CHAPTER XXXIV

As Christopher was preparing to leave the works one Saturday afternoon he was told that a man had just arrived from Birmingham who refused to give his name, but who asked for him. Christopher hung for a moment on the step of his car and then descending again went straight to the room where his unknown visitor was waiting. He proved to be a spare, stooping man, with lips so thin and white as to be almost invisible. His eyes, which he hardly raised from the floor, were bright with the fire of fever, and his shaking hands, one of which held a cap, concealing the other, were narrow, and the knuckles stood out with cruel prominence.

"What do you want with me?" Christopher demanded shortly.

The man looked at him sideways and did not move, but he spoke in an uncertain, quavering voice.

"You are Masters' son, ar'n't you?"

Christopher turned on him with fierce amazement, and checked himself.

"Answer my question, if you have anything to say to me, and leave my private affairs alone," he said sternly.

"There you are," grinned the man, the thin mouth widening to a distorted semblance of a smile, "seems to me, seems to my mates 'tain't such a private affair, neither, leastways we pay for it."

Christopher's instinct to turn the man out struggled with his curiosity to know what it all meant. He stood still, therefore, with his eyes fixed on the weirdly displeasing face and neglected to look at the twitching hands.

"It were bad enough when Masters were alive, curse him, with his 'system' and his 'single chance,' and his sticking to his word, but we knew where we was then. Now, none of us knows. Here's one turned off cos he broke some rule he'd never heard of; another for telling a foreman what he thought of him; my mate's chucked out for fighting—outside the Mill Gate, look you—What concern be it of yours what we do outside? It's a blessed show you do for us outside, isn't it? I tell you it don't concern you anyhow, you lazy bloodsucker—and look at me—I've worked for your father fifteen year, and you turn me off—you and your precious heads of departments,—because I was a day behind with my job. Well, what if I was? Hadn't I a wife what was dying with her sixth baby, and not a decent soul to come to her? We've been respectable people, we have, till we came to live in the blooming gaudy houses at Carson."

"That's the Steel Axle Company's works, isn't it?" put in Christopher quietly. He had not moved; he was intent on picking up the clue to the mad indictment that lay in the seething flow of words.

"Yah. Don't know your own purse-strings," spluttered the denouncer, growing incoherent with rising fury; "sit at home with your little play-box of a works down here, with fancy hutches for your rabbits of workmen, clubs, toys, kitchen ranges, hot and cold laid on. Oh, I've seen it all. Who pays for it, that's what I want to know? who pays for your blooming model works and houses?"

"I pay for it," said Christopher still quietly, "or rather the company does. It comes out of working expenses."

The man gave an angry snarl of disbelief. "You pays, does you? I tell you it's we who pays. You take our money and spend it on this toy of yours here. I'll——"

Christopher put up his hand. "You are utterly mistaken," he said, "I have no more to do with the late Peter Masters' works or his money than the men in the yards out there."

The black ignorance, the fierce words interlarded with unwritable terms, the mad personal attack, filled him with a shame and pity that drowned all indignation. There had been injustice and wrong somewhere that had whipped this poor mind to frenzy, to an incoherent claim to rights he could not define.

"Why do you come to me?"

The man gave almost a scream of rage.

"Come to you? Ain't you his son? Don't it all belong to you, whether you takes it or whether you don't? Are you going to skulk behind them heads in Birmingham and leave us at their mercy, let 'em grind us to powder for their own profit and no one to say them yea or nay? There was a rumour of that got about, how you was going to shunt us on to them, you skulking blackguard. I wouldn't believe it. I told 'em as how Masters' son, if he had one, wouldn't be a damned scoundrel like that. He'd see to his own rights."

What was that in the shaking hands beneath the cap? Christopher's eyes, still on the tragically foul face, never dropped to catch the metallic gleam; his whole mind lay in dragging out the truth entangled in the wild words. The voice quivered more and more as if under spur of some mental effort that urged the speaker to a climax he could not reach but on the current of the crazy syllables.

"So it ain't no concern of yours if we lives or dies, if we work or be turned off without so much as a word to carry us on again? 'Tain't nothing to you we've got fifty masters instead of one, so long as you gets your money. I tell you I won't serve fifty of 'em. One as we could reckon on was bad enough, but fifty of 'em to battle flesh and blood and make their own food out of us, and no one what we can call to account as it were, I tell 'ee we won't have it. I won't serve 'em." The poor wretch had forgotten he was already dismissed from such service. "If you won't be their master, then by God, you shan't be master anywhere else."

His hand with the revolver he had clutched under cover of his cap flew up. The report was followed by a splitting of glass and a cry without.

For a brief second that was like a day of eternity, Christopher and the man continued to face each other; the swaying blue-grey barrel of the smoking weapon acted like a magnetic point on which their numbed minds met and mingled in confusion, with that independence of time we ascribe to dreams. For the echo of the report had not died from the room when those outside rushed in. The would-be assassin instantly crumpled up on the floor, a mere heap of grimy clothes, unconscious even of his failure.

The men clamoured round Christopher with white faces and persistent inquiries as to whether he were hurt.

He reassured them of that as soon as it appeared to him his voice could sound across the deafening echo of the shot.

"Not hurt in the least," he said dully, looking down at the huddled form. "Is he dead?"

They straightened out the poor creature they would gladly have lynched, and one of them shook his head.

"A fit, I think. Let him be."

A new-comer rushed in with horror-stricken face, and stopped his tongue at sight of Christopher.

"How's it outside?" whispered one to him.

"Dead." The word was hardly breathed, but Christopher spun round on his heel.

"Who's dead?"

They looked at him uneasily, and at one another.

He moved to the door mechanically, when an old man, a north-countryman and a Methodist preacher of some note, laid his hand on his arm.

"Don't 'ee take on, lad. 'Tis the Lord's will which life He'll take home to him. Maybe He's got bigger work for you than for the little 'un."

"Who is it?" His dry lips hardly framed the words.

"It's Ann Barty's little chap as was passing. We thought 'twere but the glass."

"Better a boy than a man," muttered another.

Christopher paid no heed. He went out with the old Methodist beside him. A group of men stood round something under the window which one of them had covered with a coat. They made way for the master, and not one of them, fathers and sons as they were, but felt a throb of thankfulness the small life had been taken in preference to his. But Christopher knelt down and raised the coat.

"One shall be taken, the other left."

It was old Choris who said it. A little murmur of assent went up from the circle, bareheaded now, like Christopher. He looked up with fierce, unspoken dissent to their meek acceptance of this cruel thing, and then replacing the coat very gently, stood up.

"Has anyone gone to Ann Barty?" he asked quietly.

Someone had gone, it appeared. Someone else had gone for a doctor. Christopher ordered them to carry the little form into the waiting-room, where it was laid on the table. Someone fetched a flag from the office and laid it over the boy.

Without direct orders all work in the mill had ceased, little knots of men had gathered in the yard and there was a half-suppressed unanimous murmur from two hundred throats when a group of men came out of the room with the shattered window, carrying the still conscious form of the author of the outrage. It rose and fell and rose again threateningly. Christopher came out of the waiting-room and at sight of him it fell again.

"They must go back to work," he said to the head foreman, who waited uneasily. "They can do nothing, and if we stop work there will be trouble."

"Where are you going, sir?"

The foreman ventured this much on sheer necessity.

"To Ann Barty."

"What shall I say to them?" Again he eyed the men uneasily.

"Tell them I wish it," returned Christopher simply. "It's only an hour to closing time, but it will steady them down."

He went back to the motor car he had been on the point of entering not fifteen minutes ago, and they made a lane for him to pass through, following him with their eyes till the gate closed behind him. The foreman stood on the steps of the office and gave the order to resume work. Not a man moved.

"It's Mr. Aston's wish," he shouted, "if you've got any heart in you to show him what you feel, you'll attend to it."

The crowd swayed and broke up, melted once more into units, who disappeared their several ways. The head foreman wiped his forehead and went into the office.

Outside the ante-room to Christopher's private office the glass was strewn on the pathway, and that was the only sign in the mill yard of what had occurred.

Christopher found a group already assembled round

Ann Barty's cottage. They drew back from him with curious eyes.

"Is anyone with her?" he asked, his hand on the latch.

"Mrs. Toils and Jane Munden, what's her sister," said a woman, eagerly seizing a chance of a speaking part in this drama of life and death.

Christopher went in. The mother was sitting dry-eyed and staring, her hands twisted in her coarse apron. She swayed to and fro with mechanical rhythm, and paid no heed at all to the two weeping women who kept up a flow of low-uttered sentences of well-meant but inadequate comfort. Christopher bent over her and took both her hands, neither remembering the other nor seeing aught but the mother with a burden of grief slowly dropping on her.

"Ann," he whispered, "Ann, there was no choice for me. Forgive me if you can, for being alive."

The strained, ghastly face twitched and she stopped swaying and looked at him uncomprehendingly as he knelt before her.

"They say he's dead, he's dead. My boy Dick," she moaned.

Christopher put his arm round her. "God help mothers," he gasped, under his breath, as the poor, shaking woman dropped her head on his shoulder with an outbreak of fierce weeping.



CHAPTER XXXV

The Roadmaker lay at the edge of the cliff and looked out on a green sea flecked with white, whose restless soul, holding to some eternal purpose, forever attains and relinquishes in peace and storm, in laughter or tears.

A week had passed since the attempt on Christopher's life for which Ann Barty had paid so high a price. Happily for Christopher, it had been a week so full of affairs that although they were mostly in connection with the one thing, yet they claimed his outward active attention to the exclusion of the inner point of view. The unhappy man from Birmingham was found, when he recovered from the seizure, to be in a semi-imbecile state with no knowledge of his deed and was accordingly handed over to the authorities proper to his condition. He was easily traced to the works from which he had been harshly enough discharged, as it turned out on investigation, and Christopher came into active opposition with the directors of the Steel Axle Company over the question of providing for his wife and children. It had been impossible to keep the affair quiet and there had been innumerable reporters to circumvent, and more innumerable friends from far and near, eager to express their interest in his providential escape. Little Dick Barty received more honour in death than in life and the bereaved mother drew more consolation from the impressive funeral than poor Christopher.

Mr. Saunderson bustled down in well-meant concern for Christopher's well-being, and received certain emphatic instructions, which he took with shrewd docility, and a wink of his eye to the world.

All the while, as he went through the day's particular and general business, the wild words in the rasping, incoherent voice haunted Christopher so persistently that he heard them through the enthusiastic platitudes of congratulations, the calm official statements of plain facts, behind even Patricia's healing voice of love. It was not till the following Sunday he awoke to find a stillness instead of clamour, calm instead of turmoil. He rose early while the day was still holding the hand of dawn and went out to the cliff edge, as if there in the heaving waters he might read the Eternal Meaning and Purpose of it all. He thought how every individual man is one with the great tide of humanity, advancing with it, receding with it, subject to one eternal law he could not read. How the suffering and sin of one was the burden of all: the heroic endeavours and victories of one the gain of all. The little isolated aim of the individual must subject itself to the wider meaning or be swept back to nothingness, just as the stranded pools among the rocks that for a few hours caught the sunshine and reflected the heavenly lamp, but were overswept each tide and their being mingled again with the great sea.

Christopher knew the work he had done had been good, that hundreds were the happier for his direct concern with their lives, that he indeed had made the Road of Life more possible for those who would set out thereon for far or nearer goals. It was all he aspired to do. He knew it was not his to show them the goal, or to direct them thereto; that was for themselves and others; but it was his to make the way possible, that they need not stumble on unbroken ground, or toil in blinding dust of ages, or wade in clogging mud of tradition, these children of the world who tramped with patient feet to a vague end.

What was wrong was that he had chosen his own ground, that when he had stood at the cross roads of life he held himself qualified as a god to say "that road is evil and this good," taking council only of what was most in accord with his own will, forgetting that the Great Power embraces all within itself, knowing no good or evil, but seeing only a means to fulfil the eternal purpose of creation. It is we who must be the alchemists to transmute what we term evil into good, we, who are the servants and instruments by which that purpose must be achieved. If, seeing evil, we pass by on the other side, how shall the waste places of the earth be cleansed or the wilderness break forth into song?

The message so roughly delivered had sunk into Christopher's heart at last. Looking back at his life he saw how everything had fitted him for the task he had refused. How he was born to it, trained to its needs unconsciously by his mother and Caesar, shaped by his own experience, armed by the completion of his inner life in his marriage. He had refused it with blindness, had closed his ears to the voice of thousands who had called to him in the unattractive voice of a conventional law. It had taken the deafening report of a madman's pistol and the sight of a dead child to teach him the lesson.

At that thought he hid his face in his arm on the short turf and lay very still.

The sea sung its endless Te Deum below him, a lark soared high to heaven with its morning hymn, and the wind, rustling along the cliff edge, breathed strength to the land. Day stood free and open upon earth and called for service from those to whom the Dominion of the earth is promised. Only by service comes lordship, only by obedience can be found command.

At the moment of renunciation, Christopher realised for the first time the greatness of the cost and knew how dear his life and surroundings were to him. The Roadmaker had been his own master; the successor of Peter Masters must be the servant of thousands. The work here would go on, there were men ready to take his place, but he found no salve in the thought. Deep in his heart he knew he feared the grim struggle that lay before him, the uprooting of the old "system," the antagonism, the necessary compromises, the slow result. His age, or rather his youth, would be a heavy weapon against him. How could he hope to make his voice heard above the dictates of a dozen committees of men intent on their personal interests? He told himself passionately the thing was Impossible, and as quickly came the remembrance of the hoarse cry for help that had made itself heard above the report of Plent's pistol.

Step by step through the door of humility he reached the hall of Audience and in silence surrendered himself to the eternal Purpose.

At length he again stood on the edge and looked out to sea and for the moment the simplicity instead of the complexity of life visible and invisible, was written on the face of the deep. He stood bareheaded and read the message thankfully and went back to the house with peace in his heart.

He found a new beauty in the house he had made for himself, and as Patricia came down the garden path to meet him, he was glad for the real worth of the outward things he must surrender.

She met him with a question on her lips which was not uttered in face of what she saw in his eyes. They stood for a moment with clasped hands and he looked at her smiling, and she at him gravely, and presently they walked to a corner of the garden overlooking the sea, from where each dear beauty of the place was visible.

"Will it hurt you greatly to leave it, dear?" he asked, prefacing the inevitable with question of her will to do so.

"Just as much as it will hurt you. No more or less," she answered, her head against his arm. "But I am glad it is so good to leave."

"That's my mind, too. How do you know what I mean, though?"

"I've always known it must come, Christopher."

She spoke low and looked away, weakly hoping for the moment he would leave it at that, but Christopher never left uncertain points behind him.

"You knew I should come to take this other work—this inheritance?"

She nodded. He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her to him.

"Why didn't you tell me so, Patricia?"

"I was so sure you would know yourself. I hated to be the one to speak," her voice shook a little. "Oh, forgive me, Christopher, dearest," she cried suddenly, "it was weak of me, for I did know always, only I wanted all this for a little time so badly. Just a taste of the beautiful good life you had planned. I thought it would not matter, just two years."

He put his arms round her and drew her close.

"We have had it, beloved. It has been beyond anything I ever dreamt. Only—" his voice broke a little, "we must remember it had to be paid for—No, no," he cried, seeing the wave of sorrow sweep over her face, "not you. It is I who should have known and listened. My fault!"

"It is I who should have spoken," she said steadily, "we can't divide ourselves even in this, dear, but we can bear it together."

"And pay the debt together," he added and raised her face to his and kissed her. And they crossed the Threshold of the New with this understanding between them.



CHAPTER XXXVI

In the great buildings in Princes Street, Birmingham, the days continued as of old, with the ebb and flow of business. On each floor clerks bent over their high desks and the workers of each concern sat behind their mahogany defences and toiled early and late for the treasure they desired. At stated times rows of grave gentlemen, who carried due notice of their own importance on their countenances, met in the respective committee rooms, and discussed wide interests with closed doors and a note of anxious irritation that was new since the demise of Peter Masters.

He who had concentrated the whole of the executive business of these many affairs under one roof had done so of definite purpose and with no eye to merely his own convenience. His presence there was a tangible power offering a final court of appeal that, whether they knew it or not, had as great an effect on the various committees as it had on the managers of each business themselves.

So perfect was the organisation and adjustment of the machinery of routine that after the dominant visible power had gone down to the land of shadows, the vague note of personal anxiety that lurked on each floor was the only perceptible change apparent in the great body.

But the wives of the working heads could have told of more enduring change in men who have suddenly become responsible for great issues, for laws, for a system they had had no voice in founding. Men who found themselves limited masters where unconsciously they had been tools and were selected as such—there men sooner or later bend before the strain put on them and for the most part seek salvation in blind obedience to the rules they dare not criticise. In the daily compromise between the individual character and the system which he must serve, many an excellent man was ground down in nerve and heart and health to a strange shadow of his former self, and many a woman shed secret tears over half-understood changes in one near and dear to her.

Mr. Saunderson by right of informal instructions, which no one troubled to dispute, acted as steward over the late Peter Masters' private affairs during those two years of waiting, and his stewardship was prosperous and able, but beyond that he neither would nor could move. To the appeals of distracted secretaries he only replied, "My dear sir, act to the best of your ability. I can only assure you your responsibilities are limited to two years."

He never allowed to anyone the possibility that Peter Masters' son might even then fail to accept his place, but alone to himself he faced it often and felt his scanty hair whiten beneath the impending wreckage, if the misguided young man continued his foolish course.

"He will probably wreck the whole thing if he accepts it," sighed Mr. Saunderson, "but at least it will be done legally, and in the regular course of things. If he'll only be sensible and see he's wanted just as a figurehead, everyone will be comfortable and prosperous."

But he sighed again as he thought it, for Christopher did not at all strike him as a man likely to make a good figurehead, or to be the mouthpiece of a system he evidently disliked. He was even more confirmed in this opinion a fortnight after the unhappy affair at the Patrimondi works, when Christopher walked into his London office and without any explanation announced himself ready to take his place as Peter Masters' son. He was sufficiently wise to conceal his own triumph and accepted the intimation without question. As they sat there in the dull London office hour after hour, Mr. Saunderson realised that the mantle of Peter Masters, millionaire, had fallen on shoulders that would wear it maybe in a very different fashion, but none the less royally.

"I am to understand then," said Christopher after long hours of instruction, "I can go there when I like, see what I like, decide what I like, at all events with regard to these mines and works which are almost private property."

"You can go to-morrow if you like," answered his Mentor, rising. "I advise you to let things run for some time as they are, till you know the ropes."

He went to a safe and unlocking it produced a key.

"That is the key of your father's room at Princes Buildings," he said, putting it on the table. "There are two locks. Clisson, the head clerk, has the key of one and this is the other. You are free to walk straight in when you like, but it would be best to send Clisson a wire you are coming and he would bring you the day's business, your private affairs that is, precisely as he used to bring it to your father."

This time, because he was looking intently at the young man, he saw his mouth tighten at that term and felt a resigned wonder thereat.

Christopher took up the key and looked at it, thinking of all the doors in the world it would unlock for him, thinking of the powers of which it was a symbol, of how it fastened the door of his freedom and opened for him the door of a great servitude of which he was already proud.

Mr. Saunderson also was silent a moment listening to his own thoughts and looking at Christopher with misgivings.

"Will you live at Stormly Park?" he asked airily.

"I expect so. It is not let, is it?"

Mr. Saunderson permitted himself a little smile of superiority as he answered.

"Everything has been kept just ready for you these two years. But it will hardly be to your taste. Perhaps you will like it done up—altered?"

Christopher shook his head. "Not yet."

"You can afford it, you know."

At that the young man suddenly faced him, as if he meant to say something of importance, and stopped.

"Yes, I suppose I can afford it," he returned, and added with apparent irrelevance, "Do you happen to know Stormly village, Mr. Saunderson?"

"I've driven through it."

Christopher nodded. "So have I. I'll not detain you any longer. Will you let Clisson know I shall be there on Thursday?"

"Certainly. Will you like me to accompany you?"

Christopher shook his head. "Not this time, I think. I would rather be alone."

"And one thing," Mr. Saunderson coughed a little nervously, "the name? We can arrange the legal identification this afternoon, but what name will you ultimately take?"

Christopher came to a standstill at the door. Here was a decision thrust on him for which he was oddly unprepared. He recognised at once it meant setting the seal to his own committal if he answered as the lawyer evidently expected and hoped he would do. He paused just long enough to remember how hardly he had taken Mr. Aston's insistence he should sign his marriage register as Aston Masters.

"I must take the name since I take its belongings," he said ruefully, and Mr. Saunderson felt his victory was complete.

On the following Thursday morning there was nothing in the aspect of earth or sky to indicate to the workers in Princes Buildings the importance of that day to their respective fortunes. On the top floor only a sense of gentle expectancy was present, and a complacent faith in their own readiness to receive and set at ease the young man who was to be the outward visible sign of all that for which they toiled so unceasingly.

As an individual, the younger men bestowed a certain curiosity not unmixed with envy on him; as the successor of Peter Masters, they entertained no doubt whatever he would obediently adhere to the prescribed system as they themselves did. Christopher had arrived in Birmingham the night before and put up at an hotel. Early the next morning he went up the steps into the central corridor of the great buildings that were to all intents and purposes his. There was no one about but a lift boy who did not recognise him, but seeing him look round with deliberate curiosity, asked him civilly what floor he wanted.

"Mr. Masters' private offices," Christopher explained. "Top floor, aren't they?"

The boy nodded. Christopher studied him gravely as they went up in the lift as one of the smallest and probably least important items into whose service he had entered.

The porter at the door of the offices asked Christopher his name, and he hesitated a moment.

"You need not announce me," he said quietly, at last. "I am Mr. Masters."

The man gave a guttural gasp of amazement. A rumour of the possible arrival of the young millionaire had percolated despite Mr. Clisson's care, through the range of desks to the doorkeeper, who without discernible reasons had expected some time in the day a procession of black coats and grave men to appear from the doors of the lift and with formal solemnity to proceed to the closely locked door of that remote silent office. He opened the door for this calm, quiet young man in flurried trepidation, half expecting that Mr. Clisson would dismiss him on the spot for transgressing such a fundamental rule as admitting a stranger without announcing his name, but as totally unable to disobey the stranger as if it were Peter Masters himself.

Christopher walked quickly down the line of clerks, who looked up one after the other, and did not look back at their work again. At last a senior man advanced and accosted him.

"Do you want Mr. Clisson, sir?" he asked, in a tone verging between deference and curiosity.

Christopher said he did, and added abruptly, "I remember you, you are Mr. Hunter. I saw you four years ago when I came here with my father."

He caught his breath when he had said it. It was purely involuntary. Some unaccountable association of ideas was bridging the distance between him and the dead man minute by minute. But Mr. Hunter transferred his allegiance from the dead to the living in that moment of recognition, and led him away to Mr. Clisson's hitherto all-important presence with mechanical alacrity rather than personal desire to relinquish the honours of escort.

Mr. Clisson was a keen, sharp-featured man of narrow outlook, the best of servants, the worst of masters. A genius for detail and a miraculous memory had carried him from the position of junior clerk to his present prominence when the death of the Principal left him with his minute knowledge of routine and detail practically master of the situation as far as Mr. Saunderson was concerned. But his inability to bend with the need of the day, or to cope with wider issues than those concerned with office work had had far-reaching results, not even wholly unconnected with the tragedy in the mill yard at the Patrimondi works.

He apologised to Christopher for the lack of a better reception, as if he, and not Christopher, were responsible for the informality of it.

"We imagined from Mr. Saunderson's letter you would arrive by the 12.30 from town. I had ventured to order lunch for you here on that understanding," the head clerk explained deferentially. "What will you like to do first, sir?"

"I wish to go into the inner office and for you to carry on the usual routine precisely as in my father's time."

There was no hesitation over the term now.

"Bring me such letters and reports as you would bring him. I must find out for myself how much or how little of it I am capable of understanding."

"It will be a question of practice rather than of understanding with you, sir, I am confident," returned Mr. Clisson politely, turning over in his mind what business it would be least embarrassing to submit to this decided young man.

"It will be your business to see I get the practice," Christopher answered.

Together they unlocked the door of Peter Masters' sanctum and the head clerk flung it open.

"It is precisely as he left it that day. Nothing has been done excepting the sorting of the papers, which Mr. Saunderson and myself did between us. The last time Mr. Saunderson was here we had it cleaned out. You will find the bells and telephones all labelled. If you will wait a few minutes I will send a man in with ink and writing material, and the keys, and I will bring you this morning's letters myself."

Christopher thanked him mechanically and entered the room. He stood in the window silently waiting, while a young clerk trembling with excitement performed the small services necessary, and asked nervously if he could do more.

"Nothing else now. What is your name?"

He gave it with faltering tongue. In the old days such an inquiry was a distinction hardly earned.

Christopher was alone at last. He walked slowly across the room and sat down in his father's chair and touched the big bunch of keys laid there on the table before him.

An overwhelming desire for some direct message from the dead man, some defined recognition of his right to be there at all, pressed on him. He opened the drawers and pigeon-holes of the great table with a faint hope he might light on some overlooked note, or uncomplete memorandum addressed to him. Mr. Saunderson had assured him no such thing existed beyond the curt exact clue he had put in his hand four years ago when the old will had been destroyed.

He glanced at the neat documents, the piles of labelled papers; there was nothing personal here, nothing that conveyed any sense to him but that of a vast machine of which he had become a part.

In the pen tray lay a collection of pen-holders and pencils, a knife he had seen his father use, and a smaller knife. He picked this up and looked at it.

It was rather a unique little knife, with a green jade handle, and the initials A. A. were plainly engraved on the label. He had recognised it at once and he stared at it as it lay in his hand, trying to comprehend what its presence there might mean. He had lent it one day to Peter Masters, who had asked him where he had got it. And he had answered it had belonged to Aymer Aston, but he had found it as a boy and Aymer had given it to him. Peter had given it back without the further explanation that he had originally given it to Aymer. A day or so later Christopher had missed it, and he told his host regretfully it was lost. Again Peter failed to explain he was the finder. Yet here was the knife on the desk where he had sat day after day.

Perhaps it had not seemed worth returning. Yet Christopher was curiously loath to accept that simple answer. It seemed to him as he fingered the smooth green sides, as if other fingers had done this in this precise spot before, a strange aching familiarity attached itself to the simple action. For someone's sake Peter Masters had so touched and handled this cool green thing, he was sure of it, and suddenly he was conscious here was the message he sought. Here in the mere sensation of touch lay the thread of recognition that linked him with the dead man, so slight and intangible that it would bear no expression in heavy words.

There was a knock at the door. Christopher laid the little green knife back in its place before he answered it. Mr. Clisson entered with a handful of letters.

"This is a very good sample, sir. As many as you will get through at first, I expect," he said apologetically.

He sat down opposite Christopher and handed him letter after letter, giving such explanations as were necessary. Christopher made few comments. He put the letters into two separate piles. Presently there was one concerning the sale of some land in the neighbourhood of the Stormly Foundry.

"It is only just started, sir. I think we shall get a good price if we hold out."

"I am not going to sell any land at all. You will write and say I have altered my mind."

He spoke with the keen decision of his father. Mr. Clisson gazed at him with pained amazement.

"It is only the leasehold we sell, sir, not the actual land."

"I do not sell land," repeated Christopher sharply.

"Of course, it shall be as you wish, sir."

"Of course. Do you know if Mr. Fegan is still at Stormly Foundry?"

"I can ascertain."

"Do so. If he is, tell him to come and see me here to-morrow. And who is the best builder you employ?"

"Builder? What kind of builder, sir?"

"Bricks and mortar. Cottages. I don't want an architect. I'll employ the man we used in Hampshire."

"You mean to build?"

"I mean to build."

Mr. Clisson coughed. "The late Mr. Masters found it did not pay——"

"Mr. Clisson," said Christopher firmly, "let us understand one another from the beginning. I do not intend to work on the same lines as my father worked. I intend to do many things which he would not have done, but I am inclined to think he knew it would be so. I believe I am a very rich man. At all events I mean to spend a lot of money. You would have no objection to my spending it on yachts and motors and grouse moors, I suppose? These things do not, however, interest me. You probably won't approve of my hobbies, and I've no doubt I shall make heaps of mistakes, but I've got to find them out myself. You can help me make them, but once for all, never try to prevent me. Those are all the letters I can manage to-day. You can take the others. I'll answer these myself."

The flabbergasted Mr. Clisson rose, trembling a little in his agitation.

"I hope, Mr. Masters, I should know better than ever attempt to dictate to you on any matter."

Christopher gave him one of his rare half-shy, half-boyish smiles and leant forward over the big desk.

"Mr. Clisson, I shall need your help and advice every hour of the day. I haven't the slightest doubt you could dictate to me to my great material advantage on every point, only I don't care for this material advantage and I don't want us to misunderstand each other, that is all."

Mr. Clisson thawed, but his soul was troubled. He looked at the letters as he gathered them up. It was a goodly pile yet left to his decision, but he missed one that Christopher had passed over without comment.

"The application for the post of gardener at Stormly Park, sir. Did you wish to attend to that yourself?"

"What has happened to Timmins? Wasn't that his name? Is he dead?"

"Oh, no."

"He wishes to go?"

Mr. Clisson shook his head. "It is simply a matter of routine, sir. Timmins is a very excellent man, but the invariable rule is that no one remains after they are fifty-five."

"After they are fifty-five?" repeated Christopher slowly.

"Not those employed in manual labour: with very few exceptions that is. Timmins will be fifty-five next month. He suffers from rheumatism already, I find."

Christopher never took his eyes from the other's face.

"He would be pensioned, I suppose."

"Oh, dear me, no. We have no pension list. Timmins has received very high wages. He has no doubt put by a nice little sum."

"How long has he worked for—for us?"

"I cannot tell without reference. I believe for twenty years or so. I can easily ascertain."

Christopher stared out of the window for so long that the head clerk thought he had forgotten the matter and was disagreeably surprised when he spoke again.

"I shall be at Stormly this week and will see if Timmins wishes to retire or not. You have no fault to find with him as a gardener, I suppose?"

Mr. Clisson smiled. "A man who has served for twenty years will not be an indifferent workman sir. Timmins' accounts are exemplary."

"The matter will stand over. Please see no one is dismissed under this age regulation without my knowledge. That is all now." His manner was as curt again as his father's. Mr. Clisson closed the door behind him with a vague feeling that the two years of his authority were but a dream and that the thin, square figure behind the office table had unaccountably widened out to the portly proportions of his old master.

Christopher drew to him the pile of letters he had reserved and fell to work. He dared not allow himself to think yet, but now and again when his heart and soul ran counter to the tenor of what he read he put out his hand and touched the little green knife his father had handled for some unknown person's sake.



CHAPTER XXXVII

"I understand the fortune well enough now," said Christopher bitterly; "anyone can do it if they take one aspect of things and subordinate everybody and everything to it."

He was at Marden again. It was a glorious spring evening and Caesar's couch was drawn up to the open window. Mr. Aston sat on the far side of it and Christopher leant against the window-frame smoking moodily.

"You will dissipate it fast enough at the rate you are going," remarked Caesar. His eyes followed every movement of the young man with a jealous hunger.

Christopher shook his head resignedly. "It can't be done. It goes on making itself. We are going to allow ourselves ten thousand a year. It's a fearful lot for two people"—his eyes wandered across the lawn to Patricia, where she sat with Renata—"or even three, but that's what it costs to live properly at Stormly, and the rest has to be used somehow."

"How about Stormly Park? Do you and Patricia like the place?"

He shook his head again. "I'm afraid we don't. We both feel we are living in an hotel. But I must be there on the spot, and she too. As it is, we have only had time to do so little."

"Cottages, schools, hospitals," murmured Mr. Aston, softly.

"They are only means to an end," returned Christopher quickly, "only what they are entitled to as human beings in a civilised world. Think of having to begin at that. We've got to make restitution before we can make progress. They mistrust all one does, of course. They use the bathrooms as coal stores, their coppers for potatoes, their allotments as rubbish ground, but it's better than the front yard, and, anyhow, the children will know a bit more about it."

"You have laid down Patrimondi roads for them," Caesar put in.

"Of course," Christopher answered, accepting it literally, "they appreciate that at least. The roads were beastly."

Mr. Aston looked at Caesar and they both smiled.

"I've persuaded Sam to open a shop in Stormly and put Jim into it. He says you can't make a living honestly in grocery, but I'd take himself in preference to his word."

"You've beaten him after all, old chap."

It was Caesar who spoke, and he held out his thin hand towards his big boy, who came and sat by him in silence a while. The twilight crept up over the earth and freed the soul of things as it stole their material forms. The two men looking out and watching the gentle robber, wasted no regrets on the day, no fears on the approaching night. Behind them, where Mr. Aston sat, it was dark already, and as his son watched Christopher, so he watched Aymer.

"We have made our roads," he thought, "Aymer and I, and thank God we leave behind us a better Roadmaker still, who will make smooth paths for the children's feet."

Outside two white figures came slowly towards the house and were joined by a third, Nevil, to judge by his height.

"Caesar," said Christopher, "have you forgiven me taking my own way and giving up what you gave me?"

"Do you think I see anything to forgive in it?"

"You gave me my choice, and you gave me my chance. It looked on the surface so ungrateful," persisted Christopher.

"You question the quality of my eyesight?"

"I doubt your forgiveness when you are so flippant, my best of fathers."

"For what do you want forgiveness specifically?"

"For giving up my work as a Roadmaker."

"I did not know you had given it up."

In the quiet hours of the night Aymer Aston paced those even roads his feet had never trodden, saw them spreading far and wide across the earth, heard the echo of countless footsteps stepping down the ages, knew that life itself was made an easier road for thousands of little feet that would take their first steps on better ground than their parents had done, knew that there were less crippled, less maimed, less halt in the sum total of the world's suffering by reason of one Roadmaker's career.

But it was Aymer Aston with the crippled form and maimed life who had put the spade first into the Roadmaker's hand.

Meanwhile the Roadmaker slept the sleep of the just and forgot all these things.



* * * * *



Transcriber's Note:

Spelling and punctuation have been preserved as printed except as indicated below. The following changes were made to the original text. The change is enclosed in parentheses:

Page 15: and what there was so essentially fitted its place that it was unobtrusive (added a period at the end of unobtrusive)

Page 82: at the dull red mark of which Chirstopher (Christopher)

Page 143: "Christopher does.' (changed single quote mark to a double quote mark at the end of the sentence)

Page 242: "Never since Mrs. Masters went out of it." (removed extra double quote mark at the end of the sentence)

Page 258: He looked very worn and tired when he joined Renate (Renata)

Page 305: changed quote marks from "Ecco il 'Roadmaker'" to 'Ecco il 'Roadmaker.''" to correct punctuation inconsistency.

Page 323: the weight of this stupenduous burden (stupendous)

Page 338: "Then I dismiss further responsibility. I'm really more pleased than I can say, Christopher. Poor little Patricia! What fortune for her! (added double quote mark at the end of the sentence)

The following words were found in variable forms in the original text and both versions have been retained: bookcase (book-case); commonsense (common-sense); downland (down-land); hairs-breadth (hair's-breadth); highroad (high-road); milestone (mile-stone); roadside (road-side); teapot (tea-pot); unbiased (unbiassed).