PART II

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CHRISTOPHER HIBBAULT, ROADMAKER

by

MARGUERITE BRYANT

New York

Grosset & Dunlap

Publishers

Copyright, 1908, by

Duffield and Company

Set up and electrotyped; published January, 1909

Reprinted March, August, October, December, 1909

May, August, October, 1910

_To V. B. and M. B.

this Book

with my love

1906-1908_

_Your paths were two when

first the tale began

And now are one, and still

with every year

Love, the Divine Roadmaker,

works His will.

And of these paths he makes

one perfect Road

Which those who follow after

shall find smooth

And with more easy steps

shall seek the Dawn._

Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker

CHAPTER I

It was a hot July day, set in a sky of unruffled blue, with sharp

shadows across road and field, and a wind that had little coolness in

it playing languidly over the downland. The long white dusty road kept

its undeviating course eastward over hill and dale, through hamlet and

town, till it was swallowed up in the mesh-work of ways round London,

sixty-three miles away according to the mile-stone by which a certain

small boy clad in workhouse garb was loitering. He had read the

inscription many times and parcelled out the sixty-three miles into

various days' journeys, but never succeeded in bringing it within

divisionable distance of the few pennies which found their way into

his pockets. His precocious little head carried within it too bitter

memories of hungry days, and too many impressions of the shifts and

contrivances by which fortune's votaries bamboozle from that fickle

Goddess a meagre living, to adventure on the journey unprepared.

Moreover, Mr. and Mrs. Moss of the Whitmansworth Union were not

unkind, and meals were regular, so he did not run away from the house

that had opened its doors to him and an exhausted mother six months

ago. But he still dreamt of London as the desideratum of his fondest

hopes, and that, in spite of a black terror crouching there and

carefully nurtured by the poor mother in the days of their wanderings.

He saw it all through a haze of people and experiences, of friends and

foes, and it was the Place of Liberty.

Therefore, when escape was possible from the somewhat easy rule of

the Union, he hurried away to the mile-stone on the "Great Road," as

it was called about here. The stone with its clear distinct black

lettering, seemed to bring him nearer London, and he would spend his

time contentedly flinging pebbles into the river of dust at his feet,

or planning out in his active little mind what he would do when old

Granny Jane's prophecy came true.

There was a wide strip of turf on each side of the road bejewelled

with poppies and daisies, matted with yellow and white bedstraws,

carpeted with clovers, and over all lay a coating of fine chalky dust,

legacy of passing cart and carriage.

The boy was very hot and very dusty, and a little sleepy. He lay on

his back drumming his heels on the turf and watching an exuberant lark

tower up into the sky above him. He was not unmindful of the lark's

song, but he vaguely wondered if a well-thrown stone could travel as

far as the dark mounting speck.

"It's a year ago I am sure since that old woman told me my fortune,"

he said, suddenly sitting up. "I wonder if it will come true. Mother

said it was nonsense."

It was a lonely stretch of road. The mile-stone was on the summit of a

rise and the ground sloped away on his right to a reach of green

water-meadow through which a chalky trout-stream wandered, and the red

roof of an old mill showed through a group of silvery poplars and

willows. On the other side of the road were undulating fields that

dwindled from sparse cultivation to bare down-land. There was no sign

of any house except the distant mill, but directly over the summit of

the hill, happily hidden, an ugly little red-brick mushroom of a town

asserted itself, overgrowing in its unbeautiful growth the older

picturesque village of Whitmansworth.

The faint sharp click of horses' hoofs stepping swiftly and regularly

swept up the road towards the boy. He stood up the better to see the

approaching vehicle which was coming from out of the east towards him.

Two horses, he judged, listening intently. Presently a distant dark

spot on the road evolved itself into a carriage--a phaeton and a pair

of iron grey horses. It was long before the days of motors, when fine

horses and good drivers were common enough in England, but even the

small boy recognised that these animals were exceptional and were

stepping out at a pace that spoke of good blood, good training and

good hands on the reins.

He watched them trot full pace down the opposite hill and breast the

steep rise after without a break in the easy rhythm of their

movements. It was a matter of their driver's will rather than their

pleasure that made them slacken pace as they neared the mile-stone.

The lonely little figure standing there was clearly visible to the

travellers in the phaeton. The man who was driving looked at him

casually, looked again with sudden sharp scrutiny, and abruptly pulled

up his horses. He thrust the reins into his companion's hands, and was

off the box before the groom from behind could reach the horses'

heads.

The owner of the phaeton came straight towards the small boy who was

watching the horses with interest, pleased at the halt and oblivious

of his own connection with it. The traveller was a man who looked

forty-eight despite his frosted hair, and was in reality ten years

older. He was tall, well beyond average height, thin, well-fashioned,

with a keen kindly face, clean shaven. His mouth was humorous, and

there was a certain serenity of expression and bearing that invited

confidence. The boy, casting a hasty glance at him as he approached,

thought him a very fine gentleman indeed: as in fact he was, in every

possible meaning of the word.

"Is this Whitmansworth?" demanded the owner of the phaeton. His tone

was not aggressive. The boy gave him as straight a look of judgment as

he himself received.

"Down there it is," with a nod of his head in the direction of the

distant townlet.

"And not up here?"

"Dunno, they calls it the Great Road."

The stranger still stood looking down at him fixedly.

"Is your name James Christopher Hibbault?"

Without warning, without time for the canny little morsel of humanity

to weigh the wisdom of an answer, the question was shot at him and he

was left gasping and speechless after an incriminating "Yes," forced

from him by the suddenness of the onslaught, and the truth-compelling

power of those keen eyes. "Least it's Hibbault," he added unwillingly.

"Jim, they calls me."

"I think it is Christopher as well, and I prefer Christopher. And what

are you doing on the Great Road at this hour in the afternoon,

Christopher?"

And Jim--or Christopher,--trained and renowned for a useful

evasiveness of retort in those far-off London days, answered

mechanically: "Waiting for the fortune to come true."

Then the hot blood rushed to his face from sheer shame at his own

betrayal of the darling secret of his small existence.

"Your fortune?" echoed the other slowly. "Fortunes do not come for

waiting. What do you mean?"

"It was the old woman said so--mother didn't believe it. She said as

how my fortune would come to me on the Great Road. There wer'n't no

Great Road there, so when I heard as how they called this the Great

Road, I just stuck to it."

It was a long speech. The boy had none of the half-stupid stolidity

of the country-bred, and yet lacked something of the garrulity of the

cute street lad. His voice too was a surprise. The broad vowels seemed

acquired and uncertain and jarred on the hearer with a sense of

misfit.

"Do you live at Whitmansworth Union?"

There was a faint tinge of resentment in the short "Yes."

How did the gentleman know it, and, anyhow, why should he tell him?

Jim felt irritated.

The owner of the phaeton stood still a moment with one hand on the

dusty little shoulder, and then looked round at the water-meadows, the

distant copses, the more distant shimmering downs. Then he laughed,

saying something the boy did not understand, and looked down at the

sharp inquiring little face again.

"Which means, Christopher, hide-and-seek is an easy game when it's

over," he explained. "Come and show me where you live."

They walked back towards the carriage together. The elderly gentleman

holding the reins was looking back at them; so was the groom. The

elderly gentleman cast a puzzled, inquiring glance from the boy to his

companion as they came near.

"Fortune meets us on the road-side, Stapleton," said the owner of the

phaeton. "Let me introduce you to Christopher Hibbault. Get up,

child."

Get up? Mount that quietly magnificent carriage, ride behind those

beautiful animals with their pawing feet and arched necks? The small

boy stood still a moment to appreciate the greatness of the event.

"Are you afraid, Christopher?"

Resentment sprang to life. Yet it was almost well so transcendent a

moment should have its pin prick of annoyance. With a "No" of

ineffable scorn, Jim--or Christopher--the name was immaterial to

him--clambered up into the high carriage and wedged himself between

the elderly gentleman and the inquisitive driver, who had regained his

seat and the reins.

Christopher's experiences of driving were of a very limited nature,

and certainly they did not embrace anything like this. He had no

recollection of ever having travelled by train, and it was the

question of pace that fascinated him, the rapid, easy swinging

movement through the air, the fresh breeze rushing by, the distancing

of humbler wayfarers, all gave him a strange sense of exhilaration.

Years afterward, when flesh and blood were all too slow for him and he

was one of the best motorists in England, if not in Europe, he used to

recall the rapturous pleasure of that first drive of his, that first

introduction to the mad, tense joy of speed that ever after held him

in thrall.

The owner of the phaeton and the elderly gentleman whom he had called

Stapleton exchanged no remarks, but they both cast curious, thoughtful

glances at their small companion from time to time. They had to rouse

him from his rhapsody to ask the way at last. He answered concisely

and shortly with no touch of the local burr.

"How came you to be so far away?" demanded Jim's fine gentleman as

they were passing through the market-place.

Jim was engaged in superciliously ignoring the amazed stares of the

town boys who were apt to look down on the "workhouse kid," though he

attended the Whitmansworth school. Once past them he answered the

question vaguely.

"The master was out: I hadn't to do anything."

"And you had permission to wander where you liked?"

To this Jim did not reply. He had _not_ permission, but he counted on

the good nature of Mrs. Moss, with whom he was a favourite, to plead

his cause with her husband.

"Had you permission?" demanded his questioner again, bending down

suddenly to look in the boy's face with his disconcerting eyes.

It would have seemed to Jim on reflection a great deal more prudent

and quite as easy to have said "yes" as "no," but the "no" slipped

out, and the questioner smiled, not ill-pleased.

At last they came to a standstill before the door of the Whitmansworth

Union. Jim, with a prodigious sigh, prepared to descend. The glorious

adventure was over. Also he prepared to slip away to a more lowly

entrance, but was stopped by a retaining hand.

The porter, no friend of Jim's, stared with dull amazement at the

apparition of the fine turn-out, and the still finer gentleman waiting

on the doorstep with that little "varmint" of a Hibbault. He signed to

the boy angrily to begone, as he ushered the visitor in.

"The boy will stay with me," said the owner of the phaeton quietly,

and they were accordingly shown into that solemn sanctum, the Board

Room. It was a cheerful room with flowers in the window and a long

green-covered table with comfortable chairs on each side, but it

struck a cold note of discomfort in Jim's heart. The first time he had

entered it, about six months ago, the chairs had been occupied by ten

more or less portly gentlemen who informed him that his mother, now

being dead (she had died two days previously), they had decided to

give him a home for the present, and would educate him and teach him a

trade, and that he should be very grateful and must be a good boy.

Jim had said tearfully he would rather go back to London and Mrs.

Sartin, which appeared to surprise them very much, and they were at

some pains to point out the advantages of a country life, which did

not appeal to him at all. Then one of them, who had not spoken

before, said abruptly, "his mother had wished him to stay there, and

there was an end of it."

That was six months ago. Jim remembered it all very distinctly as he

waited with his companion in the Board Room.

Mr. Moss bustled in: he was a stout, cheerful man of hasty temper, but

withal a man one could deal with--through his wife--in Jim's

estimation.

He held the card the visitor had sent in between his fingers and

looked flurried and surprised. Jim noticed he bowed to the stranger,

but did not offer to shake hands as he did with the doctor and parson

and the few rare visitors the boy had observed. So Jim concluded _his_

gentleman was a very great gentleman indeed, as he had all along

suspected.

"My name is Aston--Charles Aston"--said the owner of the phaeton in

his pleasant voice. "I have driven down from London to make inquiries

about a small boy I have reason to believe came under your care about

seven months ago: Hibbault by name."

"Yes, sir,--Mr. Aston," said Mr. Moss, assuming an air of importance,

"and that is the boy himself."

"A good boy, I hope?" He bestowed on him one of those keen, sharp

glances Jim was beginning not to resent.

"Not bad as boys go," Mr. Moss answered dubiously, scratching his

chin, "but his bringing up has been against him. London, sir,--and

then tramping about the country for a year."

Jim regarded Mr. Aston anxiously to see how this somewhat negative

character struck him, but he was still looking at Jim and seemed to

pay small heed to Mr. Moss's words.

"We passed him on the road," he said; "I was struck by the likeness to

someone I knew, and I thought there could not be two boys so like in

Whitmansworth. You were master here when he was admitted?"

"Oh, yes, Mr. Aston. It was in November last, on a Thursday night, I

remember, because service was on. The mother was clean exhausted, and

was taken to the infirmary at once and----"

Mr. Aston interposed.

"Christopher, go out and stay by the carriage till I call you, and ask

the gentleman--Mr. Stapleton--to come in here."

And James Christopher Hibbault obeyed without so much as a glance for

permission at Mr. Moss.

He delivered his message and then interviewed the groom, who seemed

used to waiting. The tea bell rang, but Jim, though hungry, never

thought of disobeying his orders. The hall porter came out and went

off on his bicycle and presently returned with Mr. Page, one of the

Board gentlemen.

The groom eventually grew communicative and told Jim the horses' names

were Castor and Pollux, and there wasn't their match in the country,

no more in all London, though to be sure Mr. Aston had some fine

horses at Marden Court.

"Is that where he lives?" inquired Jim.

It appeared he lived there sometimes, but Mr. Nevil,--Jim did not know

who that was--lived there mostly. Mr. Aston spent most of his time in

London with Mr. Aymer. They had left London the previous day, Jim

learnt, and had been driving to queer out-of-the-way places, always

stopping at Unions.

At which point the door opened and Mr. Aston came out, and with him

Mr. Page and Mr. and Mrs. Moss and Mr. Stapleton with a bundle of

papers in his hand, and all these people looked at Jim in a perplexed

way, except Mr. Aston, who appeared quite happy and unconcerned.

"Say good-bye to Mrs. Moss, Christopher," he said authoritatively.

"You are coming with me."

"Where to?" demanded the boy with a sudden access of caution.

"To London."

Christopher began to scramble up into the carriage and was

unceremoniously hauled down.

"Manners, Christopher. Mrs. Moss is waiting to say good-bye."

Now, Mrs. Moss had been very kind to the little waif and taken him to

her motherly childless heart, and in spite of her excitement over this

wonderful event, or because of it, she could not refrain from a few

tears. Jim was not indifferent to the fact--any more than he had been

to the lark's song, but he secretly thought it very inconsiderate of

her to cloud this extraordinary adventure with anything so depressing

as tears. He was the more aggrieved as against his will, against all

reason and all tradition of manliness, he found objectionable salt

drops brimming up in his own eyes. A culminating point was reached,

however, when Mrs. Moss fairly embraced him. It should be stated that

on occasions and in private Jim had no sort of objection to being

cuddled by Mrs. Moss, who was a comfortable, pillowy sort of person.

The ordeal was over at last and he was clambering up into the carriage

when Mrs. Moss bethought her he had had no tea.

Mr. Aston protested they were going to stop at Basingstoke, but the

good woman insisted on provisioning the boy with a wedge of cake and

tucking a clean handkerchief of her own into his pocket.

"We shall sleep at Basingstoke, and I'll send back his clothes by

post," said Mr. Aston. "No doubt we can get him some sort of temporary

outfit there."

Jim, who had been secretly afraid he would be relegated to the back

seat with the groom, breathed a sigh of relief as Mr. Aston mounted to

his place. That gentleman apparently understood the innermost soul of

the boy, for he gravely asked Mr. Stapleton to find room for a

companion, and then with a toss of their proud heads Castor and Pollux

moved off. Mr. Aston raised his hat courteously to Mrs. Moss, and Jim,

observing, made an attempt to remove his own dingy little cap, a

performance everyone took as a matter of course untill he had gone,

when Mrs. Moss remembered it and exclaimed to her husband: "Didn't I

always say, Joseph, he wasn't like the rest of them?"

But Joseph only said "Umph," and went in doors.

"We will telegraph to Aymer from Basingstoke," said Mr. Aston as they

started, and after that there was silence.

The monotonous click-clack of the horses' feet lulled the tired child

into blissful drowsiness. He had had too many ups and downs in his

eleven years of life to be alarmed at this unexpected turn of fortune,

and he was still too young to grasp how great a change had been

wrought in that life since the hot hour he had spent lying by the

mile-stone on the Great Road.

As they clattered through the narrow streets of the country town in

the light of the long July evening Christopher sat up and rubbed his

eyes.

"I've been here before," he volunteered.

Mr. Aston effected a skilful pass between a donkey cart and two

perambulators.

"Yes, quite right, you have. What do you remember about it,

Christopher?"

The boy looked dubious and a little distressed, but just then they

passed a chemist's shop.

"We went there," he cried. "Mother got something for her cough, so she

couldn't have any supper. We stayed at a horrid old woman's, a nasty,

cross thing."

"You did not go to the Union, then?"

"No, we had some money, a whole shilling and some pennies."

Mr. Aston said something under his breath and Mr. Stapleton murmured

"tut-tut-tut."

"That's how we first missed the trail, Stapleton," he said, and then

as they walked up a steep hill he spoke to the boy.

"Christopher, I want you to tell me anything you remember about your

mother and the old days if you wish it, but you must not talk about

that to Aymer. It would make him unhappy."

"Who is Aymer?" asked Christopher, not unreasonably.

"Aymer is my son, my eldest son. You are going to live with him."

"Is he a boy like me?"

"No, he is quite big, grown up, but he can't get about as you can, he

is--a cripple."

He said the words with a sort of forced jerk and half under his

breath, but Christopher heard them and shivered.

"Do you live there, too?" he asked, pressing a little nearer the man

who was no longer a stranger.

"Live where?"

"With the--your son."

"Yes, I live there too. My boy couldn't get on without me--and here's

the White Elephant, which means supper and bed for a tired young man.

Jump down, Christopher."

CHAPTER II

The spirit of waning July hung heavily over London. In mean streets

and alleys it was inexpressibly dreary: the fagged inhabitants lacked

even energy to quarrel.

But on the high ground westward of the Park, where big houses demand

elbow-room and breathing space and even occasionally exclusive

gardens, a little breeze sprang up at sundown and lingered on till

dusk.

In this region lies one of the most beautiful houses in London, the

country seat of some fine gentleman in Queen Anne's day. It hid its

beauties, however, from the public gaze, lying modestly back in a

garden whose size had no claim to modesty at all. All one could see

from the road, through the iron gates, was a glimpse of a wide

portico, and a long row of windows. It stood high and in its ample

garden the breeze ran riot, shaking the scent from orange and myrtle

trees, from jasmine and roses, and wafting it in at the wide open

windows of a room which, projecting from the house, seemed to take

command of the garden.

It was a large room and the windows went from ceiling to floor. It was

also a very beautiful room. In the gathering dusk the restful

harmonies of its colours melted into soft, hazy blue, making it appear

vaster than it really was. Also, it was unencumbered by much furniture

and what there was so essentially fitted its place that it was

unobtrusive. Three big canvases occupied the walls, indiscernible in

the dim light, but masterpieces of world fame, heirlooms known all

over Europe. There was a curious dearth of small objects and

unessentials, nothing in all the great space that could fatigue the

eye or perplex the brain of the occupant.

The owner of the room was lying on a big sofa near one of the open

windows. Within reach was a low bookcase, a table with an electric

reading lamp, and a little row of electric bells, some scattered

papers and an open telegram.

The man on the sofa lay quite still looking into the garden as it sunk

from sight under the slowly falling veil of purple night.

He was evidently a tall man, with the head and shoulders of an

athlete, and a face of such precise and unusual beauty that one's

instinct called out, "Here, then, God has planned a man."

Aymer Aston, indeed, was not unlike his father, but far more regular

in feature, more carefully hewn, and the serenity of the older face

was lacking. Here was the face of a fighter, alive with the strong

passions held in by a stronger will. There was almost riotous vitality

expressed in his colouring, coppery-coloured hair and dark brows, eyes

of surprising blueness and a tanned skin, for he spent hours lying in

the sun, hatless and unshaded, with the avowed intention of

"browning"; and he "browned" well except for a queer white triangled

scar almost in the centre of his forehead, an ugly mark that showed up

with fresh distinctness when any emotion brought the quick blood to

his face. There was indeed nothing in his appearance to suggest a

cripple or an invalid.

Nevertheless, Aymer Aston, aged thirty-five, the best polo-player, the

best fencer, the best athlete of his day at College, possessing more

than his share of the vigour of youth and glory of life, had, for over

ten years, never moved without help from the sofa on which he lay, and

the strange scar and a certain weakness in the left hand and arm were

the only visible signs of the catastrophe that had broken his life.

A thin, angular man entered, and crossed the room with an apologetic

cough.

"Is that you, Vespasian?" demanded his master without moving. "Have

they come?"

"No, sir, but there is a message from the House. I believe Mr. Aston

is wanted particularly."

"What a nuisance. Why can't they let him alone? He might as well be in

office."

The man, without asking permission, rearranged his master's cushions

with a practised hand.

"The young gentleman had better have some supper upstairs, sir, as

it's so late," he suggested. "I'll see to it myself."

"Send him in to me directly they come, Vespasian."

"Yes, sir."

He withdrew as quietly as he had entered and Aymer continued to look

out at the dark, and think over the change he, of his own will, was

about to make in his monotonous existence. He was so lost in thought

he did not hear the door open again or realise the "change" was

actually an accomplished fact till a half-frightened gasp of "Oh!"

caught his ear. He turned as well as he could, unaided.

"Is that you, Christopher?"

The voice was so singularly like Mr. Aston's that Christopher felt

reassured. The dim vastness of the room had frightened him, also he

had thought it empty.

"Come over here to me," said Aymer, holding out his hand, "I can't

come to you."

Christopher nervously advanced. The brightness of the corridor outside

left his eyes confused in this dim light. Aymer suddenly remembered

this and turned on a switch. The vague shadowy space was flooded with

soft radiance. It was like magic to the small boy.

He was first aware of a gorgeous glint of colouring in a rug flung

across the sofa, and then of a man lying on a pile of dull-tinted

pillows, a man with red hair and blue eyes, watching him eagerly.

Children as a rule are not susceptible to physical beauty, turning

with undeviating instinct to the inner soul of things, with a fine

disregard for externals, but Christopher, in this, was rather

abnormal. He was very actively alive to outward form.

Since Mr. Aston had told him Aymer was a cripple Christopher had been

consumed with unspeakable dread. His idea of a cripple was derived

from a distorted, evil-faced old man who had lived in the same house

that had once sheltered his mother and him. The mere thought of it

made him sick with horror. And when the tall gentleman in black, who

had met them in the entrance hall and escorted him here, had opened

the door and put him inside, he had much ado not to rush out again. He

conquered his fear with unrecognised heroism, and this was his

reward.

He stood staring, with all his worshipful admiration writ large on his

little tired white face. Aymer Aston saw it and laughed. He was quite

aware of his own good looks and perfectly unaffected thereby, though

he took some pains to preserve them. But his vanity had centred itself

on one thing in his earlier life, and that, his great strength, and it

died when that was no more.

"Little Christopher," he said, "come and sit down by me: you must be

tired to death."

"Are you Mr. Aymer?" demanded Christopher, still staring.

"Yes, only you mustn't call me that, I think. I wonder what you will

call me?"

Christopher offered no solution to the problem.

"Would you like to live here with me?"

He looked round. A dim sense of alarm crept back. The room looked so

empty and unreal, so "alone." Without knowing why, Christopher, who

had never had a real home to pine for, felt miserably homesick.

Aymer watched him closely and did not press the question. Instead, he

asked him in a matter-of-fact way to shut the window for him.

The boy did so without blundering. The window-fastening was new to

him, and Aymer noticed he looked at it curiously and shut it twice to

see how it went. Then he sat down again and continued to gaze at

Aymer.

"I forgot, I was to tell you something," he said suddenly, his face

wrinkling with distress. "The other one--the gentleman who brought

me----"

"My father?"

Christopher nodded. "I oughtn't to have forgotten. He said he had to

go to the House, but he'd be back quite soon, he hoped."

"He's had no dinner, I suppose," grumbled Aymer.

"Yes, we had dinner at--I forget the name of the place--and tea. And

yesterday we had dinner too."

"That was wise," said Aymer gravely. "Where's Mr. Stapleton?"

"He went home by train this morning. I sat in his place all the time,

not at the back."

He paused thoughtfully. An idea that had been dimly forming in his

brain, took alarming shape. A small companion at the Union had lately

been sent out as a page to a kindly family. Christopher wondered if

that was the meaning of all these strange adventures for him. At the

same time he was conscious of so vast a sense of disappointment that

he was compelled to put his Fate to the test at once. He jerked out

the inquiry with breathless abruptness.

"Am I going to be your page?"

"Page?" Aymer Aston echoed the words with consternation; then held out

his hand to the child.

"Didn't my father tell you?" he asked.

A kind of nervous exasperation seized on Christopher. He was tired,

overwrought, puzzled and baffled.

"No one tells me anything," he said petulantly, blinking hard to keep

back the tears; "they just took me."

"Do you want to be a page boy?"

"No." It was emphatic to the point of rudeness.

Aymer put his arm round him and drew him near, laughing.

"You are not going to be a page," he said, "you are going to be"--he

hesitated--"to be my own boy--just as if you were my son. I've adopted

you."

"Why?"

Christopher's dark eyes were fixed on the blue ones and then he saw

the scar for the first time. It interested him so much he hardly heard

Aymer's slow answer when it came.

"I have a great deal of time on my hands, and I should have liked a

son of my own. As I can't have that I've adopted you. Don't you think

you can like me?"

Christopher looked round the room and back at the sofa. The voice was

kind and the arm that was round him gripped him firmly; also, Mr.

Aston had said he lived here too. That was reassuring. He was not

quite certain how he felt towards this strangely fascinating man, but

he was quite sure of his sentiments towards Mr. Aston.

"Mr. Aston lives here, doesn't he?"

"Yes; do you like him best?"

"I like him very much," said Christopher truthfully, and added

considerately, "You see, I've known him longer, haven't I?"

"You must like me too."

Christopher was too young to read the passionate hunger in the voice

and the look. It was gone in a moment.

Aymer released him, laughing.

"Is there anyone else?" asked the boy, looking vaguely round.

"Anyone else living here? Only the servants."

"I don't mean that." A puzzled look came into his face. "I mean--there

was Mrs. Moss and Grannie Jane, and Mrs. Sartin and Jessy and mother."

Then he recollected Mr. Aston's prohibition and got red and

embarrassed.

"You mean--a woman," said Aymer in a strangely quiet voice.

Christopher noticed the scar again, clear and distinct. Aymer took out

a cigarette and lit it carefully. Christopher watched dumbly. He

wanted to cry: for no reason that he could discover. Presently Aymer

turned to him as he sat on a low chair by the side of the wide sofa

and put his arm round him again.

"I'm sorry, little Christopher," he said rather huskily, perhaps

because he was smoking, "but I'm afraid I can't give you that, old

chap. We only--remember them here."

The tired child yielded to the slight pressure of the arm--his head

dropped against his new friend--the room was very quiet--only Mr.

Aymer must have been mistaken. It seemed to Christopher a thin

black-clad woman was in the room--somewhere--she was looking at Aymer

and would not see him at first--then she turned her head--he called

"Mother," and opened his eyes to find Mr. Aymer bending over him.

When Mr. Aston had returned and found Aymer smoking composedly with

one arm round the sleeping boy, he had pointed out with great care the

enormity of a small child being out of bed at eleven o'clock.

Aymer put down his cigarette and looked at his charge.

"Vespasian did come for him," he confessed; "I thought it a pity to

wake him till you came. It's just as I feared," he added with assumed

pathos, "you have had first innings and I shall have to take a second

place."

"It's only just that he got used to me: I hardly talked to him at

all," pleaded Mr. Aston humbly, and Aymer laughed. Whereupon

Christopher woke up, rubbing his eyes, and smiled sleepily at Mr.

Aston.

"I gave him the message, not just at once, but almost."

His first friend sat down and drew him to his knee.

"Well, what do you think of my big boy?" asked Mr. Aston. "I've been

scolding him for not sending you to bed."

Christopher looked from one to the other with solemn eyes, blinking in

the light.

"Scolding him? Isn't he too big to be scolded?"

The men laughed and involuntarily glanced at each other in a curiously

conscious manner.

"He does not think anyone too big to scold," sighed Aymer resignedly.

"Father, about the name: I'd rather tell him to-night." His voice was

a little hurried. Mr. Aston glanced at him questioningly.

"As you like, Aymer--if he's not too sleepy to listen. Are you,

Christopher?"

"I'm not tired," answered Christopher, valiantly blinking sleep out of

his eyes.

It was Aymer who spoke, slowly and directly. Mr. Aston kept his eyes

on the boy and tried not to see his son.

"What is your real name, Christopher, do you know?"

"James Christopher Hibbault, but they calls me Jim, except him."

In his sleepiness and agitation the boy had dropped back into country

dialect. Aymer winced.

"That is the only name you know? Well, Christopher, it's a good name,

but all the same I want you to forget it at present. I want you to

call yourself always, Christopher Aston. Do you think you can

remember?"

The newly-named one stood silent, puzzling out something in his mind.

"Will it make me not belong to mother?" he said at last.

There was a faint movement on the sofa. It was Mr. Aston who answered,

putting his hand gently on the boy's head.

"No, little Christopher, nothing will make you cease to belong to her;

we do not wish that. But it will be more easy for you to have our

name. We want Christopher Aston to have a better time than poor little

Jim Hibbault. Only, Christopher, remember Aston is my name, and I am

only lending it to you, and you must take very great care of it."

"Isn't it his name too?" The child edged a little nearer his friend,

and looked at Aymer.

"Yes, it's Aymer's name too. And, Christopher, if we were both to give

you everything we possess we could not give you anything we value more

than the name we lend you, so you must be very good to it. Now, Aymer,

I insist on your ringing for Vespasian: the child should have been in

bed hours ago. I must really buy you a book of nursery rules."

Vespasian was apparently of the same mind as Mr. Aston. Disapproval

was plainly expressed on his usually impassive face when he entered.

"Is that Vespasian?" demanded Christopher.

"Yes, and you will have to do just what he tells you, Christopher,

just as I have to," said Aymer severely.

Christopher regarded him doubtfully: he was not quite sure if he were

serious or not. He did not look as if people would tell him to do

things, yet the grave man in black did not smile.

"It's a funny name," he said at last, not meaning to be rude.

"Vespasian was a great general," remarked Aymer, and then added

hastily, seeing the boy's bewilderment increased, "Not this one, the

General's dead, but this is a good second."

"Aymer, you are incorrigible," expostulated Mr. Aston. "Good-night,

little Christopher."

He kissed him and Christopher's eyes grew large with wonder. He did

not know men did kiss little boys, and he ventured slyly to rub his

cheek against the black sleeve.

"Good-night, Christopher." Aymer held out his hand, and then suddenly,

half shyly, and half ashamed, kissed him also, and Vespasian bore him

off to bed.

The two men sat silently smoking, avoiding for the moment the subject

nearest their hearts, Aymer, because he was fighting hard to get some

mastering emotion under control, and he loathed showing his feelings

even to his father; Mr. Aston, because he was aware of this and wanted

Aymer to have time.

All that day he had been secretly dreading to-night, shrinking like a

coward from a situation which must arouse in his son memories better

forgotten. He was not a man given to shirking unpleasing experiences

to save his own heart a pang, but he was a veritable child in the way

that he studied to preserve his eldest son from the like.

It was Aymer who first spoke in his usual matter-of-fact tone.

"Had you any difficulties?"

"None whatever," answered his father, crossing his legs and preparing

to be communicative. "Stapleton had been all over the ground before

and knew every point. We went first to Surbiton Workhouse, since she

told Felton she stayed there. They found the entry for us. Then we

went on to Hartley, which is quite a small village and off the main

road. We stayed the night there, and went to the cottage where Felton

had seen her. It was quite true, all he said. The old woman remembered

distinctly a tramp-looking man stopping and calling to her over the

gate. They sat in the garden and talked together for some time. She

and the boy had been there a month, but they went the day after

Felton's visit--seemed frightened, the old lady said. Apparently they

meant to go to Southampton, for she had asked the way there.

Basingstoke must have been the next stop, but we did not know where

until the boy told us. They were in funds, so did not go to the House.

We got to Whitmansworth the next afternoon. Then a strange thing

happened, one of those chance coincidences that put to rout all our

schemes. There is a hill going into Whitmansworth with a milestone on

the top. I drove slowly, as I wanted to see if it really were the

place, and by the stone was a small boy. The likeness was so absurd

that it might have been ..." he stopped abruptly and examined his

cigar, "had I not been seeking him I should have seen it. I found out

his name, and that I was right, and took him up and drove to the

Union. They raised no objections--it was only a matter of form. The

master and his wife seem to be good people, and to have been kind to

the boy."

He came to a pause again. Aymer still waited. Mr. Aston walked to the

window and looked out at the night, and then went on without turning:

"She had never left the slightest clue or given any hint whatever as

to her identity. She was going to Southampton, she said. But she was

dying of exhaustion then. They could do nothing for her. She asked

them to keep the boy. The Mosses took a fancy to him, and it was

managed. She would not say where she came from."

Aymer lay very still, his face set and immovable.

"The strength of her purpose: think of it, in a woman!" said Mr. Aston

a little unsteadily; "the boy should have grit in him, Aymer."

"What did they say of the boy?"

"Ah." Mr. Aston resumed his seat with a sigh.

"Well, what's your own impression, Aymer?"

"I am satisfied."

Mr. Aston leant forward with a wealth of affection in his kind eyes,

and straightened the edge of the gorgeous sofa cover. "Aymer, old

chap, you are too sensible, I know, to imagine it is going to run

easily and smoothly from the first. The boy will come out all right:

he is young enough to shape, and worth shaping. But he has had

everything against him except one thing. It means many troubles and

disappointments for you, but I believe it will have its compensations.

It will help fill your life, at least."

"I understand," said Aymer, steadily. "I should like to tell you just

how I feel about it, father. Putting aside entirely the question of it

being--Christopher--. That was a stroke of Providence, shall we say? I

had you and Nevil, and the children. Life was not altogether empty,

sir. But I felt I had learnt something from life,--from

myself,--mostly from you,--that might be useful to a man. Not to pass

this on," the steady voice lost its main quality for a moment, "seemed

a waste. I told you all this when I first spoke of adopting someone;

and at that precise moment the clue which led us to Christopher was

put into our hands. There was no choice then. I say this again because

I want you to remember that the idea that first started my plan is

still the main one. Christopher, being Christopher, does not alter it.

There is only this thing certain," he raised himself a very little on

his right arm and laid down his cigarette deliberately, "I've taken

the boy and I mean to do my best by him, but he is mine now. If the

fate that--she died to save him from--comes to him, it must come. I

will not stand in his way, but I will have no hand in bringing it to

pass, I will raise no finger to summon it, nor will I call him from

it, if it come. Until, and unless it comes, he is mine. I think even

she would let me have him on those conditions." He lay back again, his

flushed face still witnessing to the force of his feeling.

"On any conditions," said his father, "if she knew you now. Only you

must bear the chance in mind in dealing with him. And it's only fair

to tell you the Union Master's report on him."

"Let's have it."

"Fairly docile, but inclined to argue the point. Truthful,--I

discovered that myself--but either through lack of training

or--according to the Master--through bad training in London, he is--"

Mr. Aston stumbled over a word, half laughed, and then said, "well, he

has a habit of acquisitiveness, shall we call it? When you think of

her history it seems at once natural and strange. They had not known

him to actually take things--money, that is,--but if he found any--and

he appears to have luck in finding things--he was not particular to

discover the real owner. It may be a difficulty, Aymer."

"Hereditary instinct," said Aymer a little shortly.

"Well, my own theory is that acquisitiveness is generosity inverted,"

concluded Mr. Aston thoughtfully, "and that heredity is merely a

danger signal, though it may mean fighting. I believe you can do it,

my dear boy, but it is a big job."

"I hope so, I was a born fighter, you know."

"You have not done badly that way, son Aymer," returned his father

quietly.

"You mean you have not. You are very gracious to a vanquished man,

sir."

It was one of his rare confessions of his indebtedness to his father,

and perhaps Mr. Aston was more embarrassed at receiving it than Aymer

in confessing it. For the indebtedness was undeniable. The Aymer Aston

of the present day was not the Aymer Aston of the first bitter years

of his imprisonment. The fight had been a long one: but whether the

love, the patience, the forbearance of the elder man had regenerated

the fierce nature, or whether he had only assisted the true Aymer to

work out his own salvation was an open question. Certainly those dark

years had left their mark on Mr. Aston, but, for a certainty they were

honourable scars, and he, the richer for his spent strength. He had

sacrificed much for him, but the reward reaped for his devotion was

the knowledge that of their friendship was woven a curtain of infinite

beauty that helped to shut away the tragedy of Aymer's life.

CHAPTER III

The question that chiefly occupied Mr. Aston's mind during the first

days of Christopher's advent was whether Aymer had gathered in those

ten long years of captivity sufficient strength of purpose to set

aside once and for all the sharp emotions and memories the boy's

presence must inevitably awake.

When Aymer had first approached him on the subject of adopting a boy

he had consented willingly enough, but when, coincident with this,

Fate--or Providence--had pointed out to them the person of Christopher

Hibbault, he, Mr. Aston, though he agreed it was impossible to

disregard the amazing chance, had sighed to himself and trembled lest

the carefully erected edifice of control and endurance that hedged in

his son should be unequal to the strain.

But after the first evening Aymer Aston betrayed by no sign whatever

that the past had any power to harm him through the medium of little

Christopher, and his father grew daily more satisfied and content over

the wisdom of their joint action. They stayed in town all that summer.

Mr. Aston was acting as Secretary to a rather important Commission and

even when it was not sitting he was employed in gathering in

information which could only be obtained in London. Nothing would

induce Aymer to go away without his father. He hated the publicity of

a railway journey even after ten years of helplessness, and the long

drive to Marden Court could not be undertaken lightly. So they stayed

where they were, a proceeding which seemed less strange to Christopher

than to such part of the outside world who chose to interest itself in

Mr. Aston's doings.

The August sun dealt gently with the beautiful garden, and not a few

hardworking men, tied, like Mr. Aston, to town, congratulated

themselves on his presence, when they shared its restful beauty in the

hot summer evenings.

Christopher meanwhile adapted himself to his new life with amazing

ease. He accepted his surroundings without question, but with quiet

appreciation, and if certain customs, such as a perpetual changing of

clothes and washing of hands were irksome, he took the good with the

bad, and accommodated himself to the ways of his new friends

resignedly. But he was haunted with the idea that the present state of

things would not and could not last, and it was hardly worth while to

do more than superficially conform to the regulations of the somewhat

monotonous existence.

Most of the ten years of his life had been spent under the dominant

influence of a devoted woman. All that he had learnt from mankind had

been a cunning dishonesty that had nearly ruined his own small

existence and indirectly caused his mother's death. Women, indeed, had

always been near him, and there were times when he thought regretfully

of Mrs. Moss. There were none but menservants at Aston house, and the

only glimpse of femininity was afforded by the flying visits of

Constantia, Mr. Aston's married daughter. She would at times invade

Aymer's room, a vision of delicate colourings and marvellous gowns.

She was a tall, dark, lovely woman who carried on the traditional

family beauty with no poverty of detail. She seemed to Christopher to

be ever going on somewhere or returning from somewhere. He liked to

sit and watch her when she flashed into the quiet room, and spent

perhaps half an hour making her brother laugh with her witty accounts

of people and matters strange to Christopher. She was kind to the boy,

when she remembered him, lavish with her smiles and nonsense and

presents, but it was like entertaining a rainbow, an elusive, shadowy

thing of beauty. She could not be said to denote the Woman in the

House. Christopher, as he wandered about the big silent rooms and long

corridors, was perforce obliged to take with him for company a more

shadowy presence, an imaginary vision of another woman, also tall and

dark, but without Constantia Wyatt's irresponsible gaiety and dazzling

smile. He would escort this phantom Woman through his favourite rooms,

pointing out the treasures to her. He even apportioned her a room for

herself, behind a closed door at the end of the wing opposite to which

Aymer Aston lived. For it was here he had first discovered with what

ease the image of his dead mother fitted into the surroundings he had

never shared with her. It was rather an uncanny, eerie idea, and had

Christopher been at all morbid or of a dreamy disposition it might

have been a very injudicious fancy: but he was the personification of

good health and robust spirits. His vivid imagination flitted as

naturally and easily round the memory of his dead mother as it

rejoiced in the adventures of the Robinson family, or thrilled over

the history of John Silver. It was just a deliberate fancy that he

indulged in at will, and the only really fantastical thing about it

was that he invariably started his tour with the imaginary Woman from

the door of the closed room. At the end of October, when he had fairly

settled into the regular routine of Aston House, a tutor was procured

for him. School, for more reasons than one, was out of the question.

Christopher's previous existence would hardly have stood the

inquisition of the playground, and Aymer, moreover, wanted to keep him

under his own eye. The boy's education had been of a somewhat

desultory nature. He could read and write, and possessed a curious

store of out-of-the-way knowledge that would upset the most carefully

prepared plan of his puzzled tutor. That poor gentleman was

alternately scandalised by the boy's ignorance and amazed at his

appetite for knowledge. He showed an astonishing aptitude for figures

while he evinced a shameful contempt for history and languages.

Indeed, he could only be made to struggle with Latin Grammar by

Aymer's stories of Roman heroes in the evening and the ultimate reward

of reading them for himself some day.

The year wore on, ran out, with the glories of pantomime and various

holiday joys with Mr. Aston. Christopher by this time had accepted his

surroundings as permanent, with regard to Mr. Aston and Aymer, though

he still, in his heart of hearts, had no belief that so far as he was

concerned they might not any day vanish away and leave him again prey

to a world of privations, wants and disagreeables generally.

He was forever trying to make provision against that possible day, and

laid up a secret hoard of treasure he deemed might be useful on

emergency. With the same idea he made really valiant attempts to put

aside a portion of his ample pocket-money for the same purpose, but it

generally dwindled to an inconsiderable sum by Saturday. Aymer kept

him well supplied and encouraged him to spend freely. He was told

again and again the money was given him to spend and not to keep, and

that the day of need would not come to him. He would listen half

convinced, until the vision of some street arabs racing for pennies

would remind him of positive facts that had been and therefore might

be again, and cold prudence had her say. But this trait was the result

of experience and not of nature, for he was generous enough. Not

infrequently the whole treasury went to the relief of already existing

needs outside the garden railings, and he could be wildly extravagant.

Aymer never questioned him. He sometimes laughed at him when he had

wasted a whole week's money on some childish folly, and told him he

was a silly baby, which Christopher did not like. However, he found he

had to buy his own experiences, and he soon learnt that no folly

however childish annoyed "Cæsar" so much as accumulated wealth for no

particular object but a possible future need.

Christopher had christened Aymer "Cæsar" shortly after his

introduction to the literary remains of one, Julius, from some

fanciful resemblance, and the name stuck and solved a difficulty.

In the same manner he bestowed the distinctive title of St. Michael on

Mr. Aston, from his likeness to a famous picture of that great saint

in a stained glass window he had seen, and it also was generally

adopted.

No one made any further attempt to explain his introduction into the

family, or the general history of that family. He was just "grafted

in," and left to discover what he could for himself, and he certainly

gathered some fragmentary disconnected facts together.

"What is a Secletary?" demanded Christopher one day from the

hearth-rug, where he lay turning over old volumes of the _Illustrated

London News_.

"A Secretary, I suppose you mean. A Secretary is a man who writes

letters for someone else."

"Who does St. Michael write letters for?"

"He used to write letters for the Queen, or rather on the Queen's

business. What book have you got there?"

Christopher explained.

"There is a picture of him. Only he hasn't got grey hair: and

underneath Perma n-e-n-t, Permanent Undersecretary of State for

Foreign Affairs. What does it mean, Cæsar?"

Cæsar, otherwise Aymer, considered a moment.

"Permanent means lasting, going on. You ought to know that,

Christopher."

"But he isn't going on."

"He could have done so."

"Why didn't he? Didn't he like it?"

"Yes, very much. He was trained for that kind of thing."

"Did he get tired of writing letters, then?"

"No."

Aymer was apt to become monosyllabic when a certain train of thought

was forced on him. Also a short deep line of frown appeared under the

white scar: but Christopher had not yet learnt to pay full heed to

these signs: also he had a predilection for getting at the root of any

matter he had once begun to investigate, so he began again:

"Why didn't he go on being permanent, then?"

"He thought he had something else he ought to do."

"Was the Queen angry?"

"I don't know."

"What was it?"

Aymer cut the leaves of the book he was trying to read rather

viciously.

"Taking care of me," he said shortly.

Christopher got up on his knees and stared.

"Hadn't you got Vespasian then?"

"Good heavens, Christopher, are you a walking inquisition? My father

gave up his appointment--if you must know, because of my----" he

stopped, and went on doggedly, "of my accident. I wasn't particularly

happy when I found I had to stay on a sofa all the rest of my life,

and he had to teach me not to make an idiot of myself. Now you know

all about it and need not bother anyone else with questions."

Christopher thought he knew very little about it, but he had learnt

what he set out to know and was moreover now aware that the subject

was distasteful to Aymer, so he politely changed it. "Robert's

brother has got some very nice guinea-pigs," he said thoughtfully.

"Who is Robert?"

"Robert is the under footman. I forgot you don't know him."

Christopher recollected with momentary embarrassment Aymer's

inaccessibility to the general domestic staff.

"He wants to find a home for them," he added hastily; "he doesn't mind

where, so long as it's a happy home."

Aymer guarded a smile. Christopher was already notorious for ingenious

methods of getting what he wanted.

"It would be a pity for them to be ill-treated, of course," he agreed

gravely.

Christopher shuffled across the floor to the side of the big sofa.

"It's rather a happy home here, you know," he remarked suggestively,

touching Aymer's arm tentatively with one finger.

"I am glad you think so. Do you consider the atmosphere equally

suitable for guinea-pigs?"

"I should like them." He rubbed his cheek caressingly on Aymer's hand.

"May I, Cæsar?"

"Not to keep in your bedroom as you did the bantam."

"But in the garden--or yard. _Please_, dear Cæsar."

"You ridiculous baby, yes. If you make a house for them yourself."

Christopher flew off in a transport of joy to consult with Vespasian,

who, from mere tolerance of his beloved master's last "fad," had

become the most ardent if unemotional partisan of the same "fad."

It was Vespasian who had provided Christopher with more clothes than

he deemed it possible for one mortal boy to wear, who taught him how

to put them on, and struggled with him figuratively and literally over

the collar question. Vespasian's taste running to a wide margin of

immaculate white closely fastened, while Christopher had a

predilection for a free and open expanse of neck.

"Look at Mr. Aymer," pointed out the great general's successor

sternly. "You never see him with even a turn-down collar, and he lying

on his back all the time, when most gentlemen would consider their own

comfort."

Christopher, hot, angry and uncomfortable, wondered if Vespasian had

insisted on the wearing of those instruments of torture, or if Cæsar

really preferred it.

But in spite of small differences of opinion, Vespasian and he were

good friends, and he received much instruction from the mouth of that

inestimable man. It was he who drilled him in Mr. Aymer's little ways,

warned him how he hated to be reminded of his helplessness, and could

not endure anyone but Vespasian himself to move him from sofa to

chair, and that only in the strictest privacy. How he disliked meeting

anyone when wheeled from his own room to the dining-room for dinner,

which was the only meal he took in public, and that only in company

with his father or very intimate friends. How he avoided asking anyone

to hand him things though he did not object to unsolicited help, which

Christopher soon learnt to render as unostentatiously as Vespasian

himself. Also it was Vespasian who explained to him woodenly, in

answer to his direct question, that the scar on Mr. Aymer's forehead

was the result of a shooting accident. His revolver had gone off as he

was cleaning it, said Vespasian, had nearly killed him, had left him

paralysed on one side, so he'd never be better. He added, Mr. Aymer

didn't like it talked about. All this and more did the boy learn from

this discreet man, but never did Vespasian hint at those dark years

when to serve poor Aymer Aston was a work for which no money could

pay, when the patient father and much-tried man had secretly wondered

whether that fight for mere life that had followed on the ghastly

accident had indeed been worth the winning. There was no word of this

in Vespasian's revelations. He only impressed on Christopher the

necessity of avoiding any expression of pity or commiseration with the

paralysed man, and a warning that a somewhat casual manner towards the

world, and his entirely undemonstrative way, was no true index of Mr.

Aymer's real feelings.

Christopher was himself warm-hearted and given to expressing his

joyous feelings with engaging frankness. It could hardly have been

otherwise, brought up as he had been by a woman of ardent nature and

passionate love for him, but in contradiction to this he had learnt to

be very silent over the disagreeables of life and to keep his own

small troubles to himself, so that he readily entered into Aymer's

attitude towards his own misfortune, and the relationship between the

two passed from admiration on Christopher's part to passionate

devotion, and from the region of experimental interest on Aymer's part

to personal uncalculated affection, and to an easing of a sharp

heartache he had tried valiantly to hide from his father. Aymer never

questioned him on the past, never even alluded to it. Partly because

he hoped the memory of it would dwindle from the boy's mind, and

partly for his own sake. But Christopher did not forget. There were

few days when he did not contrast the old times with the new, and gaze

for a moment across the big gulf that separated Christopher Aston from

little Jim Hibbault and the quiet woman absorbed in a struggle for

existence in an unfriendly world. He occasionally spoke of his mother

to Mr. Aston when they were out together, but he kept his implied

promise faithfully with regard to Aymer and made no mention of his

former experiences, or of his mother, until one day an event occurred

which recalled the black terror under whose shadow they had left

London, and necessitated an elucidation of knotty points.

There was in one corner of the garden far away from the house a gap in

the high belt of shrubs that jealously guarded the grounds from the

curious passerby. In fact the gap had once meant a gateway, but it had

been disused so long that it had forgotten it was a gate and merely

pretended it was part of the big railings; only it had not got a

little wall to stand on. Christopher was fond of viewing life from

this sequestered corner. The road that ran by was a main

thoroughfare--an ever-varying picture of moving shapes. One morning as

he stood there counting the omnibuses--he had nearly made a record

count--his attention was attracted by a small boy about his own age or

possibly older, who was dawdling along, hands in pockets, with a

dejected air. He appeared to be whistling, but if he were, without

doubt it was also a dejected air. His was a shabby tidiness that spoke

of a Woman and little means. He had sandy hair and light eyes and--but

Christopher did not know this--an uncommonly shrewd little face and a

good square head, and as he passed by the boundaries of Aston House

he glanced at the small fellow-citizen gazing through the

railings--rather compassionately, be it said--for he knew for certain

the boy inside was longing to get through the gate. That one glance

carried him beyond the gate, but he suddenly spun round on his heel,

collided with an indignant lady laden with parcels, and stared hard at

Christopher. Christopher stared hard at him. Then the boy outside went

on his way.

"Jolly like Jim," he ruminated, "but a swell toff, I reckon. Poor

little kid."

Christopher, after one shout as the boy went on, tore back through the

garden towards the entrance gate, meaning to intercept him there. Such

at least was his laudable intention, but half way there his pace

slackened; he stood irresolute, kicking a loose stone in the gravel

path, and finally strolled off to the stable yard to feed his

guinea-pigs.

He was preoccupied and thoughtful for the rest of that day. Mr. Aston

was absent, and when evening came and Christopher was still a prey to

harassing ideas he decided he must appeal to Cæsar even at the cost of

disregarding Mr. Aston's prohibition. He came to this decision as he

lay in his usual position on the hearth-rug and was goaded thereto by

the approach of bed time.

"Cæsar, could anyone be taken to prison for something he had done ever

so long ago--I mean for--for stealing, and things like that?"

"Yes, if he had not been already tried for it. Why do you ask?"

"And if anyone met the person suddenly who had done something would

they have to give him up?" persisted Christopher.

Aymer regarded him curiously. He had an unreasonable impulse to check

the coming revelation, as he might the unguarded confidence of a weak

man, but common-sense prevailed.

"It would depend on circumstances entirely, and the relationship of

the two. Are you wanted, Christopher?" he asked in a matter-of-fact

tone.

"I was," returned Christopher slowly. "That's why we left London, you

know. It was Marley Sartin. He took me out with him. You see," he

broke off parenthetically, "I stayed with Martha, that's Mrs. Sartin,

all the day while mother took care of a gentleman's house, and

sometimes Marley was there, and he taught me things."

"What things?"

Christopher shifted his position a bit, and tossed a piece of wood

into the fire.

"Oh, lots of things," he repeated at last, "tricks, and how not to

answer, and how to avoid coppers and how to get money. Mother said it

was stealing."

The scar on Aymer's forehead was very visible. He took up a

paper-knife and ran his fingers along the edge slowly.

"Well?"

The boy looked round, suddenly aware of where he was, of the beauty

and comfort around him, of Cæsar's personality, and the incongruity of

his admission. However, so it was: facts were facts: it was imperative

he should know his own position, even if it was an unpleasing subject.

So he went on hastily. "Oh, well, one day he took me out with him for

a walk. We went into a big sort of shop with lots of people buying

things and he knocked up 'accidental like' (this was evidently a

reminiscence of a phrase often used), against a lady and she dropped

her parcels and purse and things, and I pretended to pick them up, and

if there were only parcels or pennies I really did, but if the money

spilt and it was gold I put my foot on it and picked it up for Marley

when I could. We made a lot that way. Of course mother didn't know,"

he added hurriedly, "or Martha. Then one day there was a row and

Marley was caught, and I ran away. You see I was pretty small, and

could slip in anywhere. I got back and told Martha, and she cried and

told mother, and said as how I should be sure to be took too. So we

went away from London that night. I don't know what happened to

Martha, but mother said I mustn't go back to London or I'd be taken

too."

The grim tragedy of it all, the miserable fate from which the woman

had fought so hard to save her child, and the same child's dim

appreciation of it struck Aymer with the sharpness of physical pain.

"Marley told me it was only keeping what one found, but mother said it

was just stealing, and that Marley was bad. He was good to me anyhow.

Martha--Mrs. Sartin--you know--used often to cry about Marley's ways.

_She_ was always very respectable; her father kept a linen-draper's

shop, and she meant to put Sam into a shop. Sam didn't like his

father. I saw Sam go by to-day--he's bigger, but it was him and he

knew me--and I asked about the being taken up because I thought it

wouldn't be safe for me to go about perhaps."

So level and even was his voice that Aymer did not guess the agony of

apprehension and fear the boy was holding back behind his almost

abnormal self-control, but he did his best to reassure him.

"They would not know you, Christopher, and if they did they would not

take you away from me. You were a very little boy then. I could let

them know how it happened, and how it could never happen again."

Christopher hid his face in his arms and the room became very silent.

The fire crackled cheerfully and strange shadows lived uncertain lives

on the ceiling. Aymer put the paper-knife down at last and looked at

his charge. He was aware it was a critical moment for them both: also

he was quite suddenly aware he was more fond of the child than he had

previously imagined. But mostly in his mind was the sickening

appreciation of what hours of torture that solitary silent woman must

have endured.

"Christopher, old boy, come here," he said quietly.

The boy got up. His face was flushed, hot with his efforts to control

himself.

"Do you want the light, Cæsar?"

"No, I want you."

He came unwillingly and sat down on the edge of the sofa, playing with

a piece of string.

"You need not be frightened at all," said Aymer. "It is all utterly

impossible now, we both of us know that."

"I suppose so."

"You know it. You only did what Marley told you to do. You didn't

steal because you wanted money yourself."

But Christopher was doggedly truthful.

"Marley used to give me some for myself, Cæsar, and I liked it and I

didn't think it was stealing. It was just keeping what one found."

"But you knew to whom it belonged."

"Not certain sure, Marley said."

"What did your mother say?"

"Just that it was stealing. She said, too, lots of people in the world

were thieves who didn't know, and Marley was no worse than many rich

men, who just knocked people down to get the best of them. What did

she mean, Cæsar?"

"She thought it was as wrong for a rich man to take advantage of a

poor man, as for a strong man to attack a weak one, or a cunning man

to cheat a simpleton."

Christopher was conscious he had heard something like this before. He

nodded his small head sagely. Aymer went on.

"It really means you must never get money at someone else's expense.

If you can give them something in return, something equal, it's all

right, but it must be equal. That is what your mother believed, and I

do too--now."

Christopher regarded Cæsar thoughtfully. He was speculating what he

did in return for the golden sovereigns that seemed so plentiful with

him.

"We try to give fair exchange," explained Cæsar, answering his

thoughts. "The money comes to us out of the big world. And my father

gives the world good service in return. You will know how good,

some-day."

"Does everybody do things?" sighed his listener, much perplexed.

"Everyone should. You are wondering what I do. My money comes to me

before I earn it, from houses--land--I have to see the people who live

in my houses have all that is fair and necessary, that the land is in

order. Then sometimes we lend other people our money, and they find

work for many others, and make more of it. Money is a very difficult

thing to explain, Christopher. What I want you to remember now is that

you must never take money from other people without giving something

in return, because it's stealing."

Christopher, with his usual disconcerting shrewdness, found an

unsatisfactory point.

"I don't do anything for the money you give me every week, Cæsar."

Aymer was fairly caught, and wanted desperately to laugh, only the

boy's face was so grave and concerned he did not dare. He thought for

a moment to find a way out of the difficulty without upsetting the

somewhat vague theories he had just crystallised into words.

"But I owe something to the world, and you are a small atom of the

world, Christopher, so I choose to pay a mite of my debt that way.

Besides, it is a part of your education to learn how to spend money,

as much a part as Latin grammar."

Christopher thought it a much pleasanter part and looked relieved.

"I am glad you aren't paying me," he said slowly; "of course it's just

my good luck that it happened to be me you pay your debts to. Lots of

people aren't lucky like that."

Which was a truth that remained very deeply indented in Christopher's

mind. Aymer ordered him to bed, but when he said good-night he kept

grip of his hand.

"Why wouldn't you like me to pay you?" he demanded, almost roughly.

The boy got red and embarrassed, but Aymer waited remorselessly.

"I can't do anything," he said, "and if I did I'd hate you to pay me

like that. Some day I'll have to pay you, won't I?"

"I should hate that worse than you would," returned Aymer shortly.

"There's no question of money between us. I get all I want out of you.

Go to bed."

CHAPTER IV

Marden Court lay bathed in the mellow October sunshine. Late

Michaelmas daisies, fuchsias, and milky anemones stood smiling bravely

in the borders under the red brick walls, trails of crimson creepers

flung a glowing glory round grey stone pillar and coping, and in the

neighbouring woods the trees seemed to hold their breath under the

weight of the rich robes they wore. Marden looked its best in late

autumn. The ripeness of the air, the wealth of colour, and the

harmonious dignity of the season seemed a fit setting to the old Tudor

mansion, with its reposeful beauty just touched with renaissance

grace. The glory of the world passes, but it is none the less a glory

worth observing.

The Astons regarded Marden as the metropolis of their affections. It

was "Home" and any member of the family wanting to go "Home" did so

regardless of who might be in immediate possession. Nevil Aston, his

wife and two small children and his young sister-in-law lived there

permanently, but their position was that of fortunate caretakers, and

both the elder Aston and the Wyatts went to and fro at their will.

Nevil Aston was at thirty-two a brilliant essayist and rising

historian, and there was a magnificent library at Marden which he

professed to find useful in his work. He also was wont to say "Marden

was an excellent place in which to work, but a far better place in

which to play." He himself did both in turn. A few weeks of furious

energy and copious achievement would be followed by weeks of serene

idleness from which little Renata, his wife, would arouse him by

sheer bullying, as he himself expressed it, driving him by main force

of will to the library, setting pen and paper to hand and then

placidly consenting to weeks of irregular meals, of absent-minded

vagaries, a seeming indifference to her presence, in place of the

wholly dependent lovable boyish Nevil of the days of indolence.

It was not till the second autumn after Christopher's introduction to

the ménage that the senior Astons decided to desert London for a few

months and go "Home." Mr. Aston had been to and fro not infrequently

and Nevil Aston had made a few brief visits to town, when Constantia

Wyatt had made it her business to see that her gifted brother did not

hide his light under a bushel, but little Christopher failed to

connect either Nevil or his beautiful sister very closely with his own

particular Astons. They were a part of an outside existence with which

he was unacquainted, and Marden Court was to him but a name, an unreal

place that got photographed occasionally and that Mr. Aston seemed to

like. The Astons, probably quite unconsciously, pursued their usual

course of leaving Christopher to drift into the stream of their

existence without any explanation or attempt to make that existence a

clear cut and dried affair to him. He was pleased enough with the idea

of the change, once he had ascertained his guinea-pigs might accompany

him, and was still more pleased when he was told he would at all

events for a time have no lessons to do.

"You'll have plenty to learn though," Aymer had remarked drily when he

made the announcement. Christopher refrained from asking for an

explanation with difficulty.

Towards the middle of October Nevil Aston, just in the midst of a

period of blissful laziness, sauntered down the long walks of the

south garden in Renata's wake, occasionally stopping to pick up one or

other of the two fat babies who struggled along after their mother,

interrupting more or less effectually the business on which she was

engaged. A pathetic-eyed yard or so of brown dachshund and a

tortoise-shell kitten completed the party. Renata Aston was small and

dark, gentle and deliberate of movement, and possessing an elf-like

trick of shrinking her entrancing personality into comparative

invisibility that bereft one of further vision. She moved from border

to border choosing her flowers with care, and looking even smaller

than she was in the proximity of her lanky husband, and the plump

little babies toddling after.

Presently she came to a stop. All her satellites stopped too. She

regarded her trophies critically.

"This is very good for the end of October, you know." She remarked to

all the assembled court. "I only want some violets now. Nevil, I wish

you'd stop Charlotte picking the heads off the fuchsias: there are no

more to come out."

Nevil hoisted his small daughter on his shoulder as the safest way to

avoid an altercation and humbly asked if he must pick violets, "they

grow so low down."

"You grow so far up," she retorted scornfully. "Max can help me. You

can watch with Charlotte. You are very good at watching people work."

"It is not a common virtue," pleaded Nevil, "watchers generally tell

the workers how to do it. I never do. Why don't you tell a gardener to

pick them, Renata?"

"A gardener! For Aymer?"

"All this trouble for Aymer?"

"It is a pleasure."

"I know just how it will be," he complained mournfully, "the moment

Aymer is here you will hound me off to work and I shall see nothing of

you at all. You won't even give me new pens. Charlotte, I should look

horrid if I had no hair: be merciful."

Renata smiled and shook her head. "I shall get no more work out of you

this side of Christmas, sir. I have no such impossible dreams. Perhaps

Aymer won't want either of us now he has got Christopher."

"I wonder now," remarked Nevil, depositing Miss Charlotte on a seat

while he took out his cigarette case, "I wonder if you are jealous,

Renata."

She flushed indignantly and denied the fact with most unnecessary

emphasis, so her husband told her in his gentle teasing way. He turned

her face up to his and professed to look stern, which he never could

do.

"Confess now," he insisted. "Just a little jealous of Christopher?"

"Well," she admitted, laughing and still pink, "Aymer has never stayed

away from us for so long before. I don't know what was the use of his

having those rooms done up for himself if he never means to use

them."

Renata continued to pick violets, and Max to decapitate those he could

find. The dachshund and kitten continued to watch with absorbing

interest, and Nevil continued to smoke and to let Charlotte

investigate his cigarette case till her mother turned round and saw

her.

"You dreadful child!" she cried, "Nevil, just look. Charlotte is

sucking the ends of your horrid cigarettes! How can you let her?"

Charlotte was rescued from the cigarettes, or the cigarettes from

Charlotte, with considerable difficulty and at the cost of many tears.

Indeed her protestations were so loud that nurse appeared and bore her

and Max away and silence again reigned in the warm garden between the

sunny borders.

The dachshund gave a sigh and flopped down on the path, and the kitten

began a toilet for want of better employment. Renata, who had stood

aside during the small domestic storm, gazed at her violets gravely

as if she were counting them.

Nevil watched her contentedly and did not observe the trouble in her

face.

"Nevil," she said at last, "about Charlotte I wonder--do you

think----" she stopped and edged a little nearer her husband and

slipped her hand in his.

"Well, dear?"

"You don't think, do you, Nevil, that Charlotte is--is getting like

Patricia?"

He put his arm round her and drew her down on the seat.

"You dear silly child, no," he said, kissing her.

She seemed only half assured and leant her head against him, sighing.

"It is quite, quite different," he insisted. "Charlotte's temper is

just like anyone else's, yours or mine, or anyone's."

"Yours--you haven't got one," she returned with pretended contempt and

then lapsed back into her troubled mien, "but I feel so frightened

sometimes."

"My dear, be reasonable. Patricia's temper isn't a temper at all.

It's--it's a possession--a wretched family inheritance. She can't help

it, poor child, any more than she could help a squint or a crooked

nose, and she doesn't inherit it from _your_ mother but only from your

step-father, so why on earth you should imagine it likely to crop up

in our family I can't conceive. It's absurd."

He tilted her pretty face up to his again and kissed her. Nevil would

like to have killed all his wife's cares with a caress. It is not

always a successful method, but it is more efficacious than the world

believes.

"Of course I know all that, though Patricia always seems quite like my

own sister. I do hope Christopher won't tease her."

"Aymer will see to that."

"Not unless he is reminded. You know he rather loves teasing the poor

darling himself."

"Here is the poor darling, herself. Storm over, I suppose, sky

serene."

The little girl coming down the path to them was barely twelve, but

she looked older. The features were too set, if anything, too regular

for her to be called pretty as yet, but an observer must have been

very blind to beauty not to see the possibilities shadowed in her

face. She had quantities of smooth gold hair, one plait of which, for

convenience's sake, was twisted round her little head that was at

present too small for its rich burden. Her great dark grey eyes and

long lashes had a curiously expectant look as if ever on the watch for

some joy or pain to come. In the clearness of her complexion and the

good modelling of her little white hands, she did resemble her

half-sister, but it was the only likeness between them. She came to

them not running, as a child should, but slowly and deliberately.

"Patricia, do come and hear what this dreadful Nevil has let Charlotte

do," cried Renata, still under shelter of her husband's long arm. For

some reason she seemed anxious to let the child know she was seen and

wanted. Nevil smiled and made room on the seat for her to sit by his

side.

Patricia stood in front of them, her great pathetic eyes looking from

one to the other. She finally addressed herself to Nevil.

"I'm ever so sorry, Nevil," she said with a dejected sigh.

"Of course, of course, it's all right, child," he answered hastily,

"come and hear my short-comings. I'm in deep disgrace."

She sat down obediently and the dachshund immediately shifted its

quarters and wedged itself in between her feet. She leant forward

with her elbows on her knees and gazed absently at the brown head.

"What have you been doing, Nevil, darling?"

"I? Not I, but Charlotte. Don't you know by this time, Patricia, I'm

only a scapegoat for the autocrat of the nursery."

"He let Charlotte nibble a cigarette," explained Renata.

"One of my very best."

"It might have been one of his worst, Rennie," suggested Patricia

consolingly.

"They are all 'worst' for Charlotte," cried Renata springing up. "I

must go and put up my flowers or they'll be here before I'm ready."

She flitted away in the direction of the house. Her husband looked

after her with mute sorrow at his own incapacity to melt from vision

in that intangible manner--from situations that were too difficult.

He glanced at his little companion, who was making attempts to tie the

dachshund's ears round his own neck.

"You won't be able to treat Christopher that way, Patricia," he said

contemplatively, "but it will be jolly for you to have a companion of

your own age, won't it?"

"Perhaps he won't like me."

"He is quite likely to like you."

"Oh, yes, at first, because I'll make him," she returned with engaging

candour, but then her mouth drooped a little, "but when he knows what

I'm really like, he won't."

Nevil examined another cigarette carefully to see it had not been

nibbled. He was really very fond of his little sister-in-law though

occasionally at a loss how to deal with her strange moods.

"Well, we are all very fond of you, anyway, child," he said easily;

"as for the temper, you can't really help it, you know, and you'll

grow out of it. I'm sure you try to, my dear."

"But I don't try," cried poor Patricia wildly, "I haven't time, I

don't know anything about it till it's there and then it's too late. I

might just as well have flung that plate at Charlotte as at you

to-day. I wonder Renata lets me go in the nursery."

"No, no. You wouldn't be angry with a baby."

She turned to him with a sort of exasperated patience. "That's just

it. You don't any of you understand. It does not make any difference,

why, who or where. It just comes. I _can't_ help it." She kicked her

heel on the gravel fiercely.

"Poor little Patricia," said Nevil gently. "I can only say we all love

you just the same, and I believe you'll grow out of it." She changed

suddenly and flung herself into his arms in a wild transport of tears

and childish abandonment. He was in no wise taken aback and soothed

her with adroitness born of practice. When she was calm again he sat

with his arm round her talking of indifferent things till a clock

somewhere near struck three.

"They should be here directly," he said, but made no effort to rise.

"Would Aymer really mind being met?" she questioned.

"He'd rather be left to Vespasian and Tollens."

Tollens was the old butler.

"Won't he ever get used to it?"

"He is afraid of becoming an invalid if he gets hardened to it."

"But he is, isn't he?"

"Not a bit of it. He has perfectly wonderful health. He has massage

and all sorts of things to keep him up to the mark. Aymer's as vain as

a girl."

"I don't call it vanity. I call it pluck."

Nevil groaned, "Oh, you women, old and young! But you are right--and

there are my father and Christopher himself."

Christopher to his great joy had been allowed to drive down with Aymer

and Mr. Aston, and had found the journey not one mile too long. Indeed

towards the end his early curiosity as to the termination had

evaporated and the mile-stones had come in sight and vanished all too

quickly. It had been reassuring to find Vespasian awaiting them at the

door with the old butler to whom he was formally introduced as Mr.

Aymer's ward. Then having inquired of Tollens of the family's

whereabouts, Mr. Aston bore off Christopher for further

introductions.

At the entrance to the garden on the long terrace and by the gate

leading to the south garden he had paused and looked round with the

slow comprehensive glance of one acquainted with every detail. He

spoke nothing of his thoughts to Christopher, but the boy was quite

acutely aware that Mr. Aston loved this place and was happy to see it

again, while he calmly discussed the possibilities of fishing in the

lake that lay below like a silver mirror in the clear sunlight.

And in the south garden Nevil and Patricia met them. Patricia, still

white and shaken with the past storm, greeted Mr. Aston shyly, but had

no qualms about greeting Christopher. He, for his part, was far too

shy and too unused to girls' society to notice her mien. He did,

however, remember afterwards that she was standing by a great clump of

purple starlike flowers and that he thought her the most beautiful

thing he had ever seen, excepting, of course, Constantia Wyatt. He

made that mental reservation as they walked along together in front of

their elders, and then glancing sideways at the wonderful hair again,

decided he liked fair hair best. Constantia's was dark. They soon

outdistanced the two men who followed at a leisurely pace. Mr. Aston

looked after them and said kindly:

"The little girl still gives trouble, I see."

"Occasionally." Nevil made the admission with reluctance. "There was a

scene this morning. I don't know what started it. Perhaps I teased

her. She flung a plate at me. I don't believe she _can_ help it, poor

child."

"You mustn't tell her so, Nevil."

"You'd tell her anything you could if you saw her after. She'll grow

out of it."

"I hope so."

They fell to talking of the estate, which Nevil was supposed to look

after. He did, when he remembered it, but that was not often, and not

of late. His father, half exasperated, half laughing, told him he

would defer his lecture till later on. Nevil penitently agreed it was

only fitting to do so, and slipping his arm through his father's,

began to explain to him the rights of a controversy just started in

the _Historical Review_. No one was ever angry with Nevil long. His

unchangeable sweet temper and gentle judgment of mankind, his entire

lack of vanity and the very real ability that was concealed under his

elusive personality outweighed the exasperation his irresponsibility

and indolence sometimes awoke. He had no enemies among those who knew

him, and the bitterest controversy with pen and ink could be brought

to a close in an interview. It must, however, be confessed that with

pen in hand Nevil was more dangerous than the unwary might imagine. He

knew his power with that weapon and when he chose to use it, did so to

good purpose with a polished finish to his scathing periods, that made

men twenty years his senior hate with fierce passion Aston the writer,

as surely as they would end by appreciation of Aston the man after a

personal encounter.

Patricia and Christopher having outdistanced their elders proceeded

to make friends in their own way. The girl began operations by asking

if he would like to see the stables and found it aroused no enthusiasm

in him, which was a point to the bad. But he was polite enough to say

he would like to go if she wished it, which nearly equalised matters

again. She confessed it might be nice to have someone to play with,

which Christopher thought very friendly of her, and told her of his

guinea-pigs, which would arrive in the evening with Robert and the

luggage. That was distinctly a point to the good; they both waxed

eloquent over the special qualities of guinea-pigs. Christopher's

original two had already increased alarmingly in numbers. He hinted

some might even be left at Marden--in a good home. Also he told her he

had christened the family by the names of great painters.

"Cæsar taught me the names," he explained, "there is Velasquez--he

painted the Don Carlos in Cæsar's room, you know--he's brown all over

except for one spot--_my_ Velasquez, I mean--and there's Watteau--an

awful frisky little beast--and Sir Joshua, who sleeps in my pocket.

You'll like Sir Joshua, he's awfully good tempered."

"I know," nodded Patricia wisely, "and he painted Nevil's great

grandmother. It's in the drawing-room. Why do you call Aymer

'Cæsar'?"

"Because he always does what he means to do, or gets it done; besides

he is--just Cæsar."

"It isn't bad," she said condescendingly, "perhaps I shall call him so

myself. I do hope we are going to have tea in his room. It's such a

lovely, lovely room."

"So it is in London. The beautifulest room I've seen."

"It's just as nice here," she maintained stoutly, "he planned how it

was to be done, and Nevil saw to it. I like this best."

Christopher was too polite or too shy to insist, but he felt doubtful

and became impatient to see for himself, so they went indoors to find

Patricia's hopes were justified. Tea was served in "Mr. Aymer's"

room.

And Christopher was obliged to allow that Patricia had some ground for

her statement. It was a smaller room than the one in London, and

singularly like it, only the prevailing note was lighter and gayer in

tone. Aymer was there, lying on a similar sofa to his usual one, with

the familiar cover across his feet.

Renata was making tea, and making Cæsar laugh also. Christopher was

uncomfortably conscious it was all new to him and the familiarity only

superficial, while it was a well-recognised phase in Cæsar's life.

Even Nevil Aston seemed a different person in his easy country dress,

and Christopher failed at first to connect the dark little lady at the

tea table with him, and only noted she took Aymer his tea, which was

his, Christopher's, special privilege, and treated him with a friendly

familiarity that nearly bordered on contempt in Christopher's eyes.

Aymer saw the children and called to them. Patricia greeted him with

the air of a young princess and drew herself up when he said she had

grown, and would soon be a child instead of a baby. Then he faced

Christopher round towards Renata, who had suddenly become grave and

shy.

"Here is Christopher, so you can approve or condemn Nevil by your own

judgment, Renata. Christopher, shake hands with Mrs. Aston."

Christopher did as he was told, but he realised they had been speaking

of him and felt on the defensive. However, he sat down as near to

Cæsar as he could. They talked of all manner of people and things of

which he knew nothing, traditional jokes cropped up, and Aymer's

propensity for teasing asserted itself in a prominent manner. Renata

never failed to respond and never failed to claim Nevil's protection

and to look delightfully shy and dignified and feminine. Presently the

children were sent for. To Christopher's indignant amazement they were

plumped down on Aymer and allowed to treat him much as if he was a new

species of giant plaything. Charlotte, in her efforts to burrow under

Aymer's arm, rolled off the edge of the sofa and was deftly caught by

Christopher, who deposited her on the floor. She immediately tried to

clamber up again, but Aymer could not second her efforts with his left

arm.

"Put her up again, Christopher," he said.

But Christopher apparently did not hear, and Mr. Aston, who had been

watching, came to the rescue. Christopher slipped away to the window.

"A question of a third baby, I think," said Mr. Aston softly as he

rearranged Charlotte, and Aymer, looking sharply at Christopher,

laughed.

When Christopher went to bid him good-night, he found Cæsar alone,

looking tired and doing nothing, not even reading.

Christopher said good-night gravely.

"It's not very late," remarked Aymer. "Stay with me a bit."

He patted the chair beside him. Christopher with rather a hot face

obeyed.

"How do you like Marden?"

"I--I don't know yet. There seems to be a lot of people here."

"It's home, you see. We all come home when we want to see each other

and have people round."

"Yes, I suppose everyone wants to see their people sometimes."

"Don't you like seeing people?"

"I haven't any of my own," said Christopher, without looking at him.

"That's unkind. You have us."

Christopher changed the subject.

"Do those--those little children live here?"

"Yes. It's their home. They are rather jolly little kids. What's the

matter, Christopher?"

Christopher assured him nothing was the matter.

Aymer continued in his most matter-of-fact voice.

"I'm fond of those babies. To begin with they are Nevil's and they are

the only youngsters I am likely to know well. But I'm a greedy person.

I had Nevil, Renata, the kiddies--and that delightfully odd Patricia,

and it wasn't enough for me. They were all as good as could be to me,

but I wanted to be more than an extra in someone's life, so I must

needs encumber myself with a troublesome little boy who's even more

greedy than myself, apparently."

Christopher sat with his curly head on his hands trying not to give in

to the smile that was struggling to express some undefined sense of

content which had sprung to life.

"You are a bad, silly boy to be jealous," said Aymer, watching him,

half laughing, half affectionately, "you ought to have known for

yourself, if they had been enough for me, you wouldn't be here at

all."

CHAPTER V

Two events wrote themselves indelibly on Christopher's memory in

connection with this first visit to Marden, while the one great matter

that began there and influenced his whole after life merged itself

into a general hazy sense of happiness and companionship. For it is

given to few of us even when we have reached years of discretion to

recognise those moments in our lives which are of real, supreme, and

eternal importance: moments when the great doors of experience open

slowly on silent hinges and we pass in, unconscious even that we have

crossed the threshold. But all that happens to our familiar selves,

that touches our well-known emotions, and rubs or eases the worn

grooves of existence, is heavily underscored in our recollection, and

not infrequently we take for mile-stones on the way what were but

pebbles on the road.

The two events which Christopher carried in his memory were, however,

not unimportant, for both bore on his relationship with the man who

was moulding his life. The one episode turned Vespasian's bald

statements into real emotional facts, and the other was the first

serious collision between the far-off disastrous tutelage of Marley

Sartin and the new laws of existence as propounded by Aymer Aston.

Christopher's education made vast strides during that winter. The

season proved an unusually mild one. He was out the greater part of

each day with Patricia, enduring with remarkable fortitude her

alternate contempt and despair over his ignorance of such everyday

matters as horses, guns, dogs, desert island games, and such like.

When she laughed at him for not being able to ride he shut his teeth

hard not to remind her he'd never possessed a shetland pony from

birth as she had, also he rose at an unconscionable early hour and

rode in the cold winter's dawn round and round the exercising yard

with the young grooms, while Patricia was warm and fast asleep in bed.

But he had his reward when Mr. Aston, who had heard of his doings from

the stud-groom, took him out with him on one of his rounds of

inspection to outlying farms.

"The boy's got a good seat, and pluck, Aymer," reported Mr. Aston.

"It's more creditable to him because he has had to learn. It's not

second nature to him."

It took him less trouble to learn how to handle a gun, and when "off

duty" to Patricia, spent a vast amount of time in the electric plant

house, learning the A B C of a big dynamo.

Aymer knew all this and made no mention of lessons, for Christopher

was backward in more matters than booklearning and the life on a big

estate, the infinite variety of interests was all good food for the

boy's hungry brain and soul.

He grew apace. Mr. Aston declared he was a changeling and not the thin

little urchin he had first encountered by the mile-stone on the Great

Road. They never alluded to his life before that, though they all knew

of it, and made their own private comparisons and observations.

Christopher became quite attached to the babies so long as they did

not intrude on his own particular hours with Cæsar, but he did not get

over a certain shy reserve towards Renata.

"She slips into empty places," he said to Cæsar once, and Cæsar

laughed at him and told Renata, who coloured and wrinkled her little

forehead.

"He is a nice boy," she said, "and I love him for being so good to

Patricia. There hasn't been a storm since he came."

One day, when it was too wet for even Christopher to be out, the two

children amused themselves by turning out a cupboard in a disused

room. It was a perfect stronghold of treasures. Old riding whips,

Badminton Magazines (marked Aymer Aston, Christopher noticed), tennis

balls, cricket pads, a pair of fencing foils and mask and gloves, a

host of sporting trophies from a hare's pad to a wolf's ear labelled

"Kronigratz," and last of all a box full of photographs.

Patricia was called away before they could investigate this last

treasure trove, and Christopher, not to be alone in the glory of

discovery, carried it off to Cæsar's room and lay on the hearth-rug

enjoying it till Cæsar, busy working out estate accounts for his

father, was at liberty to look too. They were interesting

photographs,--to a boy. Mostly of horses ridden, led, alone, jumping,

horses galloping, horses trotting, and over and over again a picture

of one horse, and rider, who never seemed to wear a hat and had a

thick head of hair that looked as if it might be the same colour as

Cæsar's. At last he came to a bigger, more distinct photo of the same

man and horse. The horse was evidently a polo-pony and was galloping

and the man on it in white riding things, with his shirt open at the

neck and was swinging a polo stick in his hand. There was no mistaking

it this time: it was undoubtedly Cæsar. Christopher gave a little

gasp. Cæsar like that, vigorous, active, panting,--Christopher could

feel it so--with life and excitement. He scrambled to his knees with

the picture in his hand.

"Cæsar, dear Cæsar, look what I've found."

Aymer looked round, saw the scattered photographs, and held out his

hand.

"Is it you really? May I have it for myself?"

Cæsar took the card and as he gave it up, Christopher knew he had made

a mistake, and got scarlet.

"Where did you find it?" demanded Aymer sharply.

"In the cupboard in the little red room. We were turning it out."

"Yes, it's I. Why shouldn't it be? I wasn't always a cripple, you

know."

He tossed the picture back on the rug. The scar stood out white and

distinct, and his face was strangely hard and set. A book slipped down

on the left side and he tried to catch it with the left hand and

failed, and it fell with a bang on the floor.

"May I have it?" asked Christopher meekly from the rug.

"What for? You don't know the horse and you don't know the man. Put it

in the fire."

"No, I won't," exclaimed Christopher indignantly. "Cæsar, don't be so

horrid, it's--it's--exactly like you."

Cæsar ignored his own command and asked another question instead.

"Where did you say you found it?"

"In a cupboard in the little red room. It's such a jolly little room.

It isn't used now and there's hardly anything in it, but the cupboards

are full of things--lovely things. Patricia and I just explored."

"It used to be my room and the things are all mine. Why haven't they

burnt them?" he muttered.

Christopher gathered up the unlucky photographs and put them back in

the box. He was dimly conscious he did not want Mr. Aston to come and

see them.

"I'm sorry, Cæsar, I didn't know we shouldn't have done it."

"You haven't done any harm, I--I had no business to be cross, old

fellow. Come and show me the pictures again, I'll tell you about

them."

Christopher sat down on the sofa with the box in his hand. He really

did want to know about them if Cæsar wasn't going to be angry. He took

out a photo at random.

"That was my first race-horse," said Cæsar. "Her name was Loadstar.

She didn't win much, but I thought a lot of her. And that--oh, that's

a mastiff I had: he was magnificent, but such a brute I had to kill

him. He went for one of the stable boys and I hardly got him off in

time. I've got the marks now of his claws: he never bit me. We used to

wrestle together."

"Wrestle with a dog?"

"Yes, I used to be fairly strong, you know, Christopher. It was good

training throwing him--sometimes it was the other way. But he had to

die, poor old Brutus."

"How did you kill him?"

"I shot him," said Cæsar shortly, "don't ask for morbid particulars.

Where is another picture?"

"This?"

This was a photo of a horse standing alone in a field and beneath was

written, "Jessica waiting to be tamed." Aymer offered no

explanation,--if Christopher had looked he would have seen the scar

show up again sharply over a frown.

The next was rather a wicked snap-shot of Aymer cover shooting, with

what looked suspiciously like a dead fox curled up at his feet.

"It was a wretched little cub I had tamed," he explained, "the little

beast used to follow me everywhere. It's really tied up to a tree, but

it always lay out as if dead when it heard a gun. I took it out with

me to try and get it used to the sound."

There was a picture of Aymer and Nevil riding and coming over a big

water jump side by side.

Aymer told him it was at the Central Horse Show and related the

triumphs and honours of the day.

But when the polo photograph turned up again Aymer appeared tired of

the amusement, and sent Christopher off to meet his father in the

brougham at Maidley station, four miles distant. "If someone doesn't

go he'll be reading reports and working out figures till he arrives at

the door," said Aymer. "It's disgraceful not to know how to take a

holiday properly. It's only small boys who ought to work like that,"

he added severely.

"You haven't given me any work to do, Cæsar," protested Christopher,

but Cæsar only laughed.

When the boy had gone, however, Aymer continued to turn over the

photographs. It was an extremely unwise proceeding, for each of them

called him with irresistible voice back to the past from which he had

sworn he would turn his eyes. It was always there with its whispering,

mocking echo, but like a good fighter he had learnt to withstand its

insidious temptations, and hold fast to the quiet, secure present

where all he could know of joy or fulfilment was centred.

But there it was, the great gulf that lay between him and the past, in

which were swallowed up the hopes, ambitions, expectations of his

vigorous youth, and all the possibilities of a man's life. He had

fathomed it to its blackest depth, and seen no hope of escape or

rescue. And yet he had escaped, through the devotion and courage of

his father. And it was the ever-living recollection of that devotion

that helped him to keep his face turned from the other side of the

gulf. Only on rare occasions did his strength of purpose fail him, and

by some momentary carelessness he found himself caught back into a

black hour of bitterness and helpless anger.

There was no one to blame but himself, no power to accuse but his own

headlong passion, and the imperious impatience that would take no gift

from life but that of his own choosing. There had been a woman and a

tangle of events, and his passion-blinded eyes could see no way of

disentangling it, and yet how trivial and easy the unravelling

appeared now. The quick--not resolve--but impulse that caught him on

the crest of his uncontrolled, wild temper, and prompted the shot that

missed its intention by a hairs-breadth: the whole so instantaneous,

so brief a hurricane of madness, succeeded by the long pulseless

stillness of this life of his now.

To do, and not to be able to undo, to hunger and thirst and ache to

take back only a short minute of life, to feel sick and blind before

the irretrievableness of his own deed, that was still his punishment

in these rare hours of darkness.

He had fought for life at first with all that virile strength of his

and won this limited existence which, when he first understood its

cruelly narrow horizon, he had as ardently longed and sought to lose

again, but the life principle that had been so roughly handled was

marvellously tenacious, and refused to be ousted from its tenement.

Slowly and painfully Aymer had groped his way from desolate despair to

something higher than mere placid resignation, to a brave tolerance of

himself and an open heart to what life might still offer him.

There was, however, little toleration in his heart at this hour as he

lay staring at the photograph, and then suddenly looked round the room

he had made so beautiful for himself. It was just as usual, every

detail complete, satisfactory, balanced, redeemed too from its own

beauty by its strange freedom from detail and its emptiness.

It pleased him well as a rule, but this evening that same emptiness

seemed to emphasise his own isolation. He was suddenly conscious of a

sense of incompleteness, of some detail left out that should be

there--a want he could not measure or define. It was a sort of

culminating point in his own grey thoughts. In a gust of his old

imperious temper he caught up the photograph and tore it in half, and

flung it from him: tried to fling into the fire and failed even in

that. The box of photographs fell and scattered on the floor. He

turned his head sharply and hid his face in the cushions.

It was very quiet in the room, the fire burnt steadily, and outside

the dusk had already fallen. There was a very little knock at the

door, but he did not hear it; the door opened with a breath of fresh

cold air and a faint scent of violets as Renata entered.

She saw she was unobserved, saw his attitude, and her whole being

seemed to melt into an expression of longing compassion. Nevil or his

father would have gone away unseen in respect for his known weakness,

but Renata for all her shyness had the courage of her instincts.

"May I come and warm myself, Aymer? You always have the best fire in

the house."

He did not move for a moment.

Renata knelt by the fire with her back to him and took off her long

soft gloves, her bracelets making a little jangling sound. Then she

saw the torn picture and picked it up and shook her head

disapprovingly. The overturned box lay nearer the sofa. She picked

that up too, and began replacing its contents in a matter-of-fact

way.

"You can't possibly see things in this light," she remarked. "It is

getting quite dark. Do you want a light, Aymer?"

"No," said Aymer abruptly, turning so that he could see her.

She sat down in a big chair the other side of the hearth and began

chatting of the very serious At Home she had just attended in

Winchester.

The black mood slipped from him, and with it the sense of need and

incompleteness. It had melted as snow before a fire the moment he had

heard the swish of her dress across the floor, and the breath of

violets reached him. He forgot even to be ashamed of his own passing

weakness as he watched her. She was all in brown with strange

beautiful gold work shining here and there. She had flung back her

furs and there was a big bunch of violets in her dress. He watched her

little white fingers unfasten them as she talked.

"If they would not think they were amusing themselves, I could endure

it," she said, "but they solemnly pretend it's amusement and frivolous

at that. One old lady told me gravely, she hardly thought it seemly

that the Dean should so lend himself to the pleasures of the world.

There, the violets are not spoilt at all. The Dean gave them to me:

it's the one thing he can do--grow violets. You shall have them all to

yourself." She fetched a silver cup and began arranging them. Aymer

ceased to be tired, ceased to be anything but supremely content as his

eyes followed her. She went on relating her experience until she had

made him laugh, and then she came and sat on a little stool near him.

"May I have the babies down?"

Aymer pretended to grumble.

"You'll go to them if I say no," he complained, "so I have no

option."

The bell was rung and the babies ordered to descend.

"Before they come, Cæsar, I'm going to ask you a favour," she said

coaxingly, "now you are in a good temper again."

"Was I in a bad one?"

"Dreadful. It mustn't reoccur. It is such a bad example for the

children."

"The favour, please; bother the children."

"Cæsar, I'm ashamed of you. Bless them, you meant to say. Well, the

favour. Aymer, I am going to start a crêche in Winchester near the big

clothing factory. I've talked to the Bishop and he quite approves. I

know just the house, but I shall have to buy it, and I haven't enough

money for that. I can run it easily if I can only get the premises.

What will you subscribe?"

"I haven't any money at all," he replied gravely. "Vespasian takes it

all and I don't think he'd approve of crêches, not being a family

man."

"Vespasian, indeed." She tilted her chin in the air as Aymer meant her

to do, a trifle too much, and the effect was spoilt, but he was well

practised in obtaining the exact tilt he admired.

"You can ask him, of course."

"Very likely I will: in the meantime what will you give me?"

"Half a crown. No; five whole shillings, if I have it," he said

teasingly.

She considered the matter gravely. "I am not quite sure. I should not

like to inconvenience you. Shall we say four and six?"

"No, I will be generous. I'll do this. If you will take the risk of

being accused of burglary by Vespasian, I happen to know there is some

money in the right hand drawer of the table over there. I don't know

how much. Fivepence, perhaps, but you shall have whatever it is."

Renata walked with great dignity across the room and opened the

drawer. A little smile hovered about her lips. She picked up a handful

of gold and silver and sat down by him to count it.

"It looks an awful lot," he remarked anxiously. "Won't you let me off?

Vespasian is always complaining of my extravagance."

"Sh----Sh----" she held up one finger, "ten, eleven, twelve, and two

and six, that's thirteen,--no, fourteen and sixpence."

"Leave me the sixpence," he urged plaintively, but she continued

counting.

"Seven pounds, four shillings and sixpence. Count it yourself,

Aymer."

Aymer counted and gravely pronounced her arithmetic to be correct.

"Thank you, you are a dear." She piled the coins up neatly in little

piles on the table by her side. He told her she had better put it in

her pocket.

"I haven't one," she sighed.

"You will be sure to forget it, and then Vespasian will get it

again."

"Is it likely I would forget seven pounds, four shillings and

sixpence?"

But she did. The children arrived and rioted over Aymer. Master Max

bumped his head and had to be consoled with his uncle's watch, while

Charlotte wandered off on a voyage of exploration alone, and finally

sat on the floor by the window with her fat legs straight out in front

of her, making a doll of one arm by wrapping it up in her dress, and

singing to herself.

"She has quite an idea of time already: listen to her, Aymer."

But Aymer only scoffed at his niece's accomplishments, and then Nevil

came in and went down on his knees to kiss his wife, who was much too

occupied with her son and heir to move for him. For a moment all three

heads were on a level, and it was only when the long Nevil stood up

and Renata was reaching up on tip-toe to put some of the violets in

his coat that Aymer's sense of completeness vanished. Finally the

children were carried off and he was alone again.

"It's a lucky thing for me," he said to himself steadily, "that Nevil

married Renata: he might just as easily have married someone I

couldn't endure."

When Christopher and Mr. Aston returned they found Aymer whistling and

drawing ridiculous caricatures of the family on the back of the

_Times_, and he was so outrageously flippant and witty that his father

glanced at him suspiciously from time to time.

"Why haven't you let Vespasian light up?" he inquired.

"I'm afraid to call Vespasian. Renata has been raiding and I shall get

a lecture. She's left her booty, as I told her she would. Christopher,

when you have quite finished pretending it's your duty to draw the

curtains, you might run up with this money to her. Put it in that

box."

Christopher came forward rather slowly. He swept the money into the

box indicated.

"What a lot," he commented.

"Seven pounds, four shillings, and sixpence, and I am now penniless. I

shan't even get credit with Heaven. She'll appropriate that."

Christopher ran off with it and meeting Nevil on the stairs gave it

into his hand. Renata had gone to dress, and Nevil sauntered in to his

wife with her "spoils" at once.

"Seven pounds, four and sixpence," she said gleefully. "For the crêche

fund. It was nice of Aymer. I had not meant to worry him to-day, but

he wanted distraction."

"I thought Vespasian kept his money. Six pounds four and sixpence,

Renata," Nevil remarked, counting the money carelessly. She came over

to him, brush in hand.

"You can't even do addition. Nothing but dates! I counted it most

carefully, so did Aymer."

"Then he's defrauded you of a pound since."

"Nonsense."

They counted it together, but no amount of reckoning would make seven

sovereigns out of six. The silver was correct.

"It must have fallen down," said Renata at last and put it away

carefully in her desk.

They were late for dinner, and Mr. Aston pretended to upbraid them and

told Renata to take her soup and leave her correspondence alone, for

there was a big envelope lying by her plate. It was her

father-in-law's contribution to the crêche scheme, Aymer having

forestalled her request, and joined forces with his father in a really

adequate sum.

Renata got pink with pleasure as she looked at the cheque. She was,

however, far too shy to express her real gratitude in words before

them all. She smiled at the donor and remarked she would give him a

big photograph in a beautiful frame of the first baby admitted to the

crêche, to hang in his room as a slight token of her appreciation of

his gift.

"It shall take the place of Charlotte," he assured her gravely.

Aymer looked aggrieved.

"May I ask the precise sum, Renata?" he inquired pointedly, "that

earns so gracious a reward."

"It's three figures," she answered, regarding the precious slip of

paper affectionately before replacing it in its imposing envelope.

"Ninety-two pounds, fifteen and sixpence more," he groaned; "it's a

lot for a photograph of a mere baby, but I can't be left out in the

cold."

"Perhaps I can let you have one without a frame for less, only

father's must be the best."

"Nevil," remarked Aymer severely, "I would call your attention to the

fact that your wife is beginning to weigh men's merits by their

means."

Nevil only laughed.

"I hear she has raided you of all you possess. Six pounds odd."

"Seven pounds four and sixpence," corrected Aymer. "I should like the

correct sum printed in good plain figures on your list, Renata. Being

my all, it is a superior present to more pretentious donations."

"Six pounds four and sixpence, however," persisted Nevil.

Aymer looked up quickly.

"Did you count it?"

Nevil nodded.

"It must have dropped," said Aymer slowly. "I'll send it you with the

interest, Renata."

But he knew it had not been dropped.

Mr. Aston began telling them of a deputation from the Friends of the

Canine Race he had received that day, and no more was said on the

other matter.

CHAPTER VI

Although Christopher's habit of acquisitiveness had given Aymer some

uneasy moments, yet there had been so far no very serious conflict of

the question of meum and tuum. Aymer had sought rather to overwrite

the rude scrawl of Marley Sartin than to erase it. The most serious

aspect that had shown itself hitherto was Christopher's readiness to

accept tips from over-generous callers and even to put himself to

ingenious trouble to invite them. Constantia Wyatt was a great

offender in this and brought down a severe scolding on her own head

from her brother when he at last learnt of Christopher's propensity.

"He does it so neatly and with such a charming, innocent face,"

pleaded Constantia, half laughing; "it's no harm, Aymer. All boys like

tips: I know my boy does."

But she rather libelled Master Basil Wyatt, who, though not averse to

a donation, would have scorned to solicit it. Aymer had told

Christopher that gentlemen did not do these things and had taken care

to keep the boy out of the way of departing visitors. But this had

been before his first lecture on the obligations of money, and

Christopher had taken that lesson to heart and quite outgrown his

childish and perfectly innocent habit of inviting tips.

Aymer was furiously angry with himself for the quick suspicion which

connected the boy with the missing sovereign. He tried honestly to put

it away from himself as unwarrantable and dangerous. But there it was,

a wretched little poisonous thought, tugging at his heart,

unreasonably coupled with a recollection of a conversation between

Patricia and Christopher that he had overheard one afternoon at

tea-time, anent the construction of an amateur brickwork bridge

across an inconvenient stream. Patricia had said they could buy bricks

at the brick-yard, and Christopher had said he had no money left; it

would cost lots and lots and they must wait till pay-day.

He mentioned the loss of the sovereign to Christopher and asked if he

had dropped the money on the stairs, and Christopher had composedly

answered in the negative, and had volunteered the remark that if it

had been dropped in the room it could not have rolled far on the thick

carpet. Aymer had been for the moment convinced of the injustice of

his own suspicion. He made no attempt to discover any other solution

to the problem; rather he evaded what might prove a difficult task,

and contented himself with solemnly sending Renata a cheque for the

remainder "with interest," and neither Renata nor Nevil spoke of the

matter again, at least to him. Nevil may have had his own opinions

about it, and if he had they were quite certainly communicated to his

wife. The worrying uncertainty, however, proved too much for Aymer,

and the following evening when he was alone with his father he told

him the story, half hoping to be scolded for harbouring uncharitable

suspicions. Now, Mr. Aston had been scrupulous to a fault in avoiding

the offer of any suggestions or advice on Christopher's upbringing. He

desired above all things to leave Aymer free in his chosen task, but

he realised at once this was a point where Aymer was quite as likely

to hurt himself as Christopher, and, therefore, that he, Aymer's

father, must make an exception to his rule and he did not like it. He

began drawing vague lines on his shirtcuff with a pencil, an evil

habit of his when uneasy in mind. Aymer watched him with disapproval.

"After all our efforts," he sighed gravely, "you still persist in your

old bad ways, sir. How often have I entreated you to remember a poor

valet's feelings, and how often has Nevil begged you to recollect the

sorrows of the washerwoman?"

Mr. Aston laughed and put away his pencil.

"Nevil once indited an ode to me entitled 'The Lament of the

Laundress.' I fear I'm incorrigible."

"What displeases you, sir?" demanded his son after a little pause;

"it's no use pretending there's nothing wrong; you only do that when

you want to say something you think won't be acceptable."

"Well, then, Aymer, I say this: Christopher is your concern. I don't

doubt your power to manage him, but I can speak of yourself, and I

tell you it's a very bad thing to live with an unsatisfied suspicion;

particularly bad for you. If you don't clear this up you will never

feel quite at ease with the boy. It is so already, is it not?"

Aymer admitted reluctantly that it was indeed the case.

"Don't let anything stand between you, Aymer. I am thinking of you, of

course," he added hastily.

"Are you sure you are not thinking of yourself?" returned his son,

half laughing, half ruefully; and his father flushed a little.

"Perhaps I was," he said humbly. "It would worry me if you were not

happy with him."

Aymer laughed outright at that and assured him he knew how to make

allowances for his well-known selfishness. But he took his advice and

grappled with the difficulty next afternoon. Christopher was mending a

rod, seated on the floor as usual.

"We've not found that sovereign," said Cæsar abruptly.

Christopher looked up quickly, and then went on with his work after a

brief "Oh!"

"Did you take it, Christopher?"

He asked the question quite slowly and looked at the boy, who got

scarlet but went on tying his rod and appeared to be considering the

question carefully, weighing it in his mind as it were, and when he

answered, it was as deliberately as Aymer had questioned him.

"No, sir."

Aymer felt a sudden sense of relief, for lying had not been one of

Christopher's faults. Then almost immediately he found himself

wondering first, why the boy was not angry, and secondly, why it had

taken so much thought to answer at all. However, he let the matter

drop and told himself he was satisfied. Christopher finished mending

his rod and then sat still considering deeply. Presently he took out a

penny from his pocket and began rolling it on the thick carpet, and,

as he had remarked to Cæsar, it did not roll far, try as he would. At

last he jumped up with a satisfied mien and went out. Cæsar heard him

whistling as he went down the passage and felt easier in his mind.

Renata and the babies paid their usual visit after tea, and Miss

Charlotte, after a brief conversation with her uncle, slid off the

sofa and trotted away to the end window, where she appeared to be

diligently playing hide-and-seek with herself. Suddenly her elders

were startled with a prolonged cry of anguish and Renata flew to the

rescue.

"I tan't find it; naughty mousie taken my booful golden penny," sobbed

Charlotte in her mother's arms. Renata could make nothing of her grief

and persisted in thinking that she was hurt, and cuddling her. Aymer,

listening attentively, said suddenly to Renata in his imperious way:

"Give Charlotte to me, Renata, and take baby away."

Renata obeyed meekly. People had a weak way of obeying Aymer on

occasions, even against their will.

"Now, Miss Charlotte," said Aymer, when the young lady was safely

deposited by him, "tell me about it. What golden penny was it?"

But Charlotte got suddenly red and stopped crying.

"Were you playing with it yesterday in the window?" asked her uncle.

Charlotte nodded.

"Was it your penny or mine?"

"Wasn't nobody's, only mummy's. You _said they_ were for her.

Charlotte wasn't naughty."

"Did you find it on the floor?"

"No."

"Where then?"

"Dey was all in nice itty rows on the table. I only taken one pitty

goldy penny. Mummy gives me goldy pennies always."

"Sovereigns for playthings, Renata. That's very immoral."

"No, only new halfpennies. Charlotte didn't know any better, Aymer."

"And you played with it in the window there and left it there."

"Is I naughty?"

"Not very naughty--if you tell me. Did you leave it there?"

Charlotte's lip trembled. "I putted it to bed in the curtain by a

mousehole, and it's all gone, naughty mousie."

"Go and see, Renata, if there's a hole there."

"Please," said Charlotte gravely.

"Please what?"

"Please go and see."

Aymer laughed. "I beg your pardon, Renata. Please will you mind

looking for the mousehole?"

"I tan't see the mousehole," put in Charlotte, "I only 'tend it."

But Renata looked all the same. There was no mousehole and no golden

penny.

"It is all right," explained Aymer in answer to his sister-in-law's

troubled look. "I know all about it. Don't worry your little head. We

will give Charlotte another golden penny, or a silver one. Only," he

added, regarding his small niece severely, "Charlotte must not touch

anyone's pennies again, not mummy's or Uncle Aymer's, or anyone's. It

is not dreadfully naughty this time, but it would be next

time--_dreadfully_ naughty."

Charlotte opened her eyes very wide.

"Would you be dreffly angry?"

"Yes, and very unhappy. I shouldn't let you come to see me any more."

At that Miss Charlotte flung her arms round his neck, protesting she

wasn't naughty and Uncle Aymer must love her. Peace was at last

restored and Aymer drew pictures of innumerable mice carrying off

golden pennies and only sent the children away when Christopher came

in.

He gave no hint to Christopher that he had solved the problem of the

lost money and discovered the boy's own compromise between truth and

dishonesty. He was anxious to see whether Christopher's moral standard

was really satisfied with the same compromise or not. So he treated

him as far as he could in his natural manner during the next few days,

but found it a little difficult. Fond of Christopher as he was, this

was just one of those points where the enormous difference between the

child of one's own self,--of self plus the unknown--and the adopted

child of others, became visible. The fault was so inexplicable to

Aymer, so utterly foreign to his whole understanding, that he had

nothing but contempt for it, whereas, had Christopher been his own

son, love would have overridden contempt with fear.

Christopher, with his uncanny, quick intuition of Aymer's innermost

mind, was not deceived by his ordinary casual manner, and became, to

Aymer's secret satisfaction, a little suppressed and thoughtful.

It was at this point the boy had his first introduction to poor little

Patricia's temper.

The two children had been riding and returned home by way of the brook

over which their ambitious dreams had already built a bridge.

Patricia, who was in rather a petulant mood, reproached Christopher

rather sharply for having got rid of his last month's pocket money so

prematurely. "Just like a boy," she said, wrinkling her nose

contemptuously. She had five whole shillings left of her money and

when Christopher could double that they were to go to the brick-yard

and bargain.

"Haven't you any at all?" she questioned impatiently.

Christopher, who was examining the proposed site, did not answer at

once, and she repeated her question.

"I have some," he confessed unwillingly.

"Well, can't we start with that. You said you hadn't any on Monday.

How much is it?"

But Christopher declined to answer.

Patricia persisted in her point. If Christopher had _any money_ they

could begin the bridge next day. Christopher said he'd see about it.

Patricia, much exasperated, said she should go home, and her companion

proposed to make the ponies jump the brook. She was too angry to

answer him, but she set her pony at it, and the pony, instead of

rising to the jump on command, very cautiously stepped into the stream

and splashed across. It is to be feared Christopher laughed. Patricia

cantered on, having seen, with much satisfaction, the other pony

behave in precisely the same way. But the end was not the same.

Christopher wheeled the pony round and tried again, tried eight times

and failed and succeeded at the ninth. It was characteristic of him

that he did not lose his temper, but had kept on with a sort of dull,

monotonous persistence that must have been very boring to the equine

mind.

Then he galloped after Patricia, and catching her up at the lodge

gates retailed his triumph gleefully. Perhaps he was a shade too

triumphant, for he was still in disgrace, and she had not spoken. At

all events by the time they had dismounted and were returning to the

house through the garden, she was in a fever of irritation, and

Christopher, blissfully ignorant of the fact, was just a tiny bit

inclined for private reasons of his own, to emphasise his own good

spirits. He never noticed the clenching and unclenching of her small

hands or saw the whiteness of her tense averted face, and he began

teasing her about her pony and her weight. "Nevil must buy you a brand

new one, up to your weight," he suggested, "you've broken Folly's

spirit evidently."

He was standing on the steps, just one step below her, and he looked

back laughing. On a sudden, with no word or sound of warning, she

turned and cut at him with her riding whip, her little form quivering

with the grip of the possessing demon. The lash caught him across the

face and he fell back against the wall gasping, with his hand up.

Luckily it was but a light whip and a girl's hand, but the sting of it

blanched him for an instant. The flaming colour died from Patricia's

face as suddenly as it had come, and with it the momentary fury. She

stood gazing at her companion a moment, and when he looked up half

terrified, half angry, she turned quickly and ran down a grass path,

dropping her whip as she went.

Christopher stood still, rubbing his smarting cheek gingerly,

wondering vaguely what he would say if it showed. He had heard from

others as well as from Patricia herself, of the child's fearful

paroxysms of rage and had rather scoffed at it--to her. But at this

moment he was far nearer crying, very near it, indeed, to be strictly

truthful. He was really concerned for Patricia, and also he was a

little--unnecessarily--ashamed of his own collapse under the sudden

attack. Probably she thought it worse than it was. He walked slowly

down the grass path between the yew hedges and picked up the whip as

he went. Patricia was not on the tennis court nor in the summer-house,

nor in the rose-garden, so he turned his steps to the wilderness, as

the rough wooded slopes on the northern side of the garden were

called. He knew her favourite spots here and presently came on her

huddled up on an old moss-grown stone seat, her head in her arms. She

was quite still, she was not even crying, and Christopher felt a

little frightened. What if she were still angry like that? However,

the chances were against it, so he went up and sat down by her.

"Patricia, don't be silly," he commanded. "What did you run off like

that for? You didn't hurt--not much," he added truthfully--he had

taken to being very exact about the truth of late.

"Go away," said Patricia. "I don't want you. I don't want anyone. You

don't understand."

"Well, someone's got to understand," persisted the boy in a

high-handed way. "You aren't going to be let get in tempers with me

and then sulk about it afterwards. Don't be silly. Sit up." Patricia's

golden hair lay about her like a veil. He pushed it aside and tried to

pull her hands away from her face, for he was getting really a little

frightened at her manner. Some instinct taught him that her misery was

as exaggerated and bad for her as her temper, and he was dimly afraid

of leaving her alone, as was the custom of her little world after one

of her outbreaks.

Patricia suddenly sat up. There were black rims round her great sad

eyes already and her face was red and white in patches from the

pressure of her hands.

"You said I hadn't hurt you," she gasped, gazing at the dull red mark

of which Christopher was already almost unaware.

"Does it show? What a beastly nuisance. I said it didn't hurt much,

Patricia. Not at all now. I'm sorry I was such a baby." He put his arm

round her and she leant her head against him too exhausted to care

whether he thought her a baby or not.

"It must be jolly exciting having a temper like that," he said,

thoughtfully. "It wouldn't be half so bad if you meant it."

She sat bolt upright and stared at him.

"Why?" she demanded breathlessly.

"Because if you meant it you could take care _not_ to mean it, silly.

You'd look out. But you don't mean it. You didn't mean to hurt me then

till you did it. It's much worse for you."

She drew a long breath.

"Oh, Christopher dear, how clever you are. No-one ever understood that

before. They all say, 'well, anyhow, you don't mean it,' as if that

made it better."

"Stupid, of course it's harder to help what you don't mean than what

you do."

"But I can't help it."

Christopher gave her a little shake. "Don't be silly. You will have to

help it, only it's harder. You can't go on like that when you are

big--ladies don't--none I've seen. It's only----" he stopped.

"Only what?"

"Women in the street. At least--some, I've seen them. They fight and

scream and get black eyes and get drunk."

"Christopher, you are hateful!" She flared up with hot cheeks and put

her hand over his mouth. "I'm not like that, you horrid boy. Say I'm

not."

"I didn't say you were," said Christopher with faint exasperation. "I

said it reminded me--your temper. Come along in."

She followed very unwillingly, more conscious than he was of his

disfigured face.

And Renata met them in the hall and saw it and got pink, but said

nothing till Patricia had gone upstairs. Christopher was slipping away

too--he never found much to say to Mrs. Aston--and of late less than

ever. However, she stopped him.

"Have you been quarrelling, Christopher?" she asked deprecatingly with

a little tremor in her voice.

Christopher assured her not.

"You have hurt your face."

"The branch of a tree," he began shamefacedly, and stopped lamely.

"I'm so sorry."

No more was said. Renata was conscious of her own failure to get on

with Christopher, but she put it down entirely to her own shyness,

which interfered now in preventing her overriding his very transparent

fib in Patricia's defence. She went away rather troubled and unhappy.

But Christopher, a great deal more troubled and unhappy, looked out of

the hall window with a gloomy frown. His own words to Patricia that

she had so sharply resented, about the women he had seen fighting in

the street, had called up other pictures of the older life, pictures

in which Marley Sartin figured only too distinctly. He felt

uncomfortably near these shifting scenes. Like Patricia, he wanted to

deny the connection between himself and the small boy following in the

wake of the big man through crowded streets and long vistas of shops.

He did not wish to recognise the bond between little Jim Hibbault and

Christopher Aston. But the pictures were very insistent and the

likeness uncomfortably clear. At last, with no more show of emotion or

will than if he were going on an ordinary errand, he walked slowly

down the corridor to Cæsar's room. He had entirely forgotten about

Patricia now and was taken aback by Cæsar's abrupt inquiry about the

mark or his face.

"It was an accident," he said hurriedly, and then plunged straight

into his own affairs.

"Cæsar, I have something to give you."

He held out his hand with a sovereign in it.

Cæsar took it and, after glancing at it casually, put it on the table,

looking hard at Christopher, who got red and then white.

"It couldn't have been the sovereign you lost," he said earnestly. "I

didn't take any of that money, really, Cæsar. I found this on the

floor by the window. It couldn't have rolled all that long way from

here. It must be another."

He was pleading with himself as much as with Cæsar, desiring greatly

to keep faith with his own integrity, though something in Cæsar's face

was driving him from his last stronghold.

"You didn't ask me if I'd found a sovereign," he pleaded desperately,

"you asked me if I had taken one of Mrs. Aston's sovereigns, and I

hadn't, because how could it have got to the window from here?"

Cæsar's face flushed a dusky red. He spoke in a hard, constrained

voice.

"Charlotte took one of the sovereigns as a plaything when we were not

looking and hid it under the curtain in the window. To her it was only

a toy, but to you----"

He made a last effort to keep control of his temper and failed. The

storm broke.

"But to you----" he repeated with a curiously stinging quality in his

voice as if the words were whipped to white heat by inward wrath--"to

you a sovereign is no toy, but a useful commodity, and your code of

honour--do you call it that?--is doubtless a very convenient one. It

is far too subtle a code for my poor intellect, but since you appear

able to justify it to yourself it is no concern of mine."

Christopher stood still and white under this ruthless attack: all his

energies concentrated in keeping that stillness, but at the back of

his mind was born a dull pain and sharp wonder, a consciousness of the

Law of Consequence by which he must abide, and henceforth accept as a

principle of life. There was too great confusion in his mind for him

to weigh his instinctive action and subsequent behaviour against what,

to Aymer, was the one and only possible code of honour. For the

present it was enough that in Aymer's eyes that action was mean,

despicable and contemptible. The Law of Consequence he dimly realised

worked from the centre of Aymer's being and not from the ill-trained

centre of his, Christopher's, individuality.

"In future," went on Aymer, still too furiously angry to weigh his

words or remember they were addressed to a child, "if I have occasion

to make any inquiries of you we will have a distinct understanding as

to whether we are speaking with the same code or not. You can go."

Christopher turned blindly away, and was stopped at the door. "As for

the sovereign, which must be very precious to you, considering the

price you were ready to pay for it, I will have it pierced and put on

a chain, so you can wear it round your neck. It would be a pity to

lose anything so valuable."

Christopher turned with indignant protest in every line. However Aymer

might talk of their separate codes of honour, he was, nevertheless,

dealing out a punishment adequate to the infringement of his own code,

and to Christopher it appeared unjust and cruel. For the moment it was

in him to remonstrate fiercely, but the words died away, for such a

protest must of necessity be based on an acceptance of this divided

code, and to that he would not stoop. It was some poor consolation to

pay the penalty of a higher law than he was supposed to understand. He

turned again to the door and got away before a storm of tears swamped

his brave control.

When Charles Aston returned that night he found Aymer in a very

irritable mood. Nevil, in his gentle, patient way, had been doing his

best to soothe him, but in vain. When Aymer was not irritated, he was

bitter and sarcastic, even his greeting to his father was short and

cold. It was clear some event in the day had upset his mental

equilibrium, and Christopher's absence (he did not even appear to say

"good-night") gave Mr. Aston a clue to the situation.

Nevil was wading through a book on farm management, which bored him

considerably. His part was to read long extracts which Aymer was

comparing with some letters in the "Field." They continued their

employment and Mr. Aston sat down to write a letter. From time to time

he paused and heard Aymer's sharp, unreasonable remarks to his

brother. A memory of the old bad days came so forcibly to Mr. Aston

that he laid aside his pen at last and sat listening with an aching

heart. He knew those quick flashes of temper were a sign of irritation

brought to a white heat. Presently, after one remark more

unjustifiable than ever, Nevil looked across at his father with a

little rueful grimace, and seeing how grave was Mr. Aston's expression

he made another valiant effort to keep peace and ignore the abuse, and

went on reading. The subject under discussion was the draining of a

piece of waste land, and when the long article came to an end, Nevil

in his dreamy way summed up the matter by saying it was a very

picturesque corner of the estate and a pity to spoil it.

Aymer flung the papers down violently.

"That's all you care for, or are likely to care for," he said

brutally. "I know I might as well let the estate go to the dogs as try

and improve it. Once my father and I are dead, you'll turn it into a

damned garden for your own use."

For one second Nevil's face was a study in suppression. He got up and

walked across the room, his hands shaking.

Mr. Aston spoke sharply and suddenly.

"Aymer, pull yourself together. You are taking advantage of your

position. What circumstances do you imagine give you the right to

trample on other people's feelings like this, whenever something or

other has put you out? It's outrageous! Keep your temper better in

hand, man."

It was so obviously deserved, so terribly direct, and at the same time

so calculated to hurt, that Nevil turned on his father with

reproachful eyes, and then perceiving his face, said no more.

Aymer became suddenly rigid, and lay still with waves of colour rising

to and dying from his face, and his hands clenched.

Mr. Aston waited a moment and then said apologetically and hurriedly,

"I'm awfully sorry, Aymer."

"Oh, it had to be done," responded Aymer, turning his face to him with

a rueful smile. "I'm a brute. Nevil, old fellow, you ought to give him

a V. C. or something; he is positively heroic."

"Don't be an idiot," retorted his father, blushing for all his

fifty-eight years, because of a grain of truth in his son's words. For

indeed it sometimes requires more courage to be brutal to those we

love than to be kind to those we hate.

"Go away, Nevil," continued Mr. Aston good humouredly, "I'll look

after Aymer."

Nevil departed, with secret relief, the atmosphere was a little too

electrical for his liking.

When he had gone, Mr. Aston went over to his elder son and sat on the

edge of the sofa.

"What's really the matter, old chap?" he asked gently.

Aymer related the whole history of the sovereign, Christopher's

confession and the subsequent events.

"I dare say he was quite honest about his point of view," he concluded

petulantly, "but because I could not see it I lost my temper with

him."

His father sat thoughtfully considering the carpet.

"It will be a little hard on Christopher," he said at length, very

slowly and without looking up, "if every time he has the misfortune to

remind you of his father you lose your temper with him."

Aymer turned sharply.

"What do you mean, sir?"

"I think," went on the elder man steadily, "I think, Aymer, it was not

only Christopher's hazy ideas of honour and honesty that angered you,

but he forced on your notice the fact that he was his father's son,

that he had in him the germs of that quality which has made his father

what he is--a successful man. Isn't it so?"

Aymer did not answer. It was true, he knew, however great his wish to

disown it. Something of the self-dissatisfaction that had numbed poor

little Christopher fell to his share. He felt his father was a little

hard on him--he could not really understand his relationship to the

boy.

"It is not quite fair on Christopher, is it?" said Mr. Aston very

gently, "at least that is how it strikes me. I do not want to

interfere between you, but I do want you to do yourself full justice

in dealing with him."

Aymer looked suddenly up at his father and laughed. "It is evidently

not only Christopher who is in disgrace to-day," he said ruefully. "I

wish I could in turn upbraid you with unfairness, but Christopher has

the pull over me there."

He held out his hand. It was a great concession in Aymer to show even

this much demonstration of feeling unasked, and it was appreciated.

"You might say good-night to Christopher when you go upstairs," Aymer

said casually a little later, and his father nodded assent, by no

means deceived by the indifferent tone. Both Aymer and Christopher

slept the better for his ministrations that night.

CHAPTER VII

At the end of February the elder Astons returned to town and Marden

Court was no longer mere vague locality to Christopher, but the "home"

of those he loved, the centre piece of their lives, and he had a share

in it himself.

Still he was very happy to find himself back at Aston House. Its many

deserted rooms, the long, silent corridors and its strange spacious

emptiness lent themselves to his robust imagination more easily than

the living friendly warmth of the old house, brimful of actualities.

He re-explored every corner of house and garden in the first days of

return, interviewed the staff collectively and individually, from

Warren the butler, to the new scullery boy. He rearranged his books

and hunted up half-forgotten treasures, slid down the shiny banisters

fifty times a day and dispelled the silent lurking shadows with a

merry whistle and a laugh that woke an echo in quiet rooms. But he

regretted Patricia. It would have been very pleasant to take his turn

at showing her round--Patricia had only been in London once,--and

there would have been plenty to show her. Lessons, however,

recommenced almost at once and Christopher was left with little time

for regrets. Life fell back into its old grooves with the solitary

difference that those grooves seemed deeper worn and more familiar

than he had imagined. The months no longer only presented possible

problems; he could consult his memory as to what had previously been

at such a time or in like conditions.

He was also given much greater liberty now and encouraged to go out by

himself, and to do errands for Mr. Aston or Aymer. It was a proud day

for him when Aymer first sent him to The House with a letter for Mr.

Aston, who was acting secretary on a Committee at the time.

Christopher had had to wait and had sat outside a Committee room door

and watched men go to and fro, men whose faces were dimly familiar to

a student of illustrated papers, and men who were strange, but all men

doing something in return for the good things the world had given

them. Such at least was Christopher's innocent belief. Aymer did not

disillusion him.

He used to recount his small adventures to Cæsar in the evenings and

was encouraged to form his own conclusions from what he had noticed

and to confirm existing ideas from actual life. Such conclusions and

ideas were naturally often childish and illogical, but Cæsar never

appeared to find them laughable and would give careful and

illuminating consideration to the most chaotic theories.

The everlasting problem of riches and poverty, happiness and misery

often came uppermost, and on this point Christopher was assuredly, but

quite unconsciously, as illuminating to Aymer as Aymer was to him.

There were certain points of view, certain lines of thought with

regard to the attitude of these "under-world" people, which

Christopher knew without knowing how, and which, flashing out

unexpectedly, would dissolve philanthropic theories wholesale. Aymer

would retell them to his father afterwards, who in turn would bring

them out in his quiet, unexpected way in one of those wonderfully

eloquent speeches of his that made the whole list of "Societies" court

him as a dinner guest and speaker, and political coteries sigh with

pained surprise at his refusal to stand for Parliament.

Christopher, indeed, possessed to a full degree the power of absorbing

the mental atmosphere in which he lived and of becoming a sort of

visible incarnation of it. Places and people who had thus once found

expression in him could always bring to the surface again that

particular phase of existence they had originally stamped on his mind.

The Christopher who wandered amongst the wharfs and warehouses in that

vague region across the river, remembered and was concerned over quite

different matters to the happy boy who rode every morning in the Row

with Mr. Aston.

There were many people to and fro to Aston House: Men who were a power

in the world; men who would be so, and men who had been, as well as

many of no note at all. They came to consult Charles Aston on every

conceivable thing under the sun, from questions of high politics to

the management of a refractory son. They did not always take his

advice, nor did he always offer it, but they invariably came away with

a more definite sense of their own meaning and aims, and somehow such

aims were generally a little more just, a shade more honest, or a

little higher than they had imagined when they started out. Charles

Aston was still alluded to by men of high repute as "the man who might

have been," yet many there were who, had they considered it carefully,

might have said to themselves that "might have been" was less well

than "has been." Very occasionally he entertained and Constantia came

to play hostess for him. On these occasions Aymer rarely appeared at

dinner, but a few privileged guests visited him afterwards and kept

alive the tradition that Charles Aston's son, that poor fellow Aymer,

was an even more brilliant conversationalist and keener wit than his

father. But as a rule very few from the outside penetrated as far as

the Garden Wing of Aston House, and Aymer and Christopher continued to

lead a peaceful and uninterrupted existence there.

Christopher continued to occupy his leisure with a prodigious number

of pets and the construction of mechanical contrivances for their

convenience, in which he showed no little ingenuity. There were

occasionally tragedies in connection with the pets which were turned

to good account by the master of their fate even at the expense of his

own feelings--and fingers--as on the occasion when he cremated a

puppy-dog who had come to an untimely end. Cæsar objected to this

experiment, and when the next catastrophe occurred, which was to a

guinea-pig, a more commonplace funeral had to be organised.

But this tragedy became curiously enough linked with a new memory in

Christopher's mind, of more lasting importance than the demise of "Sir

Joshua Reynolds" of the brown spots.

It happened this-wise. Sir Joshua having stolen a joyous but unsafe

hour of liberty fell a victim to the cunning of the feline race.

Christopher rescued the corpse and heaped tearful threats of vengeance

on the murderess, and then tore into Cæsar's room to find sympathy and

comfort. He tumbled in at the window with Sir Joshua in his arms, and

flung himself on Cæsar before he had observed the presence of a

visitor--a stranger, too. He was a big, florid man, with a

good-natured face and great square chin, and he was standing with his

back to the fire, looking very much at home. He gave a slight start as

Christopher tumbled in, and a queer little cynical smile dawned on his

face as he watched the two.

"Hallo, Aymer, I didn't know you had----"

"Go and get ready for tea, Christopher," interrupted Aymer

peremptorily, "and take out that animal. Don't you see I have a

visitor?"

Christopher, who had just perceived the stranger, hardly disguised his

lack of appreciation of so inopportune a caller, and went out to see

what consolation could be got out of Vespasian. When he returned,

tidy and clean, even to Vespasian's satisfaction, he found the two men

talking hard and slipped quietly into his seat behind the little

tea-table hoping to be unobserved; but Cæsar called him out of it.

"Peter," he said, "let me present my adopted son to you. Christopher,

shake hands with Mr. Masters."

The big man and the small boy looked at each other gravely, and then

Christopher extended his hand. Aymer looked out of the window and

apparently took no notice of them.

"How do you do, sir?"

"What's your name besides Christopher?" demanded the visitor. He had

queer, light blue, piercing eyes that were curiously unexpressive and

looked through one to the back of one's head, but, unlike Mr. Aston's

kind, steady gaze, that invited one to open one's soul to it, the

immediate impulse here was to pull down the blinds of one's

individuality in hasty self-defence, and realise, even in doing it,

that it was too late.

"Aston," said Christopher, rather hastily, escaping to the tea-table.

Peter Masters looked from him to Aymer with the same queer smile.

"Good-looking boy, Aymer," he said carelessly. "You call him Aston?"

"We've given him our own name," said Aymer steadily, "because it saves

complications and explanations."

"A very wise precaution. What are you going to do with him

eventually?"

"I hardly know yet. What were you saying about the strike?"

They fell to discussing a recent labour trouble in the Midlands, and

Christopher gathered a hazy notion that their visitor employed vast

numbers of men who were not particularly fond of him, and for whom he

had not only no affection, but no sort of feeling whatever, except as

instruments of his will.

Christopher was very glad he was not one of them; he felt rather

hostile to the big, careless, opulent man who spoke to Aymer with a

familiarity that Christopher resented and had already apparently

forgotten his own small existence.

The forget was but apparent, however, for presently he turned sharply

to the boy and asked him if he had ever been down a coal mine.

Christopher, putting control on his own hot curiosity to explore the

subject, answered that he had not, and gave Mr. Masters his second cup

of tea without any sugar to emphasise his own indifference to the

questioner, who unfortunately never noticed the omission, but drank

his tea with equal satisfaction.

"Ever been over an iron foundry?" persisted Mr. Masters, with the same

scrutinising gaze.

Cæsar was playing with his favourite long tortoise-shell paper-knife;

he seemed unusually indifferent to Christopher's manners, nor did he

intervene to save him from the string of sharp questions that ensued.

Christopher made effort to answer the questioner with ordinary

politeness, but he was not communicative, and Mr. Masters presently

leant back in his chair and laughed.

"Young man, you'll get on in the world," he said approvingly, "for

you've learnt the great secret of keeping your own counsel. I prophesy

you'll be a successful man some day."

Christopher was not at all elated at the prospect. He was wondering

why Aymer drank no tea, also wondering how long the visitor meant to

stay. There seemed no sign of departing in him, so Christopher asked

if he might go and bury the guinea-pig with Vespasian's help. Aymer

nodded permission without speaking.

"A cute lad," remarked Mr. Masters; "what are you going to do with

him?"

"I do not know yet."

"Put him in the iron trade. 'Prentice him to me. There's something in

him. Did you say you didn't know who his father was?" He shot one of

his quick glances at Aymer.

The tortoise-shell paper-knife snapped in two. Aymer fitted the ends

together neatly.

"No, I didn't," he answered very deliberately. "I told you he was my

adopted son. I adopted him in order to have something to do."

"Oh, yes. Of course, of course." A slow smile spread over his big

face. "Think of Aymer Aston of all men in the world playing at being a

family man!"

He leant back in his chair and laughed out his great hearty laugh

whose boyish ring, coupled with the laugher's easy careless manners,

had snared so many fish into the financial net.

"They'd like to make a family man of me again--do their dear little

best--but I'm not such a fool as they think me. Men with brains and

ambitions don't want a wife. You miss less than you think, old chap,"

he went on with the colossal tactlessness habitual to him when his own

interests were not at stake; "a wife plays the devil with one's

business. I _know_." He nodded gloomily, the smile lost under a heavy

frown.

Aymer put down very carefully the broken toy he had been playing with.

Peter's elephantine tread was so great that it had almost overstepped

its victim. At all events Aymer gave no outward sign that he felt it

except in his deepened colour and a faint straightening of the lips.

"What on earth do you do with yourself?" went on Peter thoughtfully;

"the care of a kid like that doesn't absorb all your brains, I

know."

"What would you recommend me to do?" asked Aymer quietly.

"With your head for figures and your leisure you should take to the

Market. Have a machine and tapes fitted up in reach, and, by Jove! in

a quiet spot like this, out of the way of other men's panics and

nonsense, you could rule the world."

"The Market, I think you said."

"Same thing. Think of it, Aymer," he went on eagerly and genuinely

interested in his proposition, whether spontaneous or not. He began

walking up and down the room, working out his idea with that grasp of

detail that had made him the millionaire he was.

"You could have the instruments and a private wire fixed up along the

wall there, and your sofa by them. A clerk over there: it would be a

sort of companion. You've plenty of capital to start with, and

wouldn't have to lose your head at the first wrong deal. Of course

you'd want someone the other end, a figurehead and mouthpiece, and

someone to show you the lines, start you off; I'd be pleased to do it.

We could make a partnership concern of it, if you liked."

There was a quick sidelong glint in his eyes towards Aymer as he came

to a stand near the sofa.

"What particular results would you expect?" inquired Aymer, knowing

the only plan to keep the enthusiast at bay was to humour him.

"Why, man, you might be the greatest power in the world--you--the

unseen, unknown, mysterious Brain--you would have time--you would

escape the crazy influences that ruin half the men 'on 'Change'--and

you've got the head for it. Calculation, nerve, everything. It would

be just the thing for you. You'd forget all about not being able to

walk in a week. I wonder why none of us have thought of it before."

"I'm getting used to it after twelve years," said Aymer, with shut

teeth; "the objection to your scheme is that I do not happen to want

money."

"Power, power, man," cried the other impatiently. "Money is just

metal, its value lies in the grip it gives you over other men, and if

you don't even care for that, there's the joy of chancing it. And you

were a born gambler, Aymer, you can't deny that," he laughed heartily,

but also again came the quick sidelong glint of his eyes. "Think of

it, old fellow," he said carelessly, dropping his enthusiastic tone,

"it would be a good deal better for you than doing nothing. It's such

wicked waste."

For the first time Aymer winced.

"I'll think of it, and let you know if it's likely to be entertained.

I have the boy, you know; that gives me something to do."

"Poof! Let him bring himself up if you want to make a successful man

of him. The more he educates himself, the better he'll get on. If you

do it, you'll make him soft. _I_ know! Public School: University:

Examinations, and £200 a year if he's lucky. That's your education!

All very well if you are born with a golden spoon in your mouth

and can afford to be a fool. If you can't, better learn to

rough-and-tumble it in the world. Education doesn't make successful

men."

"You were not exactly uneducated, Peter," said Aymer drily.

Peter grinned.

"Ah, but I was a genius. I couldn't help it. It would have been the

same had I been born in the gutter. No, I believe in the

rough-and-tumble school to make hard-headed men."

"Well, for all you know, Christopher may be a genius, or be born with

a golden spoon in his mouth."

The other looked up sharply.

"Nevil has a boy of his own, hasn't he?"

"Don't be a fool if you can help it, Peter. Other people have golden

spoons besides the gilded Aston family."

Peter shrugged his shoulders. "It's no business of mine, of course,

but the boy looks sharp. Pity to spoil him. Ha, Ha. I don't spoil

mine."

He got up yawning and sauntered over to the fireplace and so did not

see Aymer's rigid face go white and then red.

"I've got a boy--I think it's a boy--somewhere. Daresay you've

forgotten. You weren't very sociable, poor old chap, when it happened.

About a year after your accident. He's about somewhere or other. Oh, I

back my own theories! I don't suppose he's a genius, so the

rough-and-tumble school for _him_."

"You know the school?"

"I can put my hand on him when I want to--that's not yet. The world

can educate him till I'm ready to step in."

"If he'll have you."

Peter chuckled. "He won't be a fool--even if he's not a genius. Well,

you think of my proposition, I'll go halves."

"How you have disappointed me, Peter. I thought you called from a

disinterested desire to see me after all these years."

"Twelve years, isn't it? Well, you look better than you did then. I

didn't think you would come through--didn't think you meant to. I'm

sorry to miss Cousin Charles. He doesn't approve of me, but he's too

polite to say so, even in a letter. How does he wear?"

"Well, on the whole. He works too hard."

The other spread out his hands.

"Works. And to what end? I'm glad to have seen you again. It's like

old times, if you weren't on that beastly sofa, poor old chap."

"Perhaps you will call again when father is in," said Aymer steadily,

with a mute wonder if a square inch of him was left unbruised.

"To tell the truth, I'm rarely in London. I work from Birmingham and

New York, and calling is an expensive amusement to a busy man."

"Produces nothing?"

"Yes, a good deal of pleasure. It's worth it occasionally."

He stood over his cousin, looking down at him with quite genuine

concern and liking in his eyes. His size, his aggressiveness, his

blundering disregard of decency towards trouble, everything about him

was on such a gigantic scale that one could not weigh him by any

accepted standard. Aymer knew it, and notwithstanding Peter's unique

powers of hurting him to the soul, he made no attempt to scale him,

but met him on his own ground and ignored the torture.

"What has it cost you exactly, this visit?"

Peter considered quite gravely.

"Let me see. I was to have seen Tomlands. He's ceding his rights in

the Lodal Valley Affair and his figure goes up each day." He

considered again. "Three thousand," he answered with a wide grin.

"I am abashed at my value," said Aymer gravely. "I daren't ask you to

come again now."

"Oh, I'll have an extravagant fit again, some day. Where's the boy?"

His hand was in his pocket and Aymer heard the chink of coin.

"At work, or should be. Don't tip him, please, Peter. He has as much

as he needs."

"How do you know? A boy needs as much as he can get. Well, don't

forget my advice. Don't educate him."

He was gone at last. Presumably to gather in the Lodal Rights before

their value further increased.

Charles Aston did not betray any particular sorrow at missing the

visitor.

"It's rather odd his turning up again now after forgetting our

existence so long," he remarked, frowning. "Of course we've had

correspondence--not very agreeable either."

"I can hardly wonder at his not coming to see me, at all events. It's

nearly twelve years since we met, and I wasn't very polite to him that

time," said Aymer wearily.

"There was a reasonable excuse for you."

"I'm afraid I did not consider reason much in those days, sir. If he'd

been a saint in disguise I should have behaved like a brute just the

same."

Charles Aston came and stood looking down with a kind, quiet,

satisfied smile. The attitude was the same as Peter Masters' and

Aymer, remembering it, smiled too.

"What did he really want, Aymer? He never came for nothing."

"To induce me to go on the Stock-Exchange in partnership with him, I

think. Thought it would be less boring than lying here all day with

nothing to do."

Charles Aston opened his mouth to protest and shut it resolutely,

turned and walked down the room ruffling his hair, so that when he

went back to Aymer, his iron-grey thatch was more picturesque than

neat.

Aymer laughed.

"Who's lost his temper now?" he demanded.

His father looked in a glass and, perceiving the devastation,

attempted to remedy it.

"I'm awfully sorry," he said with much contrition, "but I can't keep

my temper over Peter. Has he improved?"

"Not a bit. He doesn't hurt, father, he's too big," he paused a

moment, "he saw Christopher."

Mr. Aston gave Aymer a scrutinising glance.

"It was unavoidable, I suppose."

"I did not try to stop it."

"And the result?"

"There was no result except he appeared impressed with his mental

capacity."

Mr. Aston ruffled his hair again in a perturbed manner.

"Didn't he see his likeness to his mother, Aymer?"

"Apparently not. It's not so strong as it was. He offered me advice on

his upbringing."

"Did he?" with an indignant shake of the head.

"All in good faith," said Aymer steadily, "he said he didn't approve

of education; as a proof of his sincerity, he cited the line he was

taking with his own boy."

There was a silence.

"He said he could put his hand on him when he liked." Aymer's voice

was quite level and inexpressive, but his father leant forward and put

his hand on his, saying hastily.

"He always says that. He believes it just a matter of money. It was

his one answer to all my remonstrances. When he wanted him he could

find him--not before. Aymer, I wish I'd been at home. Why did you see

him?"

"I could hardly refuse; it would have been churlish--unpolitic. I did

not know why he came. He was evidently struck with Christopher."

He laughed a little unsteadily, but his father smothered a sigh and

watched him with curious solicitude. The unwritten law that

Christopher had learnt so well had been very heavily infringed, and

Charles Aston had no liking for the man who had infringed it, though

he was his first cousin.

He was weighing in his mind what his son must have suffered in that

interview, and trying to see if it could have been foreseen and

prevented.

Peter and Aymer, who was only five years his junior, had been great

friends in the far-off days before the tragedy, but the former was too

nearly, though half unconsciously, connected with that to be a

possible intimate for Aymer now. The possibility of his turning up in

this casual manner, ignoring with ruthless amiability all that had

passed, had really never occurred to either father or son, and they

were both unprepared for a narrowly escaped crisis. But Aymer was

evidently not going to own frankly how great had been the strain and

how badly he had suffered under it. He set his pride to heal his

bruised feelings, however, applauding himself secretly for not

betraying to his cousin the torture to which he had unintentionally

put him. But he could not, having done this, altogether put it from

him, and the subject of Peter Masters cropped up next morning when

Christopher was sitting on the edge of Cæsar's bed.

Aymer asked him abruptly what he thought of the visitor of the

previous day.

"I don't like him at all. I think he's beastly," was Master

Christopher's emphatic verdict.

"He is my second cousin, his mother was an Aston, and he is one of the

richest men in England, if not quite the richest. He is thought rich

even in America."

"And horrid, too, just the same: only perhaps I oughtn't to say so as

he is your cousin," added the boy with sudden confusion.

Aymer regarded him with an introspective air.

"He is a strange man, though many people don't like him. We were great

friends once."

Christopher opened his eyes very wide.

"_You_--and Mr. Masters?"

"Yes--when I was a young man like others. We quarrelled--or rather I

quarrelled--he came to see me when I was first--ill," he jerked the

word out awkwardly, but never took his eyes from Christopher's face.

"I was perfectly brutal to him. That's twelve years ago. Most men

would never have spoken to me again, but he doesn't bear malice."

"He wouldn't mind what anyone said to him," persisted Christopher;

"fancy your being friends!"

"You like me best then?"

Master Christopher caught up a pillow and hurled it at him, and then

made a violent effort to smother him under it.

"I think you're almost as nasty--when you say things like that,

Cæsar."

"Then retreat from my company and tell Vespasian his baby is waiting

to be dressed."

Vespasian found his master in one of his rare inconsequent moods,

talking nonsense with provoking persistence and exercising his wits in

teasing everyone who came in his way.

Vespasian smiled indulgently and spent his leisure that day in

assisting Christopher to construct a man-of-war out of empty biscuit

boxes and cotton reels, for he was dimly possessed of the idea that

the boy was in some way connected with his master's unusually good

spirits.

CHAPTER VIII

It was not until Christopher had passed his fourteenth birthday that

he came face to face once more with the distant past. He had crossed

Westminster Bridge to watch the trams on the other side, and from

there, being in an adventurous mood, he had wandered out into vague

regions lying beyond, regions of vast warehouses, of narrow, dirty

streets and squalid houses, of sudden palaces of commerce towering

over the low tide of mean roofs. Suddenly turning a corner, he had

come on a block of "model dwellings," and an inrush of memories

brought him to a standstill before the giant ugly pile.

There, on the topmost floor of the east corner of Block D, had lived

Martha Sartin, and Marley Sartin, packer at one of the big warehouses

near, also Jessie Sartin and numerous other Sartins, including Sam,

who was about Christopher's age; there in the dull asphalt court Sam

and Christopher had played, and up that steep stairway had climbed in

obedience to husky shouts from over the iron railings of the top

landing.

It was all so vivid, so unaltered, so sharply set in Christopher's

mind that he had to look down at his own immaculate blue suit and

unpatched boots to reassure himself he was not waiting for Martha's

shrill order to "come up out of the dirt." But assured once more of

his own present personality he could not resist exploring further, and

went right up to the foot of the iron staircase and looked up. It was

all just as sordid and dirty and unlovely as ever, though he had not

known before the measure of its undesirableness. Leaning over the

railing of the top landing was an untidy-looking woman in a brown

skirt and half-fastened blouse. She looked over into the yard and

shouted in a voice that made Christopher jump.

"Jim, come up out of the dirt, you little varmint!"

And Christopher, erstwhile Jim, leant against the wall and felt his

head was whirling round. Then he inspected himself again, but at that

moment a shock-headed dirty mite of four years brushed past him and

began to clamber up the stairs, pushing his way through the horde of

small babies on each landing and squealing shrilly, "I'm coming,

Mammie."

Christopher went too. He could not possibly have resisted the impulse,

for assuredly it was Martha's voice that called--called him back willy

nilly to the past that after all was not so far past except in a boy's

measure of time.

A dark-eyed, decent-looking woman passed him on the stair and looked

at him curiously; further on a man, smoking a pipe, took the trouble

to follow him to the next floor in a loafing fashion. The small Jim,

out of breath and panting with the exertion of the climb, was being

roughly dusted by an undoubted Martha when Christopher reached the

topmost landing. She was stouter than of yore, and her hair was no

longer done up in iron curlers as of old, also a baby, younger than

Jim, was crawling out of the room on the right. But it was Martha

Sartin, and Christopher advanced a friendly hand.

Mrs. Sartin gazed at the apparition with blank amazement. She could

connect the tall, pleasant-faced boy in his spotless suit and straw

hat with nothing in her memory. He did not look as if he could belong

to the theatre at which she was a dresser, but it seemed the only

solution.

"Are you come from Miss Vassour?" she asked doubtfully.

"Don't you know me, Mrs. Sartin?"

"Know ye? No. How should I?"

"I'm Jim Hibbault."

"Garn!"

"Yes, I am really." Poor Christopher began to feel embarrassed and a

little disappointed.

He _was_ Jim Hibbault at that moment and he felt queerly lonely and

stranded.

Martha pulled down her sleeves and went to the inner door.

"Jessie, come out 'ere," she screamed.

Christopher felt his heart go thump. He had almost forgotten Jessie,

yet Jessie had been more to him than Martha in other days. It was

Jessie who had taken him for walks, carried him up the steep stairs on

her back, shared sweets with him, cuffed her brother Sam when they

fought, and had finally taken little Jim Hibbault back to his mother

when the great clock in the distance struck six,--Jessie, who at

eleven had been a complete little mother and was at sixteen a tall,

lanky, untidy girl who had inherited the curling pins of her mother

and whose good-natured, not ill-looking face was not improved

thereby.

She came to the doorway and stood looking over her mother's arm at

Christopher.

"Ever seed 'im afore?" demanded Mrs. Sartin.

"Well I never, if it ain't Jimmy!" cried Jessie, beaming, and

Christopher could have embraced her if it were in accordance with the

custom of his years, and he felt less inclined to bolt down the stairs

out of reach of his adventure.

Neither of the two women expressed any pleasure at his appearance.

Mrs. Sartin accepted her daughter's recognition of their visitor as

sufficient evidence it was not a hoax, and asked Christopher in.

The room, though the window was open, smelt just as stuffy as of old,

and a familiar litter of toys and odds and ends strewed the floor.

Christopher missed the big tea-tray and Britannia metal teapot, but

the sofa with broken springs was still there, covered as it had ever

been with the greater part of the family wardrobe.

Christopher sat in the armchair, and Mrs. Sartin, having plumped the

baby into its chair, sat down by the door. The small Jimmy pulled at

her apron. Jessie leant against the wall and giggled. No one said

anything. Christopher began to wish he had not come.

"I never could remember the name of this place," he began at last,

desperately. "I just came on it by accident to-day, and remembered

everything all at once."

"Shilla Buildings, that's what it's called," said Mrs. Sartin nodding

her head. "Block 7, C. Door."

Silence again. A strict sense of etiquette prevented either of the

feminine side of the company from uttering the question burning on

their tongues.

"I did see Sam once, a long time ago," Christopher struggled on, "but

I could not catch him." He got red and embarrassed again.

"'Ows your Ma?" asked Mrs. Sartin at last.

"She's dead," explained Christopher very gravely, "five years ago

now--more."

"Lor'. To think of it. I never thought she was one to live long. And

she went back to her friends after all, I suppose."

It was not a question: it was only a statement to be confirmed or

contradicted or ignored as the hearer liked.

"She died in the Union at Whitmansworth," said Christopher bluntly. "I

lived there afterwards and then someone adopted me. Mr. Aymer Aston,

son of Mr. Aston. Perhaps you know the name."

Mrs. Sartin appeared to consult an imaginary visiting list.

"No, I can't say as I do. Do you, Jessie?"

Jessie shook her head. She had ceased to look at their visitor;

instead, she looked at his boots, and her cheeks grew red.

"I thought I would like to see if you were still here."

"Very good of you, I'm sure." It was not meant ironically, it was

solely addressed to the blue suit and brown boots, but it nearly

reduced the wearer of these awe-inspiring clothes to tears.

For the moment, in the clutch of the past, with associations laying

gripping hands on him and with his curious faculty of responding to

the outward call, Aston House and the Astons became suddenly a faint

blurred impression to Christopher, less real and tangible than these

worn, sordid surroundings. Had anyone just then demanded his name he

would undoubtedly have responded "Hibbault." He felt confused and

wretched, alive to the fact that little Jim Hibbault had neither

people nor home nor relations in the world, if these once kindly women

had no welcome for him.

"I heard you call Jim," he hazarded at last, in an extremity of

disconcerted shyness.

Mrs. Sartin eyed the four-year-old nestling in her apron and pulled

him from cover.

"Yes, that be Jim. We called 'im Jim arter you. He was born arter you

an' your ma went away."

He longed to ask after Marley of unhappy memory, but the possibilities

were too apparent for him to venture, so silence again fell over

them.

At this precise juncture of affairs a shrill whistle was heard

ascending the stairway, growing momentarily louder and louder till it

became earsplitting in intensity as it arrived on landing No. 6. The

author of it pulled open the door and the whistle tailed off into a

faint "phew" at sight of the embarrassed group. The new-comer was a

thin-faced lad with light sandy hair cropped close to his square

head. He had light, undetermined eyes that were keen and lively.

Christopher had beaten him in the matter of size, but there were

latent possibilities in his ill-developed form.

Christopher sprang up and rushed forward, then suddenly stopped.

"Ullo, mother, didn't know as 'ow you 'ad swell company this

arternoon. I'd 'ave put on my best suit and topper," he grinned

affably as he deposited on the floor a big basket he carried.

"Oh, I say, Sam--don't you know me either?" began poor Christopher.

He wheeled round, stared hard, and a broad smile of recognition spread

over his face.

"Why, if it ain't Jim," he cried and seized his hand with a fervour

that set Christopher aglowing and strangely enough set him free from

the clinging shadow of his lost identity. _This_ was tangible flesh

and blood and of the real authentic present.

"Well, I'm blowed," ejaculated Sam, stepping back to look at his

erstwhile companion, "to think of you turning up again such a toff. No

need to ask what sort of luck came _your_ way. My. Ain't 'e a swell,

just."

But unlike the women, he was unabashed by externals. He demanded "tea"

of his mother that very moment, "cos 'e 'adn't no time for dinner and

'is bloke 'ad sent 'im round to get a bit o' somethink now," at a

slack hour.

"Greengrocer business, Clare Street," he explained. "Seven shillings a

week. Not a bad old cove. What d'yer say about yourself?"

He had the whole history out of Christopher in five minutes.

The women listened and flung in "Well, I never's," and "Who'd 'ave

thought it's" from time to time and thawed into ordinary human beings

under Sam's convivial example. In the end Sam offered sincere if

oddly-expressed congratulations, and disappeared into the back kitchen

to wash his hands. Jessie, too, vanished mysteriously, eventually

returning minus the curling pins and plus a row of impossible curls

and a bright blue blouse bedecked with cheap lace. Mrs. Sartin

meanwhile tidied up by kicking the scattered toys under the sofa.

"Them sisters what looks arter the poor is always givin' broken

rubbish to the children," she exclaimed. "Not but what they mean it

kindly, but it makes a heap of muck to clear up."

Christopher nodded his head comprehendingly, by no means so hurt at

her ingratitude as a real Christopher Aston might have been.

The good woman bustled about, and eventually the family drew up round

the tea table. The cloth might have been cleaner, the cups and saucers

have borne a longer acquaintance with water, and there was a spoon

short, though no one was so ill-mannered as to allude to it. Jessie

unobtrusively shared hers with her mother under cover of the big

tea-pot. There was bread and a yellow compound politely alluded to as

butter, and a big pot of jam. The younger Sartins gorged silently on

this, all unreproved by a preoccupied mother. Mrs. Sartin, indeed,

became quite voluble and told Christopher how she was now first

dresser at the Kings Theatre and how Jessie was just taken on in the

wardrobe room.

"Which is uncertain _hours_," Mrs. Sartin explained, "but it's nice to

be together in the same 'ouse, and one couldn't want a kinder

gentleman than Mr. X. to do with. I've been there ten years and never

'ad a cross word with 'im. And 'e was that good when Marley was took,

and never turned me off as some of 'em do." She stopped suddenly under

the stress of Sam's lowering countenance. Jessie hastily passed her

bread, "which I thanks you for, but will say what I was a-goin' to,

for all Sam's kicks under the table," continued the hostess, defiantly

regarding her confused offspring.

The confusion spread to Christopher, who looked at his plate and got

red. Sam pushed back his chair; there was a very ugly scowl on his

face. His undaunted mother addressed herself to their guest.

"No woman ever 'ad a better 'usband than Marley, though I ses it, but

Sam here 's that 'ard 'e won't let me speak of my own man if 'e can

'elp 'it. 'Is own father, too. Ah, if 'e 'ad 'ad a bad father, Sam

would 'ave know what to be thankful for."

"I'm thankful 'e's gone," burst out Sam, with sudden anger. "I asks

you, 'ow's a cove to get on when he's 'itched up to a father wot's

done time? Why, old Greenum gave me a shillin' a week less than 'e

ought, cos why, 'e knew I couldn't 'old out with a father like that,"

and he eyed his mother wrathfully.

"A better 'usband no woman 'ad," sobbed Mrs. Sartin. "When 'e came out

'e didn't seem to get no chance and so...."

"Is he in London?" asked Christopher, nervously gulping down some

tea.

"No--sloped," said Sam, shortly, "cribbed some other chap's papers I

guess--went abroad--we don't know--don't want to, either."

The fierce hostility and resentment in the boy's voice made it clear

to Christopher this was evidently a subject better dropped. He seized

the chance of directing Jessie's attention to Master Jim Sartin, who

was brandishing the bread-knife, and plunged hastily into a

description of the doings of Charlotte and Max. Mrs. Sartin accepted

the diversion, but kept an anxious eye on Sam, who ate hard and seemed

to recover some of his ordinary composure with each mouthful, much to

Christopher's amazement. By the time tea was finished he was himself

again. There was no lingering then. He went back to work. Christopher

said he must go too, and bade the family good-bye. The farewell was as

cordial as the welcome had been cold and he clattered downstairs after

Sam with many promises to come again.

The two boys talked freely of the passing world as they went through

the streets, in the purely impersonal way of their age, and it was

with great diffidence and much hesitation Christopher managed to hint

he'd like to buy something for the kiddies.

Sam grinned.

"Sweets," he suggested. "They eat 'em up and leave no mess about."

Christopher turned out his pockets. There was an unbroken ten

shillings, three shillings and some coppers.

They walked on a while gravely and came to a stand before a

confectioner's window.

"Cake," suggested Sam, with one eye on his companion and one on the

show of food within.

"A sugar one?"

"They cost a lot," said Sam shaking his head, but he followed

Christopher inside. Christopher boldly demanded the price of a small

wedding cake elaborately iced. It was five shillings.

He put down the money with a lofty air and desired them to send it

without loss of time to Mrs. Sartin's address.

The woman stared a little at the oddly assorted couple, but the money

rang true and the order was booked.

As they hurried towards Clare Street, Christopher diffidently asked if

there was anything Mrs. Sartin would like, and Sam's sharp wits seized

the occasion to please his mother and Christopher and serve himself at

the same time.

"Come on to my place and send her some lettuce," he suggested.

"Mother's main fond of lettuce. We've got some good 'uns in this

morning."

It was strictly true; it was also true that Master Sam had outstayed

his meal-time and a new customer might help to avert the probable

storm awaiting him, as indeed it did.

Mr. Gruner, greengrocer, was standing at the door of his shop looking

both ways down the street at once, owing to a remarkable squint, and

his reception of Sam was unfriendly, but quickly checked at the sight

of his companion, whose extraordinary terms of intimacy with his

errand boy rendered the good man nearly speechless. The young gent,

however, ordered lettuces and green peas with a free hand and earned

Sam's pardon, as anticipated by that far-sighted youth.

The two boys said good-bye and Sam made no hint as to the

possibilities of a future meeting, neither did Christopher,

embarrassed by the presence of the greengrocer. He also would be late

and hurried off, hoping he might still be in time to give Aymer tea

and relate his adventures. He had no misgivings at all as to Cæsar's

approval of his doings.

As he came out into a main thoroughfare again he passed a big cheap

drapery establishment and something in the gaudy, crude colouring

there displayed brought him to a standstill. Jessie was still

unprovided with a present. The two had exchanged very few words, but

she by no means loomed in the background of the picture. He stood

staring at the window and fingering the remaining coins in his pocket.

One section of the shop front was hung with gaily-coloured feather

boas. He was dimly conscious he had seen Mrs. Wyatt wear something of

the sort in soft grey. There was a blue one that was the colour of

Jessie's blouse, or so Christopher thought, hanging high up. He did

not admire it at all, but it suggested Jessie to him and after a

moment's consideration he boldly pushed through the swinging doors

and marched up the shop.

"I want one of those feather things in the window," he announced to

the shop-walker's assiduous attentions.

He was delivered over to the care of an amused young woman, who

proceeded to show him feather boas of all descriptions and qualities.

Christopher was adamant.

"I want a blue thing that's hanging up in the window, last but one on

the top row," he insisted, disdaining to look at the fluffy

abominations spread around him. He was sure they were not like the

thing Constantia wore now, but it was too late to retreat.

The young woman showed him one she declared was identical.

"I want the one in the window," he persisted doggedly.

In the end he got it, paid for it, saw it packed up and addressed, and

quenching sundry misgivings in his heart, marched out of the shop and

treated himself to a bus homeward.

It is perhaps not out of place to mention here that Jessie had no

misgivings as to the real beauty of the present. She had sighed long

for such a possession, and having never seen Mrs. Wyatt's delicate

costly wrap, was perfectly content with her own and applauded

Christopher's taste loudly.

CHAPTER IX

Christopher continued to visit the Sartins and to find considerable

pleasure in Sam's companionship, who on his few holidays was only too

glad to explore the grey river and its innumerable wharfs with

Christopher. Sam was already a fair waterman; he at least spent all

his scant leisure and scantier pennies in learning that arduous

profession.

Once Mr. Aston visited Block D. with Christopher, and lingered behind

gossiping to Mrs. Sartin while the boy went to meet Sam, expected home

to tea. Sam got nothing out of his mother anent that conversation

except the information that Mr. Aston was "a real Christian gentleman,

who knew what trouble was, and don't you make any mistake, but as 'ow

Mr. Christopher was a lucky young gentleman."

Mr. Aston also found time to visit Sam's master, though on this

occasion he was not accompanied by Christopher, who, indeed, chanced

to be on the river with Sam Sartin that afternoon.

It must not be imagined that Christopher had no other friends than the

humble Sartins. Besides the Wyatt household, half a dozen families

with boys of his age welcomed him gladly enough, but though he was on

good terms with these and though not one of the boys could afford to

despise him as an antagonist in any sport, yet none of them contrived

to have more than a very superficial idea of Christopher Aston. They

took to him at once, but he remained just the good-natured, jolly

acquaintance of the first day, never more, if never less. Christopher,

indeed, though he confessed it to no one, not even to Aymer, felt a

little cut off from this pleasant clan, who held the same traditions,

the same experiences, and who went through the same training at their

various schools, who led indeed a life that differed essentially from

Christopher.

He was never conscious of any lack of company. The Astons, old and

young, were companions who answered to every need of his energetic

mind. He made giant strides in his studies in these days and passed

beyond the average into the class of those of real ability. All his

well-earned holidays were spent at Marden, where there was always

Patricia as a most admirable playfellow.

It was when Christopher was a little over fifteen and Patricia about

the same age that the first definite result of their companionship

came about.

On the other side of the lake at Marden Court the high road, sunk

between a low wall on one side and the upsloping land on the other,

ran directly eastward and westward, joining eventually a second Great

Road of historic importance to Christopher Aston. The rough ground

beyond the road was covered with low scrub, and dwarf twisted

hawthorns, with a plentiful show of molehills. Here and there were

groups of Scotch firs, and the crest of the hill was wooded with oaks

and beeches and a fringe of larches, with here and there a silvery

black poplar.

Christopher and Patricia were fond of this rough land that lay beyond

the actual park. In early days it had made a glorious stage for

"desert islanders," with the isle-studded lake to bound it, whose

further shore for the nonce melted into vague mistiness. Later on,

when desert islands were out of fashion, it was still good ground to

explore, and through the woods away over the hill one came to a

delectable wide-spread country, where uncultivated down mingled with

cornfields and stretches of clover, a country bounded by long,

spacious curving lines of hill and dale, tree-capped ridges and bare

contours, with here and there the gash of a chalk pit gleaming

white.

Just at a point where a stretch of down-land ran into a little copse,

was a small barrow. A round green mound, memento of a forgotten

history that was real and visible enough in its own day, as real as

the two children of "the Now," with whom the spot was a favourite

camping ground.

Patricia, who knew all about barrows from Nevil, used to invent

wonderful stories of this one, to which Christopher lent a critical

attention, adding here and there a practical touch.

It was he who first suggested exploring the mound, and one day they

dragged heavy spades thither and worked hard for an hour or two

without great result, when suddenly Patricia began shovelling back her

pile of brown earth with feverish haste.

"I don't like it. It is horrid," she panted in return to Christopher's

protests. The idea of desecration was so strong on her that when her

companion still indignantly protested, the black passion leapt up to

life and she flung round at him.

It was then that Christopher made his discovery. He saw the mad flare

in her face and flung his strong arms round her from behind, and held

her against him with her hands in his gripped fast to her breast.

"Steady on, Patricia," he said sharply, "don't get frightened. You

aren't going to get wild this time."

There was no alarm or anger in his voice and a queer, new note of

firmness and force. She struggled ineffectually a moment and then came

the dangerous quietness that waited a chance.

He could feel her muscles strained and rigid still.

"Patricia," he said quite loudly, "drop it. I won't have it, do you

hear? You _can_ stop if you like now, and you've got to."

She bent back her head and looked at him, her child face old and worn

and disfigured with her still burning fury. She looked right in his

eyes: his met hers 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 Cæsar, 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

£150 and Fortman £200."

"Then there is no question."

"Tennant will build decent cottages of good material and with proper

foundations, and Fortman--well, you know what Fortman's hovels are

like."

"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