She bent back her head and looked at him, her child face old and worn and disfigured with her still burning fury. She looked right in his eyes: his met hers steady and hard as flints, and through the blind passion of her look he saw her soul leap up, appealing, piteous, and by heaven-taught instinct, he answered that.

"It's all right, Patricia, you are safe enough. I'm not going to let you make a fool of yourself, my dear; don't be afraid. Stop thinking. Look at the dark shadows over there—on the cornfield. They'll cut that next week."

Little by little he loosed his grasp on her as he felt the tension slacken, and presently she stood free, still dazed and bewildered. Christopher picked up a spade and whistled.

"All the same, you are right, Patricia," he said thoughtfully, "it does seem a shame to disturb the old Johnny, and creepy too. I'll fill up."

He continued to work hard, watching her out of the corner of his eye, but talking cheerfully. Presently she took up her spade and made a poor pretence of helping him, but she said nothing till they had done and he suggested a return.

"Do you mind resting a bit, first?"

Her subdued voice called for a scrutinising glance. Then he dropped his spade and flung himself on the grass by her side. A little wind swept up the downland to them, making the brown benets nod in a friendly fashion. The purple scabious, too, nodded cheerfully. Patricia picked one and began stroking it with her fingers. Christopher lay on his back and whistled again softly, watching a lark, as he had watched one five years ago, when a small boy, by the side of the Great Road.

"Christopher, how did you do it?" demanded Patricia abruptly.

"Do what?"

"Stop me."

"I didn't. You stopped yourself."

"I never have before."

"Then you ought to have. You see you can, if you only will think."

"I can't think."

"But you did," he insisted, with some reason.

"Because you made me. I'd have been much angrier with anyone else—it was like—like—holding on to a rock, when the water was sucking one away."

"Bosh," said Christopher, sitting upright suddenly.

"Look here, Patricia, it was only that I made you take time to think: no one, even you (he put in rudely enough), could be silly enough to make such a little idiot of yourself if you thought a moment. Everyone seems to take it for granted you'll go on being—stupid—or else they are afraid to stop you, and I—well I won't have it, Patricia, that's all. You must jolly well learn to stop."

His boyish words were rougher than his voice, just as his real feeling in the matter was deeper than his expression of it, and secretly he was a little proud of his achievement and felt a subtle proprietorship over his companion that was not displeasing.

Patricia slipped her arm in his and leant her golden head against him.

"Christopher, I want to tell you all I can remember about it. I don't know what anyone else has told you."

"All right, fire away," returned Christopher resignedly.

"The only thing I can remember at all about my father is seeing him get into rages like that with my mother. I can remember him quite well, at all sorts of times; he was very big and fair, and splendid, but always everything I remember ends in that. And I can remember getting in a rage when I was quite little and seeing my mother turn white, and she jumped up and ran out of the room crying out to Renata. My father was killed hunting when I was six years old and mother died when I was nine years old. Renata was married then, you know, so I came to live with her and Nevil. But always I remembered when I was naughty like that, my mother used to look frightened and go away and our old nurse used to come and scold me and watch me till I could have killed her. Renata, darling Renata, used to talk to me after and make me promise to try and be good, but she, too, was really afraid when I was bad. I suppose they had both had so bad a time with father." She stopped, gazing out at a misty half-understood tragedy, whose very dimness woke a faint echo of terror in her heart, for she was as surely the daughter of the woman who had suffered as of the man who had caused the suffering.

"That's all," said Patricia, with a sudden movement, "everyone always takes it as part of me. Nevil says I'll outgrow it. I don't—and Renata cries."

"And I scold you. Anyhow, it isn't part of you in my eyes, but just a beastly sort of thing which you let get hold of you, and then it isn't you at all. It's all rot inheriting things, though of course, if you think so——" this young philosopher on the much-debated subject shrugged his shoulders.

"But I don't think so, I don't want to think so," cried poor Patricia; "it's just because you don't think it that you made me feel I can stop it. Oh, Christopher, go on believing I can help it, please."

"But I do. Of course I do. It's a beastly shame anyone ever suggested anything else to you. Come along home, Patricia, it will be tea-time."

This was the establishing of a covenant between the two. Whether it was from the suggestion or the dominant will of the boy himself, or both causes combined, Patricia began to gather strength against her terrible inheritance and, at all events in Christopher's presence, actually did gain some show of control over her fits of passion.

The first of these times, about six months after the covenant on the barrow, Nevil was present. Renata and one of the children had been there also, but Renata had seen the queer pallor creep up in her sister's face before even Christopher had guessed and had straightway hurried off with Master Max, a proceeding which usually precipitated events.

Then Christopher flung down his work and caught her clenched hand in his.

"Stop it, Patricia," he said imperiously.

Nevil held his breath. It was a tradition in the Connell family that interference invariably led to a catastrophe. In his indolent way he had taken this belief on trust, the "laissez faire" policy being well in accordance with his easy nature.

However, tradition was clearly wrong, for after one ineffectual struggle, Patricia stood still and presently said something to Christopher that Nevil did not catch, but he saw the boy free her and Patricia remained silently looking out of the window. Christopher turned to pick up his book, and for the first time remembered Nevil was present and grew rather red. Nevil had watched them both with a speculative eye, for the moment an historian of the future rather than of the past. He said nothing, however, but having discoursed a while on the possibility of skating next day, sauntered away.

He came to anchor eventually in Aymer's room, and sat smoking by the fire, his long legs crossed and the contemplative mood in the ascendency. His brother knew from experience that Nevil had something to say, and would say it in his own inimitable way if left alone.

"Christopher's a remarkable youth," he said presently.

"Have you just discovered it?" said Aymer drily.

"He is no respecter of persons," pursued Nevil quietly; "by the way, has it ever struck you, Aymer, that he'll marry some day?"

"There's time before us, yet. I hope. He isn't quite sixteen, Nevil."

"Yes, but there it is," he waved his hand vaguely. "I think of it for myself when I look at Max sometimes."

Aymer wanted to laugh out loud, which would have reduced his brother's communicative mood to mere frivolity, and he wished to get at what lay behind, so he remained grave.

"There's Patricia, too," went on Nevil in the same vague way. "She, too, will do it some day. It's lamentable, but unavoidable. And talking of Patricia brings me back to Christopher's remarkableness."

He related the little scene he had just witnessed in his slow, clear way, made no comment thereon, but poked the fire meditatively, when he had finished.

Aymer, too, was silent.

"You are her sole guardian, are you not?" he asked presently.

"With Renata. I wonder, Aymer, if anyone could have controlled that unhappy Connell?"

Aymer ignored the irrelevant remark.

"Renata does not count. Nevil, would you have any objections—as her guardian?"

Nevil strolled across to his brother and sat on the edge of his couch. He took up a sandy kitten, descendant of one of Christopher's early pets, and began playing with it, attempting to wrap it up in his handkerchief.

"If you would mind, we will guard against the remote contingency at which you hint, by keeping Christopher away when he is a bit older," said Aymer steadily.

"My dear Caesar, it's not I who might object—it's you. You know what Patricia is, poor child. I thought it might not fit in with your plans. She hasn't a penny of her own, though, of course, Renata and I will see to that." He knotted the handkerchief at the four corners and swung it to and fro to the astonishment of the imprisoned kitten.

"Christopher has nothing either," said Aymer almost sharply, "and I shall see to that, with your permission, Nevil. That unfortunate kitten!"

Nevil released it. It scampered over the floor, hid under a chair and then rushed back at him and scrambled up his leg.

"Indeed, if things turn out as I hope, I shall have to provide for him," went on Aymer steadily, "indeed I wish to do so anyway. It will mean less for Max, but——"

"What a beastly ugly kitten," remarked Nevil suddenly with great emphasis, placing the animal very gently on the floor again.

"Don't swear, Nevil," retorted Aymer with a little ghost of a smile.

"Very well," answered his brother meekly, "but it is. Aymer, don't be an ass, old fellow—Max won't want anything."

He lounged out presently before Aymer could make up his mind to vex him further with the question of Max's inheritance.

The property set aside for the use of the son and heir of the Astons provided a very handsome income, the original capital of which could not be touched. In early days Aymer had found the income barely sufficient for his wants. He spent it freely now—the Astons were no misers, but his father and he managed to nearly double the original capital and this was Aymer's to do with as he would. Apparently he meant it for Christopher. It was one of Nevil's little weaknesses that he could not endure any reminder of the fact that to him and his small son would the line descend, and that his brother's was but a life interest, and his position as his father's heir a merely formal matter of no actual value. Poor Nevil, who was the least self-seeking of men, could not endure any reminder of his elder brother's real condition of life.



CHAPTER X

There was a certain princely building in Birmingham where all the business connected with the name of Peter Masters was transacted. On each floor were long rooms full of clerks bending over rows of desks, carrying on with automatic regularity the affairs of each separate concern. Thus on the ground floor the Lack Vale Coal Company worked out its grimy history, on the second floor the Brunt Rubber Company had command, on the fifth the great Steel Axle Company, the richest and most important of all, lodged royally. But on the very topmost floor of all were the offices devoted to the personal affairs of Peter Masters, and through them, shut in by a watchful guard of head clerks, was the innermost sanctum, the nest of the great spider whose intricate web stretched over so great a circumference, the central point from which radiated the vast circle of concerns, and to which they ultimately returned materialised into precious metal—the private office, in short, of Peter Masters.

The heads of each separate floor were picked men—great men away from the golden glamour of the master mind—each involved in the success or failure of his own concern, all partners in their respective firms, but partners who accepted the share allotted to them without question, who served faithfully or disappeared from the ken of their fellow-workers, who were nominally accountable to their respective "company," but actually dependent on the word and will of the great man up above them. None but these men and his own special clerks ever approached him. Some junior clerk or obscure worker might pass him occasionally in a passage, or await the service of the lift at his pleasure; they might receive a sharp glance, a demand for name and department, but they knew no more of this controller of their humble destinies.

It was a marvellous organisation, a perfected system, a machine whose parts were composed of living men.

The owner of the machine cared much for the whole and nothing for the parts. When some screw or nut failed to answer its purpose, it was cast aside and another substituted. There was no question, no appeal. Nuts and screws are cheap. The various parts were well cared for, well oiled, just so long as they fulfilled their purpose; if they failed in that—well, the running of the machine was not endangered for sentiment.

Apart from this business, however, Peter Masters was a man of sentiment, though the workers in Masters's Building would have scorned the idea. He had expended this sentiment on two people, one, his wife, who had died in Whitmansworth Union, the other Aymer Aston, his cousin, who on the moment of his declared union with Elizabeth Hibbault, had fallen victim to so grim a tragedy. His "sentiment" had never spread beyond these two people, certainly never to the person of his unseen child, whom, however, he was prepared to "discover" in his own good time.

His wife had left him within a year of his marriage, and whatever investigations he may have privately made, they were sub rosa, and he had persistently refused to make public ones. She would come back, he believed, with an almost childish simplicity in the lure of his great fortune,—if she needed money,—or him. That she should suffer real poverty or hardship, lack the bare necessities of life, never for a moment occurred to him. Why should she, when his whole fortune was at her disposal—for her personal needs?

People who knew him a little said he had resented the slight to his money more than the scandal to himself when Mrs. Masters disappeared. They were in the wrong. Peter's pride had been very cruelly hurt: she had not only scorned his gold, but spurned his affection, which was quite genuine and deep so far as it went, but since he had never taken the world into his confidence in the matter of his having any affection to bestow, he as carefully kept his own counsel as to the amount it had been hurt, and continued his life as if the coming and going of Mrs. Masters was a matter of as little concern as the coming or going of any other of the immortal souls and human bodies who got caught in the toils of the great Machine.

As for the expected child, let her educate it after her own foolish, pretty fancy. When it was of an age to understand matters, the man of Power would slip in and claim his own, and he never doubted but that the dazzle of his gold would outshine the vapid illusions of the mother, and procure for him the homage of his offspring. Such was the mingled simplicity and cuteness of the man that he never for one moment allowed to himself there was any other possible reverse to this picture, this, the only thought of revenge he harboured, its very sting to be drawn by his own good-natured laugh at her "fancies." So he worked on in keen enjoyment, and the dazzle of the gold grew brighter as the years passed away unnoticed.

Peter Masters sat in the innermost sanctuary of the Temple of Mammon. It was a big corner room with six windows facing south and east, with low projecting balustrades outside which hid the street far down below. The room had not a severely business-like aspect, it rather suggested to the observer the word business was translatable into other meanings than work. Thus the necessary carpet was more than a carpet in that it was a work of Eastern art. The curtains were more than mere hangings to exclude light or draught, but fabrics to delight the eye. The plainness of the walls was but a luxury to set off the admirable collection of original sketches and clever caricatures that adorned them. One end of the room was curtained off to serve as a dining-room on necessity. No sybarite could have complained of the comfort of the chairs or the arrangement of the light. The great table at which Peter Masters sat, was not only of the most solid mahogany, but it was put together by an artist in joinery—a skilful, silent servant to its owner, offering him with a small degree of friction every possible convenience a busy man could need. The only other furniture in the room was a gigantic safe, or rather a series of little safes cased in mahogany which filled one wall like a row of school lockers, each labelled clearly with a letter.

Peter Masters leant back in his chair and gazed straight before him for one moment—just that much space of time he allowed before the next problem of the day came before him—then he rang one of the row of electric bells suspended overhead.

Its short, imperious summons resounded directly in the room occupied by the head clerk of the Lack Vale Coal Company, and that worthy, without waiting to finish the word he begun writing, slipped from his stool and hurried to the office door of his chief, where he knocked softly and entered in obedience to a curt order. The room was a simplified edition of the room on the top floor; everything was there, but in a less luxurious degree, and the result was insignificant. The manager of the Lack Vale Coal Company, who sat at the table, was a hard-featured, thin-lipped man of forty-five, with thin hair already turning grey, and pince-nez dangling from his button hole.

"Mr. Masters's bell, sir," said the clerk apologetically.

Mr. Foilet nodded and his thin lips tightened. He gathered up a sheaf of carefully arranged papers and went out by a private door to the central lift.

Peter greeted him affably and waved his hand to the opposite chair.

"You have Bennin's report at last?"

"Yes. He apologised for the delay, but thought it useless to send it until he had investigated the gallery itself."

"That's the business of his engineers. If he is not satisfied with them he should get others."

Mr. Foilet bowed, selected a paper from the sheaf he carried and handed it over. Peter Masters perused it with precisely the same kindly smiling countenance he wore when studying a paper or deciphering a friendly epistle. It was not a friendly letter at all, it was a curt, bald statement that a certain rich gallery in a certain mine was unsafe for working, though the opinion of two specialists differed on the point. The two reports were enclosed, and when all three reports were read Peter asked for the wage sheet of the mine. There was no cause of complaint there.

"The articles of the last settlement between the firm and the men have been rigorously adhered to?" questioned Masters, flinging down the paper.

"Rigorously. I will say they have taken no advantage of their success."

Peter smiled. "It is for us to do that. Mr. Weirs pronounces the gallery fit for working. The seam is one of the richest we have. What improvements can be done to the ventilation and propping before Monday are to be done, but the gallery is to be worked then, until the new shaft is completed. Then we will reconsider it."

Again Mr. Foilet bowed, but his hand fingered his glasses nervously.

"And if the men refuse?" he questioned in a low voice, with averted eyes.

Peter Masters waved his hand.

"There are others. Men who receive wages like that must expect to have a certain amount of danger to face. Danger is the spice of life." He leant back in his chair, humming a little tune and watched Mr. Foilet with smiling eyes. Mr. Foilet was wondering whether his chief was personally fond of spice, but he knew better than to say more. He left the room with a vague uneasy feeling at his heart. "A nice concern it will be if anything happens before the New Shaft's ready," he muttered; "if it wasn't for his wonderful luck, I'd have refused."

So he thought: but in reality he would have done no such thing.

The manager of the Stormby Foundry, which was a private property of Mr. Masters's, and no company, was the next visitor. He was a tall lank Scotchman with a hardy countenance and a soft heart when not fretted by the roll of the Machine. The question he brought was concerning the selling of some land in the neighbourhood of the works, for the erection of cottages.

"Surely you need no instructions on that point, Mr. Murray," said Peter a little more curtly than he had spoken to Mr. Foilet.

"There are two offers," said the Scotchman quietly. "Tennant will give L150 and Fortman L200."

"Then there is no question."

"Tennant will build decent cottages of good material and with proper foundations, and Fortman—well, you know what Fortman's hovels are like."

"No, I don't," said Peter drily. "He has never been my landlord."

Mr. Murray appeared to swallow something, probably a wish, with difficulty.

"They are mere hovels pretending to be villas."

"No one's obliged to live in them."

"There are no others," persisted Mr. Murray desperately, imperilling his own safety for the cause.

Masters frowned ominously.

"Mr. Murray," he said, "as I have before remarked, you are too far-sighted. Your work is to sell the ground for the benefit of the company, which, I may remind you, is for your benefit also. You have not to build the cottages or live in them. If the people don't like them they needn't take them. I do not profess to house the people. I pay them accordingly. They can afford to live in decent houses if they like."

"If they can get them," remarked the heroic Mr. Murray.

Peter smiled, his anger apparently having melted away.

"Let them arrange it with Fortman, and keep your obstinacy for more profitable business, Murray, and you'll be as rich as I am some day."

There was nothing apparently offensive in the words, yet the speaker seemed a singularly unlovable person as he spoke them, and Murray did not smile at the compliment, but went out with a grave air.

Neither he nor his business lingered on Peter's mind once the door had closed behind him. Peter got up and lounged to the window. He stood a while looking down into the street below with its crowd of strangely foreshortened figures. On the opposite side of the wide street was a shop where mechanical toys were sold, a paradise for boys. As Peter watched, a chubby-faced, stout little man with a tall, lanky boy at his side came to a stand before the windows. Peter knew the man to be one of the hardest-headed, shrewdest men in the iron trade, and he guessed the boy was his son. Both figures disappeared within the shop, the elder with evident reluctance, the younger with assured expectation. Peter waited a long time—a longer period than he would have supposed he had to spare, had he thought of it. They emerged at last in company with a big parcel, hailed a hansom and drove away. Peter looked at the clock and chuckled. "To think Coblan is that sort of fool. Well, that youngster will add little to the fortunes of Coblan and Company. Toys!" He turned away from the window, and, seated again at his desk, began to scribble down some dates on a scrap of paper. Then he leant back in his chair thoughtfully.

"Hibbault says that boy has just got a rise in that berth of his in Liverpool. I'll let him have a year or so more to prove his grit. I suppose Hibbault's to be trusted, but I might write to the firm and ask how he gets on! However, Aymer's boy shall have the vacancy!"

Therefore he took up his pen again and wrote the following brief letter:

PRINCES BUILDING, Birmingham, April 10.

DEAR AYMER:—

Are you going to 'prentice that boy of yours to me or not? I've an opening now in the Steel Axle Company, if you like to take it.

Yours, PETER MASTERS.



Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker

PART II



CHAPTER XI

Despite his honest intention never to stand between Christopher and any fate that might serve to draw him into connection with his father, Aymer had a hard fight to master his keen desire to put Peter's letter in the fire and say nothing about it. Surely, after all, he had the best right to say what his adopted charge's future should be. It was he who had rescued him from obscurity, who had lavished on him the love and care his selfish, erratic father, for his own ambitious ends, denied him. Aymer believed, moreover, that a career under Peter's influence would mean either the blunting if not the utter destruction of every generous and admirable quality in the boy, or a rapid unbalanced development of those socialistic tendencies, the seeds of which were sown by his mother and nurtured in the hard experience of his early days. Besides this, Peter's interest in the boy was probably a mere freak, or at the best, sprang from a desire to serve his cousin, unless by any remote chance he had stumbled on a clue to Christopher's identity.

This last suspicion wove itself like a black thread into the grey woof of Aymer's existence. His whole being by now had become concentrated in the boy's life. It was a renewal of youth, hopes, ambitions, again possible in the person of this child, and for the second time a fierce, restless jealousy of his cousin began to stir in the inner depths of Aymer's being, as fire which may yet break into life beneath the grey, piled-up ashes which conceal it.

He sought help and advice from none and fought hard alone for his own salvation through the long watches of a black night—fought against the jealousy that prompted him to hedge Christopher about with precautions and restrictions which, however desirable they might seem to his finite wisdom, yet were, he knew, only the outcome of his smouldering jealousy, and might well grow to formidable barriers for Christopher to climb in later years. Aymer fought, too, for that sense of larger faith that in the midst of careful action yet leaves room for the hand of God and does not confound the little ideas of the builder with the vast plan of the Great Architect.

So the letter—the little fact which stood for such great possibilities—was shown to Christopher, to whom it was a mere nothing, to be tossed aside with scorn.

"I don't want to be under him," he commented indignantly, "I don't care about his old axles," and then because Caesar was silent and he felt himself in the wrong, he apologised.

"All the same, I don't want to go to him unless you particularly wish it, Caesar," he insisted.

But Caesar did not answer directly.

"You are certain you want to be an engineer?" he asked at length.

"Certain,—only—" Christopher stopped, went over to the window and looked out.

They were in London and it was an evening in early spring. There was a faint primrose glow in the sky and a blackbird was whistling at the end of the garden. The hum of the great town was as part of the silence of the room.

Now at last must come the moment when Christopher must speak plainly of his darling purpose that had been striving for expression these many months, that purpose which had grown out of a childish fancy in the long ago days when his mother and he toiled along the muddy wearisome roads, or wended painfully through choking white dust under a blazing sun——

* * * * *

"Mother, how does roads get made here in the country, are they made like in London?"

"Yes, Jim, they were made somewhere by men, not over well, I think, for walkers such as we are."

"I'll make roads when I'm big," announced Jim, "real good ones that you can walk on easily."

* * * * *

So Christopher broke his purpose to Caesar abruptly.

"I want to be a Road Engineer."

"A what?"

"A Roadmaker. To make high roads,—not in towns, but across countries. Roads that will be easy to travel on and will last." Again he stopped, embarrassed, for the vision before him which he only half saw, made him hot and confused. Yet it was a good vision, perhaps that was why—a picture of countless toiling human beings travelling on his roads all down the coming ages, knowing them for good roads, and praising the maker. But he was a boy and was abashed at the vision and hoped Caesar did not guess at it. Caesar, however, saw it all more clearly than Christopher himself and was not abashed but well content.

The boy went back to Caesar's side. The thing was done, spoken of, made alive, and now he could plead for it, work to gain his end,—also there was a glow in his face and a new eagerness in his manner.

"Oh, Caesar, do say it's possible. I always wanted to do it, even when I was a little chap, and watched men breaking stones on the road."

"It's quite possible, only it will want working out. You must go abroad—France—Germany—I must see where to place you."

"Yes, I must learn how they are made everywhere, and then—then there must be roads to be made somewhere—in new countries if not here."

They talked it out earnestly; Caesar himself caught the boy's enthusiasm, and the moment Mr. Aston came in he too was drawn into the discussion and offered good advice.

Thus Christopher's future was decided upon as something to be worked out quite independent of Peter Masters and his millions. Perhaps because he had seen the vision which covered Christopher with shy confusion, Aymer became very prosaic and practical over the details, and Mr. Aston was the only one of the trio who gave any more thought to the boy's dream on its sentimental side. He used to sit in the evenings watching the two poring over maps, letters and guidebooks, thinking far thoughts for them both, occasionally uttering them.

"I wonder," he remarked one night, "if you know what a lucky young man you are, Master Christopher, not only in having a real wish concerning your own future—which is none too common a lot—but in being free to follow it."

Christopher looked up from the map he was studying.

"Yes, I know I'm lucky, St. Michael. It must be perfectly horrible to have to be something one does not want to be. I suppose that's why lots of people never get on in the world. It seems beastly unfair."

"Yet I've known men to succeed at work for which they had no original aptitude," returned Mr. Aston quietly.

"Mightn't they have succeeded better at what they did like?"

"That is beside the mark, so that they did not fail altogether. I knew a soldier once," he went on dreamily, "just a private. A good chap. He was a soldier because he was born and bred in the midst of a regiment, but his one passion was music. He taught himself a little instead of learning his drill. In the end he deserted and joined a German band. That argues nothing for his musical taste, you say. He just thought it a stepping-stone, but it was a tombstone. He was quite a smart soldier, too."

"Well, I think it was jolly hard lines on him to have to be a soldier at all, if he didn't like it. He wanted a Caesar to help him out. I think all fellows ought to have a chance, there should be someone or something to say, 'what do you want to be?'"

"You'd be surprised how few could answer. Prove your point yourself anyway, my dear boy. Succeed."

"I mean to," said Christopher with shut teeth and an intonation that reminded both men of Peter Masters himself.

"We are all of us Roadmakers of one kind or another," went on Mr. Aston meditatively, "making the way rougher or smoother for those who come after us. Happy if we only succeed in rolling in a few of the stones that hurt our own feet."

"You are rather like a steam roller," remarked Aymer quietly, "it hadn't struck me before."

Mr. Aston rumpled his hair distractedly and Christopher giggled.

"I wasn't talking of myself at all," said Mr. Aston hastily. "I was merely thinking of you making things smooth for Christopher. You are much more like a steam roller than I am. You are bigger."

Christopher began to laugh helplessly, and Aymer protested rather indignantly.

"I deny the likeness. But if rolling has to be done, it is better to do it heavily, I suppose. Whose roads shall we roll, Christopher?"

Christopher looked up, suddenly grave.

"What do you mean, Caesar?"

"You say everyone should have a chance and my father insists we are bound by some unknown Board of Guardians to level our neighbours' roads, so where will you start?"

"On Sam Sartin!"

He sat upright, his face glowing, looking straight at Caesar. Caesar's tone might be flippant, but if he meant what Christopher supposed him to mean, he must not let the golden opportunity slip.

"I thought Sam was in a greengrocer's shop," said Caesar in a drawling, indifferent manner.

"So he is. But would anyone be in a greengrocer's shop if they could be in anything else? When we were kids, he and I, we used to plan we'd be Lord Mayors—A greengrocer!"

"An honest and respectable calling, if a little dirty," murmured Mr. Aston. "The greengrocers, I mean not the Lord Mayors."

"Sam's got a head on his shoulders. He's really awfully sharp. He could be anything he liked," urged Christopher. "Could you help him, Caesar?"

"You might if you liked."

"Make what I like of him?"

"No. Most emphatically, no. Make what he likes of himself. A crossing sweeper, if he fancies that. Buy him a crossing and a broom, you know."

"But really, what he likes; not joking?"

"Sober earnest. I'll see to-morrow, and tell you. Now, will you kindly find that place you were looking for when we were so inopportunely interrupted with irrelevant moralisings."

"I won't do it again," said his father deprecatingly. "I apologise."

Aymer gravely bowed his head and the subject was dropped. But when they were alone that evening, Mr. Aston reverted to it.

"What are you going to do with Sam Sartin?" he asked, "and why are you doing it?"

"Sam must settle the first question himself," said Aymer, idly drawing appalling pictures of steamrollers on the fly-leaf of a book, "as to the second—" he paused in his drawing, put the book down and turned to his father.

"Christopher's got the makings of a rabid socialist in him. If he's not given good data to go on he will be a full disciple when he's twenty-one, all theories and dreams, caught in a mesh of words. I don't want that. It's natural too, for, after all, Christopher is not of the People, any more than—than his mother was." He examined his pencil critically. "She always credited them with the fine aspirations and pure passions of her own soul, instead of allowing them the very reasonable and just aspirations and ambitions that they have and should be able to reach. Sam may be an exception, but I don't think he is. I'm quite ready to give Christopher a free hand to help him, provided he knows what he wants himself."

"To provide an object lesson for Christopher?"

"Yes, precisely."

"Is it quite fair on Sam?"

Aymer looked up quickly.

"He benefits anyway."

"Possibly; but you do not care about that."

"Christopher does."

"Ah, yes. Christopher does. That is worth considering. Otherwise——"

"Otherwise?"

"How far are we justified in experimenting with our fellow-creatures, I wonder?"



CHAPTER XII

It was a day of expectancy—and promise—of blackthorn breaking into snowy showers, and of meadows richly green, blue sky and white cloud—and a sense of racing, headlong life joyously tremulous over the earth.

The boys had met at Paddington Station, Sam Sartin by no means abashed at his own appearance in an old suit of Christopher's, and wearing, in deference to his friend's outspoken wishes, a decorous dark-blue tie and unobtrusive shirt. He looked what he was—a good, solid, respectable working lad out for a holiday. Excitement, if he felt it, was well suppressed, surprise at the new world of luxury—they travelled down first—was equally carefully concealed. The code of manners in which he was reared was stringent in this particular.

Christopher, on the contrary, was in high spirits. Sam had watched him come down the platform, out of the corner of his eye, with a queer sense of proud possession. He would have liked to proclaim to the world that the young master there, who walked like a prince, was his own particular pal. Yet he pretended not to see him till Christopher clapped him on the shoulder with a warm greeting.

"I've got the tickets. Come on," said the giver of the treat. "I say, what a day, Sammie—if it's good in London what will it be in the country?"

"Cold, I shouldn't wonder. What's the matter with London?" said the cockney sarcastically.

"Old Bricks and Mortar," retorted Christopher gaily. "You'll know what's the matter with it when you come back. It's too jolly small."

"Big enough for me. But the country's well enough to play in. I say, Mr. Christopher, I've been thinking, we may not find any boats. It's early."

"Oh, I've seen to that," said Christopher with the faintest suspicion of lordliness in his voice. "I wrote to the man I know at Maidenhead to have a boat ready—a good one."

Sam grinned. "My, what a head-piece we've got, to be sure."

The other flushed a little. "It was really Caesar who suggested it," he owned.

Sam had never been down that line before, so Christopher pointed out the matters of interest. They found their boat ready at Maidenhead, bestowed their coats in the bow and settled themselves. Christopher insisted on Sam's rowing stroke. Sam thought politeness obliged him to refuse, but he ultimately gave in. He retrieved the little error in manners by handling his oar in a masterly way. "Stroke shaping well," Christopher heard the boatman say as they went off.

The wind on the river was cold enough and, in spite of the bright sun, cut through them. But half an hour's steady pulling brought them into a glow and mood to enjoy themselves. Christopher called for a rest. Sam looked over his shoulder.

"Tired?"

"No," responded the other, laughing, "but we didn't come down just to row 'eyes in boat'; I want to look at the world."

"Nothing but green fields and trees and cows."

"I like cows."

"I don't."

Nevertheless he desisted from work, and they drifted on. Christopher was bubbling over with a great secret that was to be the crowning episode of the day. It would be fatal to divulge it too early, so he plunged into friendly discussions and they rowed on happy in the physical exertion, the clean, fresh air and the smiling earth.

It was not till after lunch that Christopher decided the great matter must be broached, to allow time to discuss it in full detail. They had changed places and he was stroke now. He pulled with a slower swing but greater power than Sam and for some time bent to his work in silence, thinking over what he was going to say. He took a rapid mental survey of Sam's present life and future, of what it held and more especially of what it did not hold; the limitations, the lack of opportunity, the struggle for existence that left no room for ambitions or hopes. And he, with Caesar's help, was going to change all that, and open the gates of the world wide for him. If the thought were exhilarating, it had also a serious side. He was not afraid, he was too young for that, but he had sense enough to know it was a big thing to uproot a life and plant it in a new spot more congenial to growth.

Mr. Aston's words to him that morning came back with puzzling insistence. "Remember," he had said in his kindly way, "no two people see life through the same glasses. Don't be surprised if Sam's make you squint." What did he mean? It was just because he, Christopher, was not sure of Sam's real ambition that he was to be given the choice. He amused himself while cogitating over it, tasting like an epicure the flavour of the good wine to be drunk presently. Sam complained he was a bad stroke, and they changed again. This better suited his plans. He could see the town boy's thin sloping shoulders bend evenly before him. Sam was no athlete in build, but his passion for rowing had stood him in good stead and developed muscle and endurance.

"He'll choose something in boats," thought Christopher, mentally picturing Sam as captain of a great liner and then as an alternative, as an admiral of the Fleet, and so came the crucial point.

"Sam, if you had your choice, what would you be?"

"Dunno."

"But think. I want to know. A greengrocer like Mr. Gruner? Ho, ho!" he shouted out wholesome laughter.

Sam grinned. He was less ready to laugh. Life had taken toll of that birthright already.

"I hate vegetables. Beastly, dirty things," he said prosaically. "No, I wouldn't be a green-grocer."

"Well what? An engineer? A doctor, lawyer, parson?"

"Why not a king now?" scoffed Sam.

"Not enough situations vacant. I mean it, really. What would you be if you were as free to choose as I am?"

"If I were you, you mean."

"No, not that. If you could choose for yourself as I have."

Sam rowed on stolidly. "Dunno that it's much use bothering," he said indifferently. "I'm doing all right, though it's not what I'd choose."

It had seemed an easy, insignificant task to break the news five minutes ago, but either Christopher had taken the wrong approach or it was a stiffer job than he had fancied. He became uneasily conscious his own part in it could not be overlooked, that he was doing something that evilly-disposed persons might even call magnanimous or philanthropic. His face grew red at the thought.

"Sam," he said as naturally as he could, "it happens you can choose, you see. Choose anything you like. Caesar's given me a free hand. We are both to start life just as we like. What shall it be? I've told you my choice."

The narrow form in front never slackened its stroke, but pulled on mechanically, and at last spoke a little gruffly.

"Say. You're kidding me, you know."

"I'm not. Dead earnest."

Again the boat shot on, but Christopher stopped rowing. Sam looked back over his shoulder.

"You're lazy. Why don't you pull?"

Christopher obeyed mechanically. He knew he could afford to be patient now.

"Easy," said the stroke at last.

There was a smooth reach of water before them. Low meadows with reddish muddy banks lay on either side, no house or any living soul was in sight. Sam rubbed his hands on his trousers, looked back at his friend and away again.

"You mean you'll start me in any trade I like? 'Prentice me?"

"Any trade or profession."

"What do you do it for, anyhow?"

"Caesar suggested it. He said I might if I liked."

"Well, why do you do it?"

"Does it matter?"

"I want to know certain."

Christopher looked embarrassed. "Weren't we kids together? Besides, it seems to me every chap ought to have a chance of working on the job he likes best. It's only fair. It's jolly rough on a fellow to have to do just what comes along whether he's fit for it or not."

"Seems to me," said Sam meditatively, "a good many jobs would want doing if everyone did what they liked."

"Oh, science would step in and equalise that," returned Christopher, hastily quoting from some handbook and went on to further expound his creed.

Sam concluded he had been listening to spouters in the Park, but he was sharp enough to recognise beneath the crude boyish creed the kindly generous nature that prompted it.

"So Caesar says you've just to choose. We'll see you through."

"He must be jolly rich."

"Well, that's why he's rich, isn't it, to be able to do things."

"I don't see what he gets out of it anyhow."

"He doesn't want anything, you silly."

"I want to think this out," said Sam, "there is something I've always wanted since I was a kiddy, but I want to think. Row on."

This was intelligible and encouraging. Christopher's sense of flatness gave way a little. He pulled steadily, trying to make out what had so dashed him in Sam's reception of the great news. He had not yet learnt how exceptional is the mind that can accept a favour graciously.

After nearly ten minutes' silence Sam spoke again. "Well, then, I'd like to be a grocer," and straightway pulled furiously.

"What?" gasped Christopher, feeling the bottom story of his card house tottering to a fall.

"It's like this. I don't mind telling you—much—though I've never told nobody before. When I was a bit of a chap, mother, she used to take me out shopping in the evenings. We went to pokey little shops, but we used to pass a fine, big shop—four glass windows—it has six now—and great lights and mahogany counters and little rails, and balls for change, tiled floor, no sawdust. Every time I saw it I says to myself, 'When I'm a man I'll have a place like that.' I tried to get a job there, but I couldn't—they made too many family inquiries, you see," he added bitterly; "well, if I could get 'prenticed to a place like that ... might be head man some day...." He began whistling with forced indifference, queerly conscious that the whole of his life seemed packed in that little boat—waiting. The boat had drifted into a side eddy. Christopher sat with his head on his hands, wondering with his surface consciousness if the planks at his feet were three or four inches wide, but at last he brushed aside the last card of his demolished palace and recalled his promise to Caesar to leave Sam as free and unbiased in choice as he had been himself.

"That would be quite easy to manage," he said with assumed heartiness, "it's—only too easy. Only you must be a partner or something. Oh, oh. A white apron. I'll buy my tea and bacon of you when I've a house of my own!"

"All right," grinned Sam. "I'll have great rows of red and gold canisters and—and brass fittings everywhere—not your plated stuff for me—solid brass and marble-topped counters. But it won't come off," he added dejectedly, "things like that never do."

"But it will," persisted Christopher impatiently, "just as my going to Dusseldorf is coming off."

"You don't get 'prenticed for nothing," was the faithless rejoinder.

Christopher joggled the boat and shouted: "You sinner, if you won't take my word for it I'll smash you."

"All right—keep cool, I'm only having you on, Chris. Oughtn't we to turn now?"

They expended their excitement and emotion in rowing furiously, and landed again at Maidenhead in time for tea. Then Christopher broke the further news to Sam that he was to return with him to Aston House and see Caesar. He overcame with difficulty Sam's reiterated objections, and they walked from Paddington, Christopher keeping a strict guard over Sam lest he should escape.

But Sam's objections were more "code" than genuine. He was really anxious to hear the wonderful news confirmed by more responsible lips than Christopher's—not that he disbelieved his intentions, but he still doubted his powers. He grew very silent, however, as they turned in at the beautiful iron gates of Aston House. He had never managed to really connect his old friend with this wonderful dignified residence that he knew vaguely by sight. He had had dim visions of Christopher slipping in by a side entrance avoiding the eyes of plush-breeched lords-in-waiting. But here was that young gentleman marching calmly in at the big front doors nodding cheerfully to the sober-clad man waiting in the hall who called Christopher "Sir."

Sam successfully concealed under an expression of solid matter-of-factness the interest and curiosity that consumed him. He looked straight before him and yet saw all round. He accepted the whole calmly, but he wanted to sit down and stare.

Christopher explained that they were to have dinner together in his own sitting-room as soon as they had seen Aymer.

They went through the swing doors down the long corridor leading to Aymer's room, and Christopher stopped for a moment near a window.

"I never come down here in this sort of light," he said with a little catch in his voice, "without thinking of the first evening I came. How big it all seemed and how quiet."

"It is quiet," said Sam in a subdued whisper.

In another moment they were in Aymer's room.

"Hullo, Caesar. Here we are, turned up like bad pennies."

Christopher pulled Sam across the room to the sofa. Sam would have been not a little surprised had he known that it cost Aymer Aston a great deal more effort to see a new face than it cost him to look at this Caesar of whom he had heard so much.

The "code" slipped from his mental horizon and left him red and embarrassed, watching Christopher furtively to see what he would do.

"Here's Sam, Caesar. I've told you all about him and he may just have heard your name mentioned—possibly—" laughed Christopher seating himself on the sofa and indicating a chair to his friend.

Aymer held out his hand.

"Yes, I've heard of you, Sam. Sit down, won't you?"

Sam sat down, his hands on his knees, and tried to find a safe spot on which to focus his eyes.

"Now, isn't it a jolly room," began Christopher triumphantly, "didn't I tell you?"

"It's big," said Sam cautiously.

"Christopher, behave yourself. Don't mind his bad manners, Sam. It's sheer nervousness on his part, he can't help it."

A newspaper was flung dexterously across his face.

"Which gives point to my remark," continued Aymer, calmly folding it. "Well, have you enjoyed your day? Madness, I call it, the river in March!"

Christopher plunged into an account of their jaunt to which his companion listened in complete bewilderment, hardly recognising the simple pleasures of their holiday in their dress of finished detail and humour.

"Is that a true account?" asked Aymer, catching the tail of a broad grin.

"I didn't see the water-rat dressing himself, or the girl with the red shoes," said Sam slowly. "My, what a chap you are, Christopher, to spin a yarn. Wish I could reel it off to mother and the kids like that."

He found himself in a few minutes discoursing with Aymer on the variety and history of his family. It was not for some minutes or so that the great subject was approached.

"I suppose," said Aymer at last, "I need not ask if you and Christopher have been discussing his little plan for your future. What do you think of it, Sam?"

Christopher got up and walked to the window. Minute by minute a sense of overwhelming disappointment and shame obliterated the once plausible idea. It was not only an opportunity missed, it was wasted, thrown away. What glory or distinctions, what ambitions could be fulfilled in the narrow confines of a grocer's shop—a nightmare vision of an interminable vista of red canisters, mahogany counters, biscuit boxes and marble slabs, swam before his eyes. It was no use denying it. It was a cruel disappointment ... and what would Caesar think?

Meanwhile Sam, in answer to Aymer's questions, had stumbled out the statement he thought it a rattling fine thing for him and was very much obliged.

"And you know your own mind on the point?" demanded Aymer, watching him closely.

Sam coughed nervously. "Yes, I always knew what I wanted to be. I told him," with a backward jerk of his head towards Christopher.

This was better than Aymer had expected. A boy with an ambition and a mind of his own was worth assisting.

"Well, what is it. Will you tell me too?"

Sam looked at him out of the corner of his shrewd eyes. "It's you as is really doing it, sir?"

"What is it?"

"It's like this," began Sam, hesitating; "it costs money,—my top ambition; but it's a paying thing and if anyone would be kind enough to start me on it I'd work off the money in time. I know I could."

"I'm afraid Christopher hasn't quite explained," said Aymer quietly; "it's not a question of investing money on your industry. I don't expect him to pay back the cost of starting him in life. You are to start on precisely the same ground."

Sam got red. "He—he belongs to you—it's different," he began.

"What is your ambition?"

"Grocery business. I've told him. Ever since I was a bit of a chap that high I've wanted it. I never could get a job in a shop, but if I was regularly apprenticed now—if that wasn't too much?"

Aymer's glance meandered thoughtfully to the distant Christopher, still staring out of the window; a shadow of a smile rose to his lips.

"Yes, that would not be difficult to manage, Sam. How old are you?"

"Over sixteen, sir. There's money in grocery, sir. I could pay it back. I'm sure I could."

Aymer lay still, thinking. "What sort of schooling have you had? Not much? Passed the fifth standard young?"

"But it takes a long time for a 'prentice to work up," said Sam, watching him eagerly.

"I'm thinking of another way," said Aymer slowly. "Christopher."

He rejoined them, standing by the grate and kicking the logs into place. He did not look at Aymer.

"Sam has been telling me of his wishes," said Aymer. "I think them quite excellent, but I've not quite decided on the best way to carry them out. Go away and get your dinner and come back to me afterwards."

The boys departed, and once in Christopher's den, the host turned to his guest questioningly.

"Well, what do you think of Caesar?"

"He's a stunner, a jolly sight more sensible than you, Chris. But I say," he added in a grumpy, husky voice, "is he always like that?"

"Like what?"

"On a sofa. Lying down."

"Yes," said Christopher shortly. He had become almost as sensitive on that point as Aymer himself.

"He must get a bit tired of it. Didn't he ever walk?"

"Yes, of course. It was a shooting accident. Shut up, Sam, we all hate talking of it."

The dinner that was served immediately somehow impressed Sam more than any other event of the day. He had occasionally had a meal in a restaurant with Christopher, and once had been in a dining-room at an hotel, but it all seemed different to this intimate, comfortable dinner. The white napery, the shining silver and delicate glass and china, the serving of the simple meal was a revelation of his friend's life, for Christopher took it all as a matter of course and was unabashed by the presence of the second footman who waited on them.

There was soup, and cutlets in little paper dresses, tomatoes and potatoes that bore no resemblance to the grimy vegetables Sam dispensed daily. Then came strange bird-shaped things, about the size of sparrows which Christopher called chicken and which had no bones in them, cherry tart, with innumerable trifles with it, afterwards something that looked like a solid browny-yellow cake, which gave way to nothing when cut, and tasted of cheese. Finally there was fruit, that was a crowning point, for Sam knew what pears cost that time of year, and said so.

Christopher laughed. "These come from Marden," he explained. "Marden's noted for pears; they have storages of different temperatures and keep them back or ripen them as wanted. The fire's jolly after all, isn't it?"

He stretched out his long legs to the fender, a very contented young Sybarite for the moment.

"I say, Chris," said Sam abruptly, "I must tell you though you'll think it pretty low of me. But after you came and told us you were living here with Mr. Aston I used to ask people about him. One day I came round here and ... somehow I never took it in. I knew in a way you lived here, but I didn't know it was like this...." He stumbled over his words in an embarrassed fashion.

"Like what?" demanded Christopher shortly.

"Well, I thought you was here like a sort of servant—not with them exactly—I see now, I never took it in before—you with your own rooms and walking in at the front door and ordering dinner and them blokes in the hall saying 'sir' to you—oh, lor'."

"I told you they had adopted me," said the other, frowning and rather red.

"I ought to have taken it in, but I didn't," continued Sam humbly, "and then you ask me here—and are going to give me a chance—Oh, lor',—what's it all for, I want to know? What does it mean?"

Christopher got up and walked away. Had Sam but known it, his chance in life was in dire peril at that moment. Seldom had Christopher felt so angry and never had he felt so out of touch with his companion. Why on earth couldn't Sam take his luck without wanting reasons. It was so preposterous, in Christopher's eyes, to want any. In the old days Sam had been ready to share his scant pennies and toys with his small friend. The offer of a ride in a van from the warehouse where Sartin senior worked would have included both of them or neither. What was the difference? What was the use of having plenty if not to share it with a friend?

To his credit he did not allow Sam to guess his irritation, but suggested a return to Caesar's room.

"Didn't it take you an awful long time to get used to all this?" inquired Sam, as he followed him.

"I forget. No, I don't though. I hated it rather at first, the clothes and collars and having to change and be tidy, and all that, but I soon got used to it. Here we are."

Mr. Aston was there too now. Sam was duly introduced and behaved with great discretion. He was far less abashed by Mr. Aston than by Aymer, whose physical condition produced a shyness not inherent in the youth.

Mr. Aston talked to him in a friendly gossiping way, then looked across at Aymer with a faint nod.

Aymer unfolded his scheme of carrying out Sam's ambitions to a fruitful end. He was to go for a year to a commercial school, and after that to be put into a good firm as pupil or 'prentice with a chance of becoming a junior partner with a small capital if he did well.

"If you don't do well, of course it's off," concluded Aymer, rather wearily, "the future is in your hands, not ours: we only supply an opportunity."

Sam said stolidly he quite understood that: that he was much obliged, and he'd do his best.

"It will be a race between you," remarked Mr. Aston, looking from one boy to the other, "as to whether you become a full-fledged grocer first or Christopher a full-fledged engineer."

But late that night when Mr. Aston was bidding Aymer good-night, he remarked as he stood looking down at him:

"You have done a good piece of road-making to-day, old man."

"No, I haven't," retorted Aymer, rather crossly. "I've only supplied material for someone else to use if they like."

"Just to please Christopher?"

But Aymer did not answer that. Mr. Aston really needed no answer, for he knew that long ago Sam's mother had made smooth a very rough piece of road for another woman's feet, and that woman was Christopher's mother.



CHAPTER XIII

A thin, sickly-looking woman in a dingy black dress sat by the roadside with a basket of bootlaces and buttons at her feet. She rested her elbows on her knees and gazed with unseeing eyes at the meadowland below.

The burst shoe, the ragged gown, and unkempt head proclaimed her a Follower of the Road, and the sordid wretchedness that reached its lowest depth in lack of desire for better things, was a sight to force Philanthropist or Socialist to sink differences in one energetic struggle to eradicate the type. If she thought at all it was in the dumb, incoherent manner of her class: at the actual moment a vision of a hat with red flowers she had seen in a shop window flickered across her mind, chased away by a hazy wonder as to how much supper threepence halfpenny would provide. That thought, too, fell away before a sudden, shrewd calculation as to the possible harvest to be gleaned from the two people just coming over the brow of the hill.

These two, a boy and a young man, were walking with the swinging step and assurance of those who have never bent before grim need.

"Young toffs," she decided, and wondered if it were worth while getting up or not.

The young man was listening eagerly to the equally eager chatter of his companion, and they walked quickly as those who were in haste to reach a goal until they were level with the tramp woman, who watched them with speculative eyes. The boy, who was about twelve years old, was as good a specimen of a well-trained, well-nurtured boy as one might find in the country, the product of generations of careful selection and high ideals, active, brimming over with vitality and joyousness, with clear-cut features perhaps a trifle too pronounced for his age. But the elder of the two, who was twenty-one and might by appearance have been some few years older, was a far stronger type. There was a certain steady strength in the set of his square head, in the straight look of his dark eyes. It was a face that might in time be over-stern if the kindly humorous lines of the mouth should fade. The tramp woman saw nothing of this. She only observed their absorption in each other and abandoned hope of adding to her meagre fortune.

Max Aston's quick blue eyes saw her and were averted instantly, for she was not a pleasing object. But at sight of her the shadow of some dominant thought drove every expression from his companion's face but pity: and the pity of the strong for the weak lies near to reverence.

He crossed the road abruptly, his hand in his pocket. Max dawdled after him. The woman looked up with awakened interest.

"It's a long road, kind sir, and poor weather," she began in a professional drawl, and then stopped. The young face looking down on her had something in its expression to which she was not accustomed. It was as if he checked her begging for very shame. She noticed dully, he held his cap in his hand.

He said nothing at all, but dropped a coin in her hand and went on, followed by Max, who was a little puzzled.

The woman looked after them and forgot she had not thanked him. She wished the moment would repeat itself and the young gentleman stand before her again. She had not taken it all in—taken what in, she hardly knew.

She looked at the coin and it gleamed yellow in her hand. It was half a sovereign. Oh, what luck, what luck! It was a mistake of course—he had thought it was a sixpence no doubt, but he had gone, and she had it.

A vista of unlikely comforts opened before her, even the hat with red flowers was possible. It was careless of him though.

She got up suddenly and looked down the hill. The two were still in sight—the boy had stopped to tie his boot-lace.

She looked at the half-sovereign again, and then set off at a shuffling slipshod trot after them. They had resumed their walk before she reached them, but the boy looking back, saw her, and told the other, who wheeled round sharply, frowning a little.

"'Ere, please sir, I wants to see yer," she gasped, out of breath, choking a little with unwonted exertion. Christopher went back to her and waited gravely. She opened her hand and the half-sovereign glinted again in the light.

"Expect yer made a mistake, didn't yer, sir?" she asked in a hoarse whisper, and saw a wave of hot colour under his brown skin.

"No," he said awkwardly, "I hadn't anything else. It was good of you to trouble to come though. Go and get some new boots and a good supper. It's bad going on the roads in autumn. I know, I've done it."

She gasped at him bewildered, her hand still open.

"Yer a gentleman, yer are,"—her tone hesitated as it were between the statement of a plain fact and doubt of his last words.

"Winchester is three miles on. You can get decent lodgings out by the Station Road to the left as you go under the arch. Good-bye." He raised his hat again and turned away. The woman looked after him, gave a prolonged sniff and limped back up the hill.

Max looked at Christopher out of the corner of his eye, a little doubtfully. He had not come near, fastidiousness outweighing curiosity.

"What did she want—and why did you take your hat off?"

Christopher grew hot again.

"Oh, she's a woman, and my mother and I tramped, you know."

Max did not know, and intimated that Christopher was talking rot.

Christopher decapitated a thistle and explained briefly, "Caesar adopted me straight out of a workhouse. My mother and I were tramping from London to Southampton, and she got ill at Whitmansworth, the other side of Winchester, and died there. The Union kept me till Mr. Aston took me away. I thought everyone knew."

Embarrassment and curiosity struggled for the mastery in the young aristocrat by his side.

"And you really did tramp?" he ventured at length.

"Yes, for a time, but we were not like that. My mother was—was a lady, educated, and all that, I think, only quite poor. She understood poor people and tramps. We used to walk with them, talk to them. They were kind."

"And if Caesar hadn't adopted you?"

"I should be a workhouse porter by now, perhaps," laughed Christopher lightly and then was silent. A picture of the possible or rather of the inevitable swam before his eyes; a picture of a hungry, needy soul compassed by wants, by fierce desires, with the dominant will to fulfil them and no means, and the world against him. He did not reason it out to a logical conclusion, but he saw it clearly.

Max concluded the subject was not to be discussed and went on with an explanation of why Christopher had not been met in state after four years' absence.

"The motor was to come for you, but it's gone wrong, and Aymer said you'd rather walk than drive, and we were not quite certain of the train. Do you really hate driving, Christopher?"

"Yes, I always think the horses will run away. Aymer knows that. Is it really four years since I was here, Max?"

"Yes, at Christmas. You never came down when you were in town two years ago. It was a beastly shame of you."

"I'd only two months and Caesar wanted me. That was before I went to Switzerland, wasn't it? They know something about road-making there, Max, but I've learnt more in France."

"And all about motors, too?" questioned Max eagerly. "Can you really drive one?"

Christopher laughed. "I've won a race or two, and I've got a certificate. Perhaps it won't pass in England."

"Will you teach me to drive? I just long to: but St. Michael says no—though he doesn't mind Geoffry Leverson teaching me to shoot. He's home now, you know, and comes over most days, and when Patricia won't play golf, he takes me shooting."

"Patricia's taken to golf then?"

"Yes. Geoffry says she's splendid, but I expect that's just to make her play up."

They had turned off the highroad now and were in the fields following a path on the side of the sloping meadows. The mist that hung over the river did not reach up to them and Christopher could see the thick foliage of the woods opposite, splashed with gold and russet, heavy with moisture. The warm damp smell of autumn was in the air. He took a long breath and squared his shoulders.

"It's good to be back. To think of its being four whole years."

"And two since you've seen any of us. Are you going away again, Christopher?"

"In the spring. There's St. Michael."

He was waiting by a stile leading into a wood that gave quicker access to Marden Court, and he came forward to meet them with undisguised pleasure.

Charles Aston had rendered but small homage to time. He was as erect and thin as ever, hair perhaps a little white, but the kind eyes had lost nothing of their penetrating quality.

Christopher's welcome could not have been warmer had it been his own father. Max went ahead to find Charlotte and left the two to come on together.

"How is Caesar?" demanded Christopher, the moment they were alone.

"Can't you wait for his own report?"

"I want yours." There was an urgent insistence in his voice, and Mr. Aston looked at him sharply.

"Well, he is decidedly better since he came down here, and I want him to stay, Christopher, to give up London in the end perhaps altogether."

"He has not been well then?"

"I have not thought so: but what made you suspicious, my dear boy?"

"His letters have been over-witty and deliberately satirical. Just the sort of things he says when something is wrong."

Mr. Aston nodded.

"Yes, I felt that. There seemed nothing physically wrong, but I felt he must have more people round him."

"And you?"

"Oh, I stay here too, and go up and down when needs must."

"And the Colonial Commission? How will it get on without you?"

"Oh, they easily found a better man. As I explained to Caesar, I was only asked as a compliment," he answered simply.

Christopher kept to himself his dissent from this, and was silent a moment, thinking how this man's life was spent to one end; and desirable as he felt that end to be, he was of age now to feel a tinge of regret for all that had been and still was sacrificed to it. An infinitesimal sacrifice of personal feeling and convenience was demanded of him now, if he were to second St. Michael's attempt to keep Aymer from Aston House and teach him to permanently regard Marden Court as home, for dearly as Christopher loved Marden it was only there he was awake to the apparently indisputable truth that he was not one of that dear family who had done their best to make him forget once and for all that obnoxious fact. His sense of proprietorship in Aymer and of Aymer's in him was undeniably stronger in town than in the country, and this not entirely because Nevil was to all intents master of Marden, but rather that there Aymer himself was less isolated, merged more into the general family life, and became again part of the usages and traditions of his own race.

Mr. Aston, without actually speaking the words, had conveyed to Christopher his own dread lest some day Aymer might be left alone, stranded mentally and physically in the great silent London house that was their home by force of dear companionship. Christopher saw it in a flash, saw it so clearly that he involuntarily glanced at his companion to assure himself of the remoteness of that dread chance. Hard on this thought pressed the knowledge that neither of these two men who had done so much for him made the least claim on his life or asked ought of him but success in his chosen line—and that knowledge was both sweet and bitter to him.

"Caesar will be far better satisfied when you are actually started at work," Mr. Aston went on. "He lives in your future, Christopher, he is more impatient for this training period to be over than you yourself."

"Because I am training and have no time to think. The first real step is coming. I have a good chance, only I must tell him first."

He quickened his steps insensibly, for the thought of Caesar waiting was like a spur even to physical effort, and even so his mind outraced his feet, till it came full tilt against a girl coming directly from its goal and momentarily obliterating it by her very presence.

"Oh, Christopher, Christopher," Patricia cried, holding out both hands. "How long you have been! I began to think you never would come again!"

Christopher, taking her hands, felt it was a long two years since they parted and that time had made fair road here meanwhile. His thoughts outpaced his feet no longer, but kept decent step with the light footfall beside him.

Mr. Aston, following, noted it all, and first smiled and then sighed a little. The smile was for them and the little sigh for Aymer waiting within.

He found, however, little reason to repeat his sigh during the next few weeks, for Christopher was in constant attendance on Aymer, and gave but the residue of his time to the rest of the little world. His suspicions as to Aymer's well-being vanished away, for the latter betrayed by no outward sign the sleepless nights and long days spent in wrestling with intangible dread of impending evil and the return of almost forgotten black hours. Indeed, Christopher's steady dependable strength and vigorous energy seemed to renew belief and confidence in the man with whom life had broken faith. He was jealously greedy of Christopher's company, though he sought to hide this under a mask of indifference, and he made a deliberate attempt to keep him near him by the exercise of every personal and social gift he possessed. It was not enough for him to hold his adopted son's affection by the bond of the past, it was not enough to be loved by force of custom, his present individuality struggled for recognition and won it. Deliberately, skilfully and successfully he bound Christopher to him by force of personality, by reason of being what he was as apart from all he had done.

None of the household grudged him his triumph or resented their own dismissal from attendance in the West Room. The women-kind once more superfluous to Caesar's well-being, resumed their wonted routine with generous content.

Patricia's routine appeared to consist very largely of golf in which she and Geoffry Leverson could undoubtedly give Christopher long odds. Christopher, however, was undaunted, and the few hours he did not spend in Aymer's company, he spent toiling round the links points behind Patricia, play she never so badly. Geoffry complained bitterly to Patricia in private that she was spoiling her game, but she, indifferent to her handicap, continued to play with Christopher and to ignore promised matches with Geoffry whenever her old playmate chose to set foot on the green.

At length Geoffry could stand it no longer and protested loudly when Christopher challenged her, that it was the third time she had put off a return match. Christopher withdrew his challenge at once and declared he would infinitely rather watch a match. Patricia demurred and pouted, whereupon he sternly insisted that promises must be kept.

She played Geoffry and beat him by one point, secured by a rather vicious putt, then lightly requesting him to take her clubs back to the Club House with his, she summoned Christopher to take her home. Geoffry had not protested again. He took early opportunity to challenge Christopher instead and reaped a small revenge of easy victories, half embittered, half enhanced by Patricia's plainly expressed annoyance with the vanquished one. He knew she would have condoled with him had he lost.

So the weeks slipped by unnoticed and autumn merged into winter. Christmas came and went—with festivities in which both Patricia and Christopher took active part.

Christopher read and studied, but did nothing definite, and the New Year slipped along with rapid, silent foot. It was Caesar who at length broke up the pleasant drifting interlude and he did it as deliberately as he did everything else, urged by his haunting desire to see Christopher finally committed to the future he had chosen.

"Why don't you go and see those road experiments they are trying in Kent?" Aymer asked one day.

"Frost-proof roads? They are no good. It was tried in Germany. What I would like is to run down to Cornwall and see how the Atlantic Road stands the winter, only it's such a beastly way down by train."

"It would certainly interfere with golf?" returned Caesar drily.

"I'm beginning to play. Leverson says if I work really hard I may do something in a few years. Patricia says I shan't even if I live to be as old as Methuselah; so I must stick to it to prove her wrong."

"That's highly desirable, of course. All the same she might leave you a little leisure to play round with your hobby. You mustn't work too hard or Sam will beat you yet."

"How is Sam?"

"He came to see me before I left town. He is doing well. They will take him in as junior partner in a year or two. I always said he'd do better than you." He sighed profoundly.

"What a pity you didn't adopt him instead of me," retorted Christopher teasingly. "Is it too late to exchange? Buy him a senior partnership and leave me a free lance."

And because Aymer did not reply at once to his familiar nonsense, he turned quickly and surprised a strange look in the blue eyes, a fleeting, shadowy love, passionate, fierce, jealous. It lost itself almost as he caught it and Aymer drawled out in his indifferent tone:

"It really might be worth considering. For then I could go back to London and he could come home every night. Besides, Sam really appreciates me."

But it was Christopher who had no answer ready this time.

The look he had surprised gripped his heart. It revealed something hitherto unguessed by him. He came and sat on the edge of the sofa, and though he spoke lightly as was his manner, his voice and eyes belied his words.

"On the contrary, Sam does not appreciate you at all. He regards you as an erratic philanthropist with a crank for assisting deserving boys."

"A just estimate."

"Not at all. It is wrong in every particular."

"Prove it."

"You are not erratic; you are methodical to a fault. You are not a crank; therefore not a philanthropist. And you show a lamentable disregard to the moral qualities of those to whom you extend a helping hand."

"Jealousy."

"Jealousy of whom, please?"

"Of Sam."

Christopher considered thoughtfully.

"I believe you are right," he returned at last in a tone of naive surprise. "How stupid of me not to have guessed before. I had always tried to think you helped him to gratify me. It was a great strain on my credulity. Now I understand."

"It had nothing to do with you at all," retorted Caesar irritably, shifting his position a little, whereby a cushion fell to the ground. With a gust of petulance he pitched another after it, and then in rather a shamed way, told Christopher to ring for Vespasian to put the confounded things right.

But Christopher did no such thing. He put his strong arm round Caesar, raised him, and rearranged the refractory cushions, talking the while to divert attention from this unheard-of proceeding.

"I shall go to London to-morrow and study Sam in order to oust him from your fickle affections," he announced. "Seriously, Caesar. I ought to be running round seeing things a bit."

And Caesar, having brought him to the conclusion he wished, signified his entire approval.

The following morning when Christopher came in to bid Caesar good-bye, he found Mr. Aston also there, standing by the fire with a humorous smile on his face in evident appreciation of some joke.

"Christopher," said Aymer severely, "I have something important to say to you."

Christopher drew himself up to attention as he had learnt to do when under rebuke as a boy.

"If you are going to make a habit of running up and down to town and the ends of the earth on ridiculous business and worrying everyone's life out with time-tables (it was notorious Christopher never consulted anyone about his comings and goings), you must understand you cannot use Renata's carriage and pair for your station work. Max's pony is not up to your weight, neither is the station fly. I find on inquiry my father occasionally requires his motor for his own use; anyhow, it is not supposed to get muddy. So you had better buy one for yourself."

He held out a blank signed cheque.

Christopher looked from one to the other. It was the dream of his life to possess a motor, but this free gift of one was overwhelming.

"Of course," went on Caesar hastily, "I shan't give you a birthday present too. It's to get out of that, you understand. You are twenty-one, aren't you? And it's only half mine, the other half is from St. Michael. I don't know where your manners are, Christopher; I thought I had brought you up to be polite. Go and thank the gentleman nicely."

Christopher turned to Mr. Aston, but he was beyond words. He could only look his overwhelming gratitude.

"It's not I," said that gentleman, hastily. "I only told Caesar I'd like to go shares—the lamps or bells or something. Get a good horn with a good rich tone."

Christopher took the cheque with shaking fingers.

"I can't thank you, Caesar, it's too big. Why didn't you let me earn it?"

"I wanted to prove to you the justice of Sam's opinion of me. Hurry up; you'll miss your train if there is one at this hour at all."

"You've not filled up the cheque."

"Not I. From what I know of your business methods you'll get what you want at half the price I should. I'm not going to let St. Michael fling away good money."

In his excitement Christopher forgot to wait for Patricia, who had promised to walk to the station with him. (Caesar's complaint anent the horse vehicles was even more unfounded than his grievance over the time-table.) But seeing him start, she ran after him and made some candid and sisterly remarks on his behaviour and was only mollified by a full explanation of his unwonted state of elation. The rest of the walk was spent in discussing the merits of various species of motors.



CHAPTER XIV

Christopher spent the whole of the day inspecting possible motors, perfectly aware all the time of the one he meant to purchase, but in no wise prepared to forego the pleasures of inspection. Sam was not free that evening, so he dined with Constantia Wyatt, whose elusive personality continued to remove her in his eyes far from relationship with ordinary women. She was going to a "first night" at His Majesty's Theatre as a preliminary to her evening's amusement, and her husband, honestly engrossed in work, seized on Christopher at once as an adequate substitute for his own personal escort. He would meet her with the carriage after and go with her to the Duchess of Z——, but it would be a great help to him to have a few early evening hours for his book; so he explained with elaborate care.

"Basil is so deliciously mediaeval and quaint," Constantia confided to her young cavalier as the carriage drove off; "he quite seriously believes women cannot go to a theatre or anywhere without an escort, even in our enlightened age. I assure you it is quite remarkable the number of parties we attend together; people are beginning to talk about it. If it's impossible for him to come himself he always seems to have hosts of cousins or relations ready to take his place. Oh, charming people; but quite a family corps, a sort of 'Guard of Honour,' as if I were Royalty—and really, at my time of life."

She turned her radiantly beautiful face to Christopher. She was indeed one of those beloved of time and it seemed to Christopher as he saw her in the crude flashing glare from the streets without, that the past ten years which had made of him a man had left her a girl still, but since he was as yet no adept at pretty speeches he kept the thought to himself and said shyly:

"It is not a question of age at all."

"You, too, think me incompetent to look after myself?"

"It is not a matter of competence either, is it? I mean, one can easily understand that Mr. Wyatt is proud of being your...." He stopped lamely.

"Finish your sentence, you tantalising boy."

"Your caretaker, then," he concluded defiantly.

"Delicious," she clapped her hands softly. "I thought you were going to say 'proprietor.'"

"It is you who are the proprietor of the caretaker, isn't it?"

"The new cadet is worthy his commission," she pronounced with mock gravity.

"It is a great honour, especially since I am not one of the family."

He never forgot this in her presence. It was as if an overscrupulous remembrance of hard days forced him to disclaim kinship with anything so finely feminine as Constantia Wyatt; as if he found no right of way from his own world of concrete fact into that delicate gracious world of illusions in which he placed her. Such barriers did not exist for her, however, and thence it came that it was to Constantia that Christopher spoke most easily of his relationship to the Aston family.

She put aside his disclaimer now, almost indignantly.

"You belong to Aymer. How can you say you do not belong to us, when you have been so good for him?"

His main claim on them all lay in that, that he was and had been good for the idolised Aymer Aston. He recognised it as she spoke and was content, for the proud generosity of his nature was built on a humility that had no underprops of petty pride.

"That was quite unpremeditated on my part," he protested whimsically; "you are all far too good to me. I can never explain it to myself, but I accept it, and realise I am a real millionaire."

Constantia Wyatt started slightly. Christopher noticed the diamonds on her hair sparkle as she leant forward.

"How did you discover that?" she asked in a low voice.

"My fortune? I was only ten when I came to Caesar, but I must have been a very dense child indeed if I had not known even then that the luck of the gods was mine—if I had not been sensible of the kindness——"

His voice was low also and he fell into his old bad habit of leaving his sentence unfinished—hardly knowing he had expressed so much.

Constantia gave a sigh of relief, and Christopher again was only aware of the twinkling diamonds, of melting lines of soft velvet and fur, a presence friendly but unanalysable. They passed at that moment a mansion of a prince of the world of money, and she indicated it with a wave of her fan.

"Supposing, Christopher, you could realise some of your imaginary fortune for his?"

"Heaven forbid. Think how it was made."

"The world forgets that."

"You do not forget," he answered quickly; "besides it's much nicer to be adopted than to fight other people for fortune."

"I thought all boys liked fighting."

"Not if there's anything better to be done. A Punch and Judy show or a funeral will stop the most violent set-to. I've seen it times, when I was a boy in the street. Sam and I raised a cry one day of 'soldiers' to stop a chum being knocked down. Then we ran."

"Oh. Christopher, Christopher, can't you forget it?"

He shook his head.

"I don't want to. It wouldn't be fair to Caesar. Also I couldn't."

"Some day you will marry, and perhaps she will rather you should forget."

"No, she won't, she is far too fond of Caesar."

He stopped abruptly. For one brief moment the great voice of the streets and the yellow glare died away; he was blinded by a bewildering white light that broke down barriers undreamed of within his soul. Then the actual comparative darkness of the carriage obscured it and he found himself again conscious of the scent of roses, the sheen of satin and soft velvet, and his heart was beating madly. He had stumbled over the unsuspected threshold, surprised the hidden temple of his own heart, and this, inopportunely, prematurely, and, to his everlasting confusion, in the presence of another.

He clanged to the gates of his inner consciousness in breathless haste and set curb on his momentary shame and amazement. The break was so short his companion had barely time to identify the image disclosed when his voice went on with quiet deliberation.

"Or will be when she appears. A case of 'if she be not fair to "he," what care I how fair she be.'"

Constantia with rare generosity offered no hindrance to the closing of the door and discreetly pretended she had not been aware it had opened. Yet she smiled to herself and decided it was quite a desirable image and very advantageous to Aymer. Also, she reflected with pleasure, she had predicted the result from Patricia's and Christopher's intimacy, to her father years ago.

The piece at the theatre was a modern comedy which did not greatly interest him, indeed, he was more concerned in keeping his attention from that newly-discovered temple within than in unravelling the mysteries of the rather thread-bare plot of the play. Being, however, quite unaccustomed to dealing with this dual condition of mind it is to be feared he was a little "distrait" and mechanical of speech. Constantia allowed him the first act to play out his mood and then with charming imperiousness claimed his full attention, gained it, and with it, his gratitude for timely distraction.

Half way through the play he remembered this was the theatre at which Mrs. Sartin and Jessie were employed. He mentioned the fact to Mrs. Wyatt, who remarked gravely their names were not on the programme. Christopher equally gravely explained quite briefly. If he found nothing surprising in his own interest in these friends of the past, he never made the error of imagining they would be of interest to newer friends. There was a certain independence in his attitude towards all affairs that touched him nearly, which even at this early age made him a free citizen of the world in which he chanced to move. This attitude of mind was more in evidence to-night than he had imagined. Personally, he quite appreciated the fact he was sitting in a box with one of the loveliest women in London, and that she was everything that was charming and nice to him, but it never occurred to him that half the men in the theatre would have given a big share of their worth to be in his place; he was almost childishly unconscious of the envious glances he earned. Constantia was not: neither was she blind to his attitude of personal content and impersonal oblivion. It amused her vastly, and she compiled an exceedingly entertaining letter to Aymer on the strength of it.

"He handed me over to Basil in the vestibule afterwards," she concluded, "with the most engaging air of having been allowed a special treat and fully appreciating it, and departed straightway to conduct Mrs. Sartin, dresser at the theatre, to her house in the wilds of Lambeth. He owned it in the most ingenuous way, seeing nothing whatever of pathos in it. Does he lack sense of humour?"

Aymer, ignoring the rest of the letter, refuted this query with pages of vigorous sarcasm, to the complete delight and triumph of his sister.

Christopher, having ascertained from a suspicious doorkeeper that Mrs. Sartin would not be free for twenty minutes, cooled his heels in a dark, draughty passage with what patience he could.

He seized on Mrs. Sartin as she came unsuspectingly down a winding stair, and bore her off breathless, remonstrating, but fluttering with pride, in a hansom.

"I'm only up for a few days," he explained. "Sam dines with me to-morrow and I want you to come out somewhere in the afternoon. Crystal Palace, or wherever Jessie likes."

Mrs. Sartin's face and Mrs. Sartin's person had expanded in the last few years and her powers of expressing emotion seemed to have expanded with her person. Disappointment was writ large on her ample countenance.

"Well, now, if that isn't a shame and a contrariwise of purpose. I've taken a job, Mr. Christopher, for that blessed afternoon. I've promised to dress Miss Asty, who is making a debut at a matiny at the Court. Eliza Lowden, she was goin' to dress her, but she can't set a wig as I can."