Christopher stood for a moment inside the great hall at Stormly Park
and looked round. It was quite beautiful. Peter Masters, having chosen
the best man in England for his purpose, had had the sense to let him
alone. There was no discordant note anywhere and Christopher was quite
alive to its perfections. But coming straight from Stormly Town the
contrast was too glaring and too crude. It was not that Peter Masters
was rich and his people were poor. Poverty and riches have run hand in
hand down the generations of men, but here, the people were poor in
all things, in morals, in desire, in beauty, in all that lifted them
in the scale of humanity, in order that he, Peter Masters, should be
superfluously rich, outrageously so!
Christopher struggled hard to be just: he knew it was not the
superfluous money that was grudged, it was the more precious time and
thought saved with a greed that was worse than the hunger of a
miser--for no purpose but to add to over-filled stores. He knew all
Peter Masters' arguments in defence of his System already: That he
compelled no man to serve him, that none did so except on a clear
understanding of the terms; that for the hours they toiled for him he
paid highly, and his responsibility ceased when those hours were over.
If Peter Masters was no philanthropist at least he was no humbug. He
said openly he worked his System because it paid him. If he could have
made more by being philanthropical he would have been so, but he would
not have called it philanthropy: it would have been a financial
method.
The grim selfishness of it all crushed Christopher as an intolerable
burden that was none of his, and yet, because he was here accepting a
part of its results, he could not clear himself of its shadow. So,
twenty-two years ago, had his mother thought until the terror of that
shadow outweighed all dread of further evil, and she had fled from its
shade into a world where sun and shadow were checkered and evil and
good a twisted rope by which to hold.
Some dim note from that long struggle and momentous decision had its
influence with her son now. Without knowing it he was hastening to the
same conclusions she had reached.
He lunched alone and then to escape the persistence of his thoughts
decided to explore the west wing of the house which he had hardly
entered.
At the end of a long corridor a square of yellow sunlight fell across
the purple carpet from an open door and he stopped to look in.
It was a pretty room with three windows opening on to a terrace and a
door communicating with a room beyond. The walls were panelled with
pale blue silk and the chairs and luxurious couches covered with the
same. There were several pictures of great value, on a French writing
table lay an open blotter, but the blotting paper was crumbling and
dry and the ink in the carved brass inkstand was dry also.
In the middle of the room surrounded by a pile of Holland covers and
hangings stood Mrs. Eliot, the housekeeper. Christopher had seen her
once or twice and she was the only servant, except the butler, with
whom he had heard Peter Masters exchange a word. "Lor', sir, how you
made me jump!" she cried at sight of him in the doorway. "It isn't
often one hears a footfall down here, they girls keep away or I'd be
about 'em as they know very well."
"May I come in?" asked Christopher. "What a pretty room."
The woman glanced round hesitatingly. "Well, now, you're here. Yes.
It's pretty enough, sir."
"Are you getting ready for visitors?"
He had no intention of being curious, he was only thankful to find
some distraction from his own thoughts, and there seemed no reason why
he should not chat to the kindly portly lady in charge.
"No visitors here, sir. We don't have much company. Just a gentleman
now and then, as may be yourself."
She pulled a light pair of steps to the window and mounted them
cautiously one step at a time, dragging a long Holland curtain in her
hand.
"Do you want to hang that up?" asked Christopher, watching her with
idle interest. "Do let me do it, Mrs. Eliot, you'll fall off those
steps if you go higher. I can't promise to catch you, but I can
promise to hang curtains much better than you can." Mrs. Eliot, who
was already panting with exertion and the fatigue of stretching up her
ample figure to unaccustomed heights, looked down at him doubtfully.
"Whatever would Mr. Masters say, sir?"
"He would be quite pleased his visitor found so harmless an amusement.
You come down, Mrs. Eliot. Curtain-hanging is a passion with me, but
what a shame to cover up those pretty curtains with dingy Holland!"
"They wouldn't be pretty curtains now, sir," said Mrs. Eliot,
descending with elaborate care, "if they hadn't been covered up these
twenty years and more."
"What a waste," ejaculated Christopher now on the steps, "isn't the
room ever used?"
"Never since Mrs. Masters went out of it. 'Eliot,' says the master--I
was first housemaid then--'keep Mrs. Masters' rooms just as they are,
ready for use. She will want them again some day.' So I did."
Christopher shifted the steps and hung another curtain.
"I didn't know there had been a Mrs. Masters."
"Most folk have forgotten it, I think, sir."
"This was her boudoir, I suppose."
"Yes. And I think he's never been in here since she went, but once,
and that was five years after. The boudoir bell rang and I came, all
of a tremble, to hear it for the first time after so long. He was
standing as it may be there. 'That cushion's faded, Eliot,' he said,
'get another made like it. You are to replace everything that gets
torn or faded or worn without troubling me. Keep the rooms just as
they are.' He had a pile of photographs in his hand and a little
picture, and he locked them up in that cabinet, and I don't suppose
it's been opened since. He never made any fuss about it from the
first. No, nor altered his ways either." She drew a cover over a chair
and tied the strings viciously. "It's for all the world as if he'd
never had a wife at all."
Christopher had hung the three sets of curtains now and he sat on the
top step and looked round the room curiously. It was less oppressively
modern that the rest of the house and he had an idea the master of
Stormly was not responsible for that. He felt a vivid interest in the
late Mrs. Masters, Why had she gone and why had neither Aymer nor St.
Michael mentioned her existence? He longed to override his own sense
of etiquette and question Mrs. Eliot, who continued to ramble on in
her own way.
"I takes off the coverings every two months, and brushes it all down
myself," she explained, "and I've never had anyone to help me before.
If I were to let them girls in they'd break every vase in the place
with their frills and their 'didn't see's.'"
"Do those sheets hang over the panels?"
"I couldn't think of troubling you! But if you will, sir, why then,
that's the sheet for there. They are all numbered."
Christopher covered up the dainty walls regretfully. Why had she left
it? Had she and Peter quarrelled? It seemed to Christopher, in his
present mood towards Mr. Masters, they might well have done so.
"Do you remember Mrs. Masters?" he was tempted to ask presently.
"Indeed I do, seeing I was here when he brought her home. Tall, thin,
and like a queen the way she walked, a great lady, for all she was
simple enough by birth, they say. But she went, and where she went
none of us know to this day, and some say the Master doesn't either,
but I don't think it myself."
Christopher straightened a pen and ink sketch of a workman on the
wall. It was a clever piece of work, life-like and sympathetic.
"She did that," said Mrs. Eliot with a proprietor's pride. "She was
considered clever that way, I've been told. That's another of hers on
the easel over there."
Christopher examined it and gave a gasp. It was a bold sketch of two
men playing cards at a table with a lamp behind them. The expression
on the players' faces was defined and forcible, but it was not their
artistic merit that startled him, but their identity. One--the
tolerant winner--was Peter himself--the other--the easy loser--was
Aymer Aston.
So Aymer did know of Mrs. Masters' existence, knew her well enough for
her to make this intimate likeness of him.
"Was it done here?" he asked slowly.
"No, she brought it with her. I don't know who the other gentleman is,
but it's a beautiful picture of the master, isn't it? so life-like."
"Yes."
He looked again round the room, fighting again with his desire to
search for more traces of its late owner, and then grew hot with shame
at his curiosity. He left Mrs. Eliot rather abruptly and wandered out
of the house, but the unknown mistress of the place haunted him,
glided before him across the smooth lawns, he could almost hear the
rustle of her dress on the gravel, and then recollected with relief it
was only the memory of the old game he used to play at Aston House
with his dead mother, transferred by some mental suggestion to Stormly
Park. Presently he saw the bulky form of Peter Masters on the steps
and joined him reluctantly.
"I want to see you, Christopher," said Peter as he approached. "Come
into my room. I shan't be able to go to London this week to buy the
car, so you must stay until Monday and go up with me then," he
announced, and without waiting for assent or protest plunged into his
subject with calculated abruptness.
"This road business of yours, is there money in it?"
"I think so. It is not done yet."
"How long will it take you to perfect it?"
"How can I tell? It may mean weeks, it may mean months."
"What are you going to do when you've found it?"
"Get someone to take it up, I suppose."
Christopher was answering against his will, but the swift sharp
questions left him no time to fence.
"I'll take it up now. Fit you up a laboratory and experimenting ground
and give you two years to perfect it--and a partnership when it's
started."
Christopher looked up with incredulous amazement.
"But it's a purely scientific speculation at present. There are just
about half a dozen people on the track. We are all racing each
other."
"Well, you've got to win, and I'll back you. You shall have every
assistance you want--money shan't count. You can live here and have
the North Park for trials, as many men as you want and no
interruption."
"But it's impossible. It's not a certainty even."
"No speculation is a certainty. If you bring it off it will mean a
fortune, properly managed. I can do that for you far better than
Aymer. We should share profits, of course, and I should have to risk
money. It's a fancy thing, but it pleases me."
Christopher got up and went to the open window. The tussle between
them had come. It would need all his strength to keep himself free
from this man's toils. However generous in appearance, Christopher
knew they were toils for him, and must be avoided.
"Aymer's done well enough for you so far," pursued Peter Masters from
the depths of his chair. "We will grant him all credit, but this is
the affair of a business man: it requires capital: it requires
business knowledge: and it requires faith. You will have to go to
someone if you don't come to me, and I'm making you a better offer
than you'll get elsewhere. I'll do more. We'll buy up the other men if
they are dangerous. You can have their experience, too. It's only a
question of investing enough money."
As he stood there in the window Christopher realised it all: how near
his darling project lay to his heart, how great and harassing would be
the difficulties of launching it on the world; how sure success would
be under this man's guidance, and yet how with all his heart and soul
and unreasoning mind he hated the thought of it, and would have found
life itself dear at the purchase of his freedom.
His hands shook a little as he turned, but his voice was quiet and
steady.
"It is very generous of you, sir, but I could not possibly pledge
myself to you or any man."
"I'm asking no pledge. I'm only asking you to complete your own
invention, and when it's completed I'll help you to use it."
"I must be free."
"You own you can't use any discovery by yourself, you'd have to go to
someone. I come to you. The credit will be yours. I only find the
means and share the return--fair interest on capital."
"It's not that."
"Then what? Do you doubt my financial ability or financial
soundness?"
The meshes of the net were very narrow. Christopher sat with his head
on his hands. He could waste no force in inventing reasons, neither
could he explain the intangible truth. It was a fight of wills
solely.
"I can't do it," said Christopher doggedly.
"You are only a boy, but I credit you with more common-sense and a
better eye for business than many young men double your age. What
displeases you in my offer? Where do you want it altered?"
"I don't want it at all, Mr. Masters. I won't accept it. I don't think
my reason matters at all. I know I shall never do so well, but I
refuse."
"There are others who would take it. Suppose you are forestalled?"
Christopher looked him straight in the eyes.
"It's a fair fight so far."
"A fight is always fair to the winner," returned Masters grimly. There
was a silence. The next thrust reached the heart of the matter.
"What is your objection to dealing with me?"
Peter Masters leant forward as he spoke and put a finger on the
other's knee; his hard, keen eyes sought the far recesses of his son's
mind, but they did not sink deep enough to read his soul. Christopher
struggled with the impetuous words, the direct bare truth that sought
for utterance. Truth was too pure and subtle a thing to give back
here. When he answered it was in his old deliberate manner, as he had
answered Fulner--as he would invariably answer when he mistrusted his
own judgment.
"If I told you my objections you would not care for them or understand
them. You would think them folly. I won't defend them. I won't offer
them. It is just impossible, but I thank you."
He rose and Masters did the same with a curious look of admiration and
disappointment in his eyes.
"I thought you a better business man, Christopher. Will you refer the
matter to your--guardian?"
"No. It is quite my own. Even Aymer can't help me."
Peter's lips straightened ominously.
"You will come to me yet. My terms will not be so good again."
"Then I am at least warned."
"As you will. You are a fool, Christopher, perhaps I am well quit of
you."
"I think that is quite likely," returned Christopher gravely, with a
faint twinkle of amusement in his eyes. He went away despondently,
however, and stopped at the door.
"When would you like me to go?"
"I told you: we go up to London on Monday," said the millionaire
sharply. "I engaged you to buy a car and you must buy it."
"I am quite ready to do so."
He left the room with an appalling sense of defeat and humiliation on
him. He could hardly credit a victory that left him so bruised and
spiritless. It was in his mind to run away and avoid his engagement
in London. He might even have done so but for Peter's remark. He
walked across the hall with downcast eyes and nearly fell against a
tall thin form.
"Nevil!" cried Christopher.
"Yes, Nevil. Christopher, could I be had up for libel if I wrote the
life of a railway train?"