future rather than the297past in this business of nomenclature, it was surely his own affair. Patricia, at all events, made no objection. She had recovered her equilibrium to find the relationship between them was so old that it called for nothing but mute acceptance on her part: the only thing that was new was her recognition of the barrier between them, whose imaginary shadow lay so cold across her heart.
Constantia offered a refuge. Her watching eyes divined something of Patricia’s unrest. She visited her that night at the period of hair-brushing and found her dreaming before a dying fire.
“You get up too early,” Constantia remonstrated, “it’s a pernicious habit. If you would come and stay with me in London, I would teach you to keep rational hours.”
“Would you have me, really?” cried Patricia, sitting bolt upright, with every sense alert to seize so good an opportunity of escape.
“Why, yes. I’ve been wanting to have you a long time. You had better come back to town with me to-morrow.”
“I’d like it better than anything in the world,” asserted Patricia, fervently and truthfully.
“I wonder if people ever grow up at all here,” Constantia said, smiling, “you are all so preposterously young, you know.”
“You were brought up here yourself.”
Constantia laughed outright. “But I have been educated since I married: that is when most people’s education does begin. We are only preparing for it before.”
“And if one never marries, one remains uneducated, I suppose.”
Constantia kissed her. “Your education is not likely to be neglected, my dear. Go to bed now, we will settle with Renata to-morrow.”
298CHAPTER XXVII
It is one thing to produce, and another to launch the production on an unwilling world. Christopher soon found he had but exchanged an arduous engrossing task for a sordid uphill struggle. Yet if his mind sometimes flew back to Peter Masters’ offer, it was never with any desire to open negotiations with him, nor did he ever remind Aymer of the possibility. They fought together against the difficulties that beset the great venture and their comradeship reduced the irritating trivialities of the first start to bearable limits.
Since the day when he received Peter Masters’ curt acknowledgment of satisfaction with the selected car, neither Christopher nor the Astons had heard one word from the millionaire. His restored interest in the family appeared to have evaporated as rapidly as it had risen, and peace fell on Aymer’s troubled mind. He flung himself heart and soul into the business of launching Christopher’s discovery, and verified his cousin’s old opinion of his business qualities. The initial difficulties of obtaining the patent being overcome and a small, private company formed, they started a factory for the manufacture of Patrimondi within five miles of Marden, and a decently capable staff was secured to meet the slow, but steadily increasing, demands for the new material.
After some months of uphill work they suddenly received an order for laying the roadways and a special motor track at an International Exhibition. From this plane Patrimondi leapt into fame. Within three months of the opening of the Exhibition the little factory had doubled its staff and even then could not produce enough to meet the demand. With the mounting299strain Christopher began to prove of what metal he was made. He stuck to the work with steady persistence, meeting success as he had met difficulties, counting each but expected incidents in a life’s work. This level-headedness enabled him to bear a physical strain that would have broken down the nerve of any man more subject to outward conditions. A large proportion of extra work was entailed on him by the starting point of Patrimondi being so distant from London, but he resisted all suggestions to move it nearer town, or make his own headquarters there, or take any step that would serve to separate Aymer from easy contact with the work that made so great a difference in his monotonous life.
Since the last appearance of Peter Masters, Aymer had seemed to lose something of his old independent spirit of resistance. The mine of strength within himself, which his father had developed, was nearing exhaustion, and he lived more and more by force of his interest in outward things, and the active part he played in Christopher’s life. But this diminution of his inward strength made the question of any move too serious to be contemplated, although they still vaguely spoke of a time when they would return to London. Mr. Aston knew that he himself could not face the old strenuous life again.
He had dropped out of the line of workers too early, and though seventy years found him still a man of active habits and vigour of mind, he was too conscious of his divorce from the past to endure meeting it daily face to face.
The fortunes of Patrimondi continued to leap forward by untraceable impulses. They were able to choose their work now, and Christopher gave the preference first to roads whose construction was under his own direction from the very foundation, and secondly to such work as least separated him from300Cæsar, but this last fact he was careful to conceal even from Mr. Aston’s watchful eyes.
In the world of workers he became known as the “Roadmaker,” and fabulous stories of his origin and fortune were circulated. Unknown to himself or to those nearest to him, men high up in the financial world kept their eye on the young man—made no prophecies—said nothing—but were careful for reasons best known to themselves to help rather than oppose him when he happened to cross their path. But the greatest of all their race, Peter Masters himself, made no sign at all. No fabulous fortune was, however, gathered in. “Patrimondi” paid well, but the working expenses were great. Christopher made big returns to the men, not in wages only, but in every condition of their work. Those in power under him soon learnt it was better to forget the momentary interests of the company than the living interests of the workmen, but in return for his care Christopher did insist on, and get from his men, an amount of work that made other employers open their eyes with envious wonder.
All this time Patricia held her place in his life. It would have been hard to trace her actual influence on his daily actions, but it was there, preserving his finer instincts under the load of material cares, linking him indissolubly to that world of high Realities which is every man’s true inheritance. Yet he made no attempt to claim her and at times wondered at his own procrastination. The idea implanted by Peter Masters bore strange fruit, for even an unconsciously harboured lie must needs hamper the life behind which it finds shelter. He could make no advance towards Patricia while that invidious doubt of his parentage existed, and he lacked the remorseless courage of Mr. Aston to inflict pain for however justifiable a cause on Cæsar. Also perhaps his pride had a word to say.301If there was a secret, it was theirs, and they had not chosen to divulge it to him. Again, he had fathomed something of the depth of the jealous love bestowed on him, and his own affection and gratitude would have their say. All and each of these reasons arrayed themselves against his love. When he tried to face it first one and then the other weighed heaviest, till at length he called time to his side and flung himself into his work the harder to leave that ally free scope. All of which meant that he was yet but a worshipper at Love’s throne, and failed to recognise that his place was on it.
Christopher was in France when he saw the notice of Peter Masters’ death in the papers, and he was more staggered by it than he cared to admit to himself. The millionaire had been knocked down at a busy crossing with no more ceremony than would have served for his poorest workman. He had been carried to the nearest hospital and died there almost directly, alone, as he had lived. There was the usual hasty account of his life, but by some magic that had perhaps root in Peter’s own will, no mention was made of his marriage.
Christopher wrote home on the subject this-wise:
“It seems to me the more terrible since I think he was a man who never believed any such mischance could dare to happen to him. He always gave me the impression of one who read his own mortality for immortality, and was prepared to rule Time as arbitrarily as he ruled men. It does not look to an outsider as if he had gained any particular happiness from his fortune, but happiness is a word everyone spells in their own way.... I shall be back at the end of the week, for I find Marcel quite capable of finishing this piece of work....”
Such was the epitaph pronounced over Peter Masters by his own son, and Aymer, reading, sank beneath302the dead weight of responsibility that was his. The outcome of neutrality can be as great a force as that of action, and to assume the right to stand aside is to play as decisive a part as the fiercest champion. Nevertheless he held to that neutral attitude through the pangs of self-reproach.
There was no will, Mr. Aston told him, when he returned from the plain business-like affair of the funeral.
The news, incredible as it was, was yet a respite to Aymer.
He did not trouble to conceal it.
“But I am certain Saunderson knows something. Do not count on it, Aymer.”
“I count every chance in my favour,” returned Aymer deliberately. “I discount even your belief that Peter knew, since he said nothing.”
Mr. Aston looked at him sadly. He had no such hope, nor was he even certain he was justified in seconding Cæsar’s wish that the fortune should pass Christopher by. The nearer the great thing came to them the more difficult was it to ignore the vastness of the interests involved, and the greater the responsibility of those who stood motionless between Christopher and it. Yet Mr. Aston knew as well as Aymer that neither of them would move from their position, and if they had acted wrongly in following the wishes of the dead woman in preference to the material instincts of the living man, they must accept the result, and Christopher must accept it, too.
But he felt keenly Aymer’s failure to present an unbiassed face to the turn of circumstances.
“How long will it be before Saunderson acts if he has any clue to go on?” Aymer asked wearily after a long silence.
“He would act immediately, but whether that would land him on the right line would depend on the303strength of the clue. Aymer, my dear fellow, try and put the matter from you. You are not going to act yourself.”
“No, but I’m no hand at waiting.”
That was true, and as usual the days of suspense told heavily on Aymer. Christopher’s return was an immense relief. He had had a heavy spell of work and travelling, and allowed himself a few days’ holiday. It happened that Patricia was also at Marden. She spent so large a percentage of her time with Constantia now that her presence in the house that had been her home more resembled a visit than Christopher’s comings and goings. No one had mentioned the fact that she was there to him, and he found her in the drawing-room before dinner kneeling by the fire and coaxing it into a cheery blaze.
“You are a regular truant, Patricia,” he complained after their greeting.
“Constantia maintains I am at school with her and calls me truant when I run down here for a few days.”
“Are you at school? What does she teach you?”
“Subjects too deep for mere man,” she retorted lightly. She continued to kneel with her back to him and the light touched her wonderful hair, that still seemed too heavy a crown for the proud little head. It was like molten gold. Christopher felt a new heartache for the days when he could touch it without fear in the blind bravery of boyhood. He wanted to see her face which she so persistently turned from him.
“I am not sure it is a suitable school for you.”
“Since when have you become responsible for my education, sir? Would you prefer my going to school with Charlotte? You are confounding me with Patrimondi. You will end by rolling me out flat on a high-road one day.”
She was talking arrant nonsense in self-defence, for every fibre of her being was quivering at his presence.304The old hushed cry awoke in her heart “Christopher and Love—Love and Christopher.” If she looked at him he must see it, her eyes must needs betray the pitiful whisper but for the clamour of foolish words. Where was Renata? Why were they all so late to-night of all nights? Yet she had hurried her dressing—chosen her gown even, on the chance of this interview that outmatched her schooled frivolity. The need to see her face and her eyes again pressed on the man—became imperative—as something of great moment, strangely difficult to achieve.
At last he abruptly spoke her name.
“Patricia.”
She involuntarily turned to him and found what had appeared so hard was quite easy, for she discerned some unusual trouble in his mind, and was woman enough for the mothering instinct to sweep up over the personal love.
“What is it, Christopher?”
He had wit enough to keep his advantage, for there was something to read on the upturned face that must not be deciphered in haste.
“I am seriously worried, Patricia. You might assist instead of hindering me.”
“Well, what is it?”
“What is Constantia teaching you?”
“Me again,” she returned with a show of indignation, “why on earth should that worry you?”
“I don’t like new facets to familiar diamonds,” he grumbled obscurely, “you are getting too old. Patricia.”
“You are losing your manners.” But even under the banter the colour died from her face and her hand fell listlessly to her side.
“I won’t allow you to be older than I am.”
She was saved further embarrassment by Renata’s entrance, but all dinner time she was conscious of his305silent “awareness” of her and was troubled by it, and it was a new and unpleasing sensation to be troubled by any attitude of Christopher’s. Then his scrutiny stopped abruptly as if she were suddenly placed outside his range of vision, and that attitude suited her mind as poorly as the other.
She hardly knew if it were by her own will or Christopher’s that she sat with him and Aymer that evening. She was quite powerless to resist the request that might have been a command, and there is some pain in life that we cling to, dreading its loss more acutely than its presence.
Mr. Aston was away, a rare occurrence now, and the three sat talking before the fire, till the dear familiar intercourse and the peace put to sleep the dull ache in Patricia’s heart. They talked—or rather the men talked—of Christopher’s latest experiences abroad. He had been to the scene of a vast tunnelling operation in which his part was to come later.
“They suggest we should take over their men’s shanties as they stand.”
“Will you?” demanded Cæsar. These things were in Christopher’s hands.
“They might serve as material,” he answered drily. “Two of their overseers and twenty men asked for berths with me. They are mostly Italians. If we keep them to make our encampment, I shall have to go myself. It is rather odd how these men pick things up. I heard––” he broke off abruptly.
“We didn’t,” remarked Cæsar suggestively after a minute.
“It was not much, but it is funny how a nick-name travels. There were about five hundred men there still, and I heard one say as I passed,‘Ecco il ‘Roadmaker.’’”
He was evidently boyishly pleased at the recognition, though he did not conclude the sentence. The306man had saluted him as he added to his comrade, “C’é un maestro d’uomini, non di brutti.”
Patricia gave Cæsar a quick look and caught his answer. It was as if some sudden bond of sympathy were tied between them.
Cæsar continued skilfully to ply Christopher with questions and extracted the information that the Patrimondi Company was much disliked by the big manufacturing powers.
“They say we spoil our men, and their own grumble. They sent me a deputation to ask us to cancel the Sunday holiday, which they never grant on contract work, and they feared the result of our example.”
“And you politely agreed?” suggested Cæsar, watching Patricia.
“I told them to––” again he stopped and laughed; “well, Patricia, I told them such was the time-honoured custom of my country and regretted my inability to consider their request.”
“I expect they only get into mischief on Sunday.”
Cæsar flung out this with assumed contempt, but it brought no quick retort. Christopher answered slowly, with his eyes on the fire.
“We plan excursions for them when there is anything to see or amusements of some kind. They are like children. If they are not amused they must needs make mischief.”
His voice was rather grave and Aymer knew there must have been difficulties here of which he did not mean to speak openly.
“It is deplorable if our Roadmaker is going about destroying other people’s comfortable paths. Don’t you agree with me, Patricia?”
She flushed up quickly, grasping his meaning at once.
“Not if their paths encroach on weaker people’s rights. I think it’s just what is wanted.” Then because307Cæsar laughed, she realised he was only drawing her, and flung him an appealing glance.
“But we mustn’t encourage him openly, Patricia, or he’ll leave us no old tracks at all.”
“I’m only the humble instrument of a company,” protested Christopher. “I merely carry out the regulations of my superiors.”
“Who are entirely at your mercy, you should add.”
Christopher disdained to reply to so obvious a fallacy. Presently, when he had gone to fetch some drawings to show them, Cæsar said quizzically.
“Has he obliterated any of your pet footpaths, Patricia?”
She shook her head.
“The Company has great confidence in him,” he announced gravely.
She looked straight at him. There was a kind intelligence in his eyes, and he held out his hand to her. “Present company not excepted. But we must not spoil him, Patricia.”
And she understood that her secret was Aymer’s and it lent her a sense of security and rest to know it, so that when she went to bed she reproached herself for her former childish moods. “I should be glad his strength of purpose and commonsense are so great,” she told herself, forgetting love and commonsense were ever ill neighbours. “I am never going to marry, and it would be difficult to say no to him. To-night was just one of the best of times that can be for us.”
That unwise thought aroused the dull throbbing ache in her heart again and the reasonable salve she offered it had no effect. She slept with it, woke with it, and knew it for the close companion of many days.
But Christopher’s last thought was, “I am not going to do without her any longer, if I am to meet her any more in this way. I should have read her308soul again to-night if I had not remembered in time.”
Aymer Aston lay awake wondering what was the matter between the two that they did not guess their palpable secret. He was the richer for another day’s respite and every day was a tide carrying him to the shore of safety.
309CHAPTER XXVIII
A chilly, rainy mist shrouded the country and blotted out the familiar beauty. Not a day for walking, but Christopher had chosen to tramp to a far-off corner of the estate on some pretence of business and had come back through the wet, dripping woods, burr-covered and muddy. He was met in the hall by a message that Mr. Aymer wanted him at once, so without waiting to change he strode away, whistling, to the West Room and came to a standstill on the threshold, finding Aymer had visitors with him.
There were two gentlemen, one was Mr. Shakleton, the son and successor of the old solicitor who had played his part in the finding of Christopher, the other was a stout, complacent man with gold-rimmed glasses and scanty sandy hair, and all three of the occupants of the room looked towards the door as if waiting for and expecting him. A glance at Cæsar’s face brought Christopher swiftly to his side and established instantly a sense of antagonism with the visitors.
“You want me, Cæsar?”
“Yes. We want you. Mr. Shakleton you know. This is Mr. Saunderson.”
Both men stood up and to Christopher’s amazement bowed profoundly.
“I am very honoured to meet you,” said Mr. Saunderson suavely. “I hope it will be the commencement of a long and fruitful acquaintance.”
Christopher felt rather at a loss to know if the man meant to be impertinent or was merely being silly. He looked at Cæsar with the hostile impatience he felt only too apparent. The hostility but not the310impatience deepened as he noticed the drawn beaten look on Aymer’s face. Also he was uncomfortably conscious of the three pairs of eyes watching him with rapt attention. The mild Mr. Shakleton, however, seemed entirely obscured by the expansive personality of the bigger man.
“Confound him,” thought Christopher, “has he never seen burrs on a wet coat before or is my tie up?”
“Christopher,” said Aymer, at last, “come and sit by me, will you. I think I should like to tell you myself.” He looked at Mr. Saunderson as if waiting permission.
“Of course, of course, Mr. Aston. I quite understand. It is not the sort of news we tell people every day.”
Christopher sat on the edge of the sofa with his eyes fixed on Cæsar.
“Are you sure it won’t keep,” he asked abruptly, “you look rather tired for business, Cæsar.”
“It won’t keep. It concerns Peter Masters. Mr. Saunderson says public rumour has underestimated his fortune rather than exaggerated it. He was worth nearly three millions.”
“Three millions six hundred and forty-one thousand.” Mr. Saunderson rolled it out in sonorous tones after a little smack of his lips that set Christopher’s teeth on edge.
“It seems, Christopher,” Aymer went on, with an abruptness that did not accord with his opening words, “that it’s yours. You are his heir.”
He made not the smallest movement or sign by which the two strangers could gather one passing glimpse of the agony it cost him to say it, for their attention was fixed on the younger man. But Christopher saw nothing else and had thought for nothing but how soonest to quench that fierce pain.311
The preposterous catastrophe was evidently true, but surely his own will and wishes were of some account. He put his hand on Aymer, searching for words which would not form into sense.
“Take your time, take your time, young man,” broke in Mr. Saunderson’s resonant voice. “It’s not the sort of event a man can be hurried over. You will grasp it more clearly in a few minutes.”
Christopher turned and looked at him.
“I believe I quite grasp the matter,” he said coolly. “Mr. Masters has, with no doubt the kindest meaning in the world, left his fortune to me. It’s unfortunate that I don’t happen to want all this money. I couldn’t possibly do with it.”
Mr. Saunderson leant back in his chair with a tolerant smile as if this were just what he would expect to hear after the shock, but Aymer bit his lip as if face to face with some inevitable ill.
Christopher leant towards him.
“You are worrying about it, Cæsar. There can’t be any need to say any more now. Of course it’s out of the question my accepting it. They can’t make me a millionaire against my wishes, I suppose. Anyhow it’s a preposterous will.”
“There is no will,” began Cæsar and then looked at the big lawyer, “tell him,” he added shortly. Mr. Saunderson cleared his throat.
“That is so. There is no will and the fortune naturally goes to the next of kin.”
“Very well, then,” returned Christopher, with blunt relief. “I believe he told me once he had a son somewhere. You had better find him. I don’t want to deprive him of his luck.”
Again the embarrassing silence. Then the big lawyer got up and bowed solemnly to Christopher.
“We have found him. Allow me to be the first to congratulate you, Mr. Masters.”312
Christopher wheeled round on him like a man struck.
“No!” he cried with passionate emphasis. “Cæsar, it’s not true. Tell them so.”
But Cæsar lay very still and looked past them all, staring blankly at the opposite wall. It seemed to Christopher the watching eyes of the others imprisoned him, held him in subjection. He got up.
“Let me out,” he muttered between his teeth, though none impeded him. He walked across the room to the fireplace and stood with his back to them, his hand mechanically altering the order of a procession of black elephants that stood there.
Aymer broke the silence, speaking with clear evenness.
“Shakleton, will you take Mr. Saunderson into the library. You will find my brother there, probably.”
“Certainly, Mr. Aston. Shall I leave these?” He indicate the papers on the table before him.
“Yes. Leave them where they are.”
Mr. Saunderson rose. “You must not be alarmed, my dear sir,” he said in a forced whisper, with a glance towards Christopher, “such news often takes a man off his feet for a while. He’ll soon appreciate it.”
“No doubt. Order anything you like, Shakleton.”
They were alone at last, yet Christopher did not move.
“Christopher, come to me,” called Aymer quietly.
At that he turned and walked mechanically to the sofa, seating himself, again with his elbows on his knees, and his eyes absently fixed on the carpet.
“Did you know this before, Cæsar?”
Aymer’s face twitched. “Yes, always.”
“Did—he—know?”
“Yes, apparently.”
“You did not tell him?”
“No.”
Christopher looked up sharply and met his eyes, and313again he forgot his own intimate trouble before the greater one.
“Thanks, Cæsar,” he said, dragging up a smile, “it would have been far harder at your hand.”
Then suddenly he sunk on his knees by Aymer’s side, and hid his head against the arm that had sheltered him as a child.
“They can’t make me take it,” he whispered, “even if I am his son. But Cæsar, Cæsar, why didn’t you tell me before?”
“I hoped you would never know. Did you never have any suspicion yourself?”
“Never. It was the last thing I should have imagined.”
“You have never asked me anything. You must sometimes have wondered about yourself.”
“I was quite content.” Christopher spoke with shut teeth. Under no provocation must Cæsar know the falsehood that had lain so long in his mind. He saw it in its full proportion now, and hated himself for his blindness in harbouring so ugly a thought.
“We were never certain how much Peter knew and I’ve never known for the past three years whether he meant to claim you or not.”
“If you’d only told me, Cæsar!”
“It was my one hope you should not know.”
“I don’t think I’ve earned that,” he said reproachfully.
“It was myself, not you, I thought of. You’ve got to know the whole thing now. Go and sit there in your old place and don’t look at me till I’ve finished.”
So Aymer at last reached the moment when he must break the seals of silence—that expected moment that had hung over him like some shadowy fate as a foretaste of judgment, when he must retrace the painful footsteps of his life across the black gulf from which he had climbed. But as he turned his face to the314darkness, there was light also on the other side, and he forgot he had feared.
“Peter and I were friends, as you know. He was five years my senior, but it did not make much difference. He was a worker, just as I was a player. He had tremendous capabilities and he put all his big brain into his work and when he wanted change he came to me. I represented to him the reverse side of his strenuous life and he was oddly fond of me. Before he was thirty he had well started his fortune as he raced to wealth. I raced to ruin and found every inch of the road made easy for me. Peter came into conflict with the socialistic party. There was a certain James Hibbault, who was a great power, and Peter, who was not so heavy a power in those days, employed the wisdom of the serpent to crush him. He came up to London and offered me a chance of new amusement in abetting his plans. The Hibbaults were middle class people without middle class virtues. They lived a scrambling, noisy life propagating their crude ideas and sowing broadcast the seeds of a greater power than they knew. They were, however, a real force to be reckoned with, they and their party, because of certain truths hidden in their wildest creeds—truths which did not suit Peter’s creed in the least. He made their acquaintance, and he introduced me to them. They were sufficiently new to amuse me, but I should have probably have tired of them soon had it not been for your mother.”
He paused a moment. “Do you remember her, Christopher?”
Christopher nodded.
“Elizabeth Hibbault,” went on Aymer slowly, “was extraordinarily beautiful, with the beauty of grace rather than of feature. She was as distinct from the rest of her clamorous family as a pearl from pebbles. She was an enthusiast, a dreamer, passionately315sincere, passionately pitiful. She recognised truth as a water diviner finds water. She was brought up in a labyrinth of theories, creeds of equality, in hatred for the rich, and out of all the jargon she gathered some eternal truths which she made her own. She did not live with her people: she had rooms of her own and she was a black-and-white artist. But she was often at the Hibbaults. Peter probably knew her accustomed days. She used to speak of her faiths. It was like one note of gold in the discordant babble. Men came and listened to her and she never knew it was not for her words but for her magnetic wonderful unknown self that they came. She might, and probably did, impress men who were dreamers or fanatics already, but those to whom all her beliefs were childish nonsense went just the same, Peter and I with them.”
He stopped a moment and shot a glance at Christopher, who never moved.
“I lost my interest in Peter’s schemes and he ceased to explain them to me, but I still visited Elizabeth at her own rooms when I was allowed. She was very anxious to convert Peter and myself, more especially Peter. I was not in love with her, Christopher, yet, but she fascinated me. I speculated as to how it would be with her if all the fire and devotion she brought to a mere Cause were turned into a more personal direction. She paid more attention to Peter than to myself, and she evidently considered him a more desirable convert. One evening we went together to call on her and they fell into the usual line of discussion, he answering her in a tolerant amused way as if she were a precocious child. I stayed behind when he left and she walked up and down in restless agitation, half forgetful of me. ‘The personality of the man!’ she cried fiercely, ‘he is too strong, he is ruthless! One cannot escape him. I cannot get him out316of my head.’ I told her she had much better tackle me. She told me plainly that I was a negative force in the world and my cousin an active. That was enough for me. I thought she despised me and I vowed she should recognise my possibilities as well as Peter’s. If any man were to turn the passionate stream of her nature back on herself, or to love—to see the woman rise above the fanatic—it should be I, not Peter. But I said nothing of this to him. I do not think he ever knew it at all. It began in pique on my side, then jealousy, lastly passion. Christopher, if I had loved her from the first beginning of things I should not be ashamed to meet your eyes now. Don’t look round yet. I laid deliberate siege to her heart and found she possessed my mind night and day. Soon it was not Peter who was my rival, but her own soul. I was confident I should win, though Peter, it was clear, was also wooing her persistently. He at least meant her well, Christopher. He loved her in his uncomprehending way, wanting her for the woman she wasnot—except in his mind. And I—I wanted her for the outward woman she was.”
He paused long enough for his listener to face clearly the portrait of the worn, broken woman he remembered, the outward woman that bore no likeness to the clear knowledge of the inner soul.
Aymer continued:
“At last I felt it was time to end it. Peter had been in town some time then. I knew the senior Hibbault and he were coming to some understanding, but I guessed nothing of the nature of it. She never mentioned him to me at this time. She stood, poor girl, between the two of us like a trapped creature, and because she feared herself and neither of us, she overstepped one snare to fall into the other. Christopher, I don’t know what was in my mind when I went to her that last evening: I had not seen her for some317days, but when I stood before her I knew suddenly I loved her, and then, like a flash, I saw it was neither Peter nor her that stood between us, but my own evil self. I told her all—that she was the victor and I the conquered. I was proud of my new humbleness. For once I recognised myself and my true place in the order of the world. But she knew me better than I guessed, and she was afraid to tell me the truth. She put me off with gentle words, terrified lest I should guess before I left her—Don’t turn away, Christopher—At last she owned she had written me a letter and I should find it when I got back. Her attitude maddened me. The better self, if it ever existed, got stamped out. I told her nothing should come between us, that nothing short of death should keep me from her, while I could move hand or foot.”
The white scar on Aymer’s forehead was very plain and his face had grown thin and sharp. Christopher for the first time looked up at him and away again.
“I went home at last, Christopher, wild to get this mysterious letter to which she would refer me. I went back and took seven devils with me—my passion and love fighting for possession. Nevil and I had a room of our own on the ground floor. I think they use it for storing papers in now.”
Christopher gave a slight movement: he knew that well.
“I went straight in, knowing any letter for me would be taken there. Nevil was going upstairs as I crossed the hall and he called to me across the banisters that Wayband had sent back my revolver and he had opened it. Revolver shooting was a passion just then and I was accounted a crack shot. I answered him savagely and went on. The letter lay on the table. She had been married to Peter two days before at a Registrar’s office. I felt I must have known it from eternity, but it caught me on the crest318of my fury, it overwhelmed me in a torrent of mad shame and wild jealousy. I had failed—had been beaten at my own game—beaten and fooled by some God who had used my passion for his own ends. Those short minutes of purer love burnt my soul like fire till I raged at my folly. Christopher, I’d give all I have left to say I was mad. I wasn’t. I knew what I was doing. The revolver lay there on the table and an open box of cartridges by it. It was the coward’s way out of the agony, and I took it. I shot myself—the crack shot of Waybands Club missed his own life by a hair’s-breadth.”
Even then, after the long years, Christopher caught an echo of bitterness in the voice. He dully wondered at his own inability to move or speak or send out a thought of consolation to the man who had suffered so fiercely.
Aymer gave a little gasp and was still a moment Then he went on:
“That’s all my story, Christopher. Now comes your mother’s part of it. The first result of her marriage was that the Hibbaults’ name ceased to be a power for the Socialist party—became less than a power. James Hibbault severed his connection with them entirely. I think Peter gave him a place at one of his big affairs. He had bought them out, and for a time the party fell into disrepute. But Elizabeth, whom he had married, he had not bought. I think she believed she had and could influence him, that she could sway him without loss of her own being. I know she clung to her true personality with passionate strength. I had failed to break it down, but I think Peter failed here also. When she heard of her father’s and brother’s betrayal of their party—it was nothing else—she was nearly crazy with grief. It was some time before Peter could get her to acknowledge their marriage at all, and she never, I believe, spoke319of her people again. But at last he got her to Stormly. I know very little of what happened there. I believe he was willing she should play Lady Bountiful to his people if it pleased her—even made her a big allowance for the purpose. But she went amongst them and she would have none of it. She would make no compromise with what she regarded as wholly evil. She found Peter had only played with her regarding her creed—that he never had the least intention of altering his plan of life to suit it. She hated it all a hundredfold more than you did, Christopher, and the thought of bringing a child into an atmosphere that was rank poison to her, became a nightmare. Perhaps she was not wholly accountable then—there was no woman to stand by her or counsel patience. Anyhow, about six weeks before you were born, we believe she just disappeared. No one knows how Peter really felt about it. In the face of the world he shrugged his shoulders and went on with his life as if wife and expected child had never been. We suppose he tried to find her at first, but he always declared there was no need—she would come back when she had had enough of the world. Eventually a letter reached him saying you had come into the world and that, rather than put you under the power of your father and all he stood for, she would bring you up among the people she loved and pitied. My father tried all he could to make Peter seriously seek for his wife. We know now he had some false clue and that he believed she and you were living in Liverpool. But either from pride or indifference he would never see for himself these two whose fortunes he watched so closely. Saunderson tells me it was the younger Hibbault who supplied him with the false clue and found it to his advantage to keep up the fraud. They can’t trace either Hibbault now. They seem to have emigrated. My father once visited Peter, before Elizabeth left him. There320was some dispute at the works and a certain foreman named Felton protested against his orders. My father heard the interview between them, and the man made a strong appeal to him. He did his best as go-between and failed. Peter did not quarrel about it. He was just immovable in his heavy way, but your mother was greatly troubled over the whole business and was generously good to Felton and his wife in the face of Peter’s direct commands. Ten years afterwards this man, tramping from Portsmouth to London in search of work, met your mother again. He was evidently a man of strong memory, and he knew her.”
Christopher nodded. He remembered the little narrow paths in the tiny garden, the smell of the box edging, a pink cabbage rose that fell when the man’s sleeve brushed against it. The man and his mother had talked long and the old woman had asked him if he knew the man. The next day they were on the road again and he had felt a resentment towards this man as the cause. All these recollections crowded themselves into his mind.
“Felton seems to have been a man with some strength of character. He had easily promised your mother not to betray her existence to her husband, but the memory of her face and some uneasy sense of unfitness troubled him, I suppose. He remembered Mr. Aston, who had spoken for him, and that he was something to do with these people. He turned up here one day and Nevil had the sense to send him direct to us in London. It was just at the time when I was wanting to adopt a child. I had stopped cursing fate and myself, and I wanted something of my own almost as fiercely as I wanted my freedom.”
There was another long pause. This time Christopher put out his hand and laid it on Aymer’s.
“There isn’t any more. We followed up the clue and found you. My father made another appeal to321Peter on behalf of his unknown son, and Peter declared the subject was not discussable: so I kept you. I vowed I’d never stand between your own father and you, but also that I’d never put out a hand to bring you together. That visit you paid him, Christopher, was the blackest time I’ve had since the day I realised what I’d done. I thought I had got over my jealousy, and I had not.”
Christopher leant over him and gripped his hands.
“Cæsar,” he said in a breathless low voice, looking him straight in the eyes. “Cæsar, there was no need of that then—there never has been, nor could be. I have no father at all if it be not you.”