"It does not seem to me a very great thing to ask in the face of
things."
Mr. Saunderson dangled his eyeglasses and regarded Christopher with a
dubious air.
"I want three days to consider the matter," continued Christopher
impatiently. "Where is the difficulty? You don't seem to remember you
are asking me to give up my chosen life and work and take on a job
that I loathe."
If Mr. Saunderson's face had been capable of expressing more than
displeasure, it would have done so, but he was of no plastic build,
mind or body, and "displeasure" was the nearest he could get to active
anger.
"You have a singular way of regarding what most men would think
overpowering good luck, Mr. Masters."
Christopher turned sharply.
"You at least cannot compel me to take that name. It has never been
mine and never will be."
"Gently, gently, young man. I am willing to make every allowance for
your perturbation, but really, in speaking of my late client ..." he
stopped with a shake of the head.
"I was speaking of a name, not of him, Mr. Saunderson. However, I
apologise. Once more, will you let the whole matter stand still for
three days. I don't mean to accept the thing, you know, but I can't
argue it out now. I will meet you in town on Wednesday."
"If you insist, there is nothing more to be said of course," returned
Mr. Saunderson, huffily. "As to your refusing your own rights, that
will be less simple than you imagine, but I shall hope you will soon
view the matter in another light."
"There was no provision made in case the inheritor should refuse or
not be available?"
Christopher confronted him suddenly with the question, and the poor
man, who was as completely off his balance by Christopher's
incomprehensible reception of his tidings, as that young man himself,
was evidently confused.
"There were no instructions at all beyond the memorandum stating his
wife and child were last heard of in Whitmansworth Union."
"But in the former will, which you say was destroyed?"
"I am not at liberty to divulge anything that might be contained in
that document."
"There is nothing to prevent your acting on such instructions at your
own prompting," Christopher insisted bluntly.
Mr. Saunderson looked at him critically. "That is an ingenious
suggestion Mr. ..." he paused.
"Aston," said Christopher. "It's the name those who have treated me as
a son gave me, and I see no obligation to change it."
The lawyer rose.
"Then we are to defer further discussion till Wednesday?"
"Until Wednesday. In town, not here."
He left with Mr. Shakleton in his wake, and Christopher was at last
alone and free to weigh if he would the weight of this stupendous
burden, which he resolutely decided was not his to bear. He stood
looking out of the window at the still driving mist and had to drag
his thoughts back from the external aspect of things to the inner
matters he must face. But there was no lucidity in his mind, nothing
was clear to him but his fierce resentment against the dead man, and
a passionate pity for a faded woman.
"It was the beauty of grace rather than feature...." He was stung with
intolerable shame for the manhood he must share with one who had
wrought such havoc in the woman he was most bound to protect from
herself, as well as from the world. The risks and chances of those
early days flickered before him. He had been abandoned to such for
some vague ultimate good to the colossal idea of fortune which neither
he nor its late possessor could spend. Was he more bound to take it
and its cares to himself than its author was bound to care for his own
flesh and blood? Anger clouded his reason and he knew it. Yet if he
could not think coherently on the matter, of what use were the three
days of grace he had claimed? He could not endure company at present,
and the four walls of his room were as a prison. At last he sent a
hasty message to the motor house, tossed a few necessaries into a bag
and wrote a note to Cæsar. "Dear Cæsar, I've got to make up my mind
about this and I must do it alone, so to come to some decision I'm
going off in the car. I'll be back when I've got the thing straight in
my mind. Tell St. Michael and Nevil about it, but if you can help it
don't let anyone else know.--Christopher Aston."
He drove slowly down the drive, out into the highroad and, turning
westward, sped away into the misty distance.
A great stillness fell on Aymer when Christopher left him. He had
lived so long under the shadowy fear of the thing that had now
happened, that it was hard to credit the fear had passed in
fulfilment. He had been forced back to face the past, and, behold, the
terror of it was gone. He could only measure the full value of the
effort he had made by the languor and listlessness that now wrapped
him round, as a child who had overtaxed his strength and must needs
rest. A hazy doubt crept into his mind as to what it was he had so
dreaded--the resuscitation of the past, or Christopher's reception of
it. In either case the fear had faded as some phantom form that melted
in daylight.
He stumbled on one thought with vague wonder. No barrier had been
raised between him and his adopted son: instead he found the only
barrier had been erected by his own lack of strength to face that
truth until the inexorable hand of God forced him to the issue.
As to the future he recognised that might be left to Christopher,
whose whole life, since Aymer took him, had been a preparation for
this situation. His long struggle to keep a grip on life was ebbing
fast, it was good to leave decisions in another's hands, to rest, and
accept.
When Mr. Aston returned Cæsar gave him Christopher's note with a brief
remark.
"Saunderson has been."
The note, short as it was, told the rest. Mr. Aston looked anxiously
at his son, but Aymer met his eyes with a quiet smile.
"I'm glad you were away, St. Michael. You've had enough to contend
with, and there was no need. There is nothing for either of us to do.
It's Christopher's affair."
Mr. Aston looked at the note again and reread the signature, then he
gave it back, satisfied.
"What will happen if he won't accept it?" he questioned thoughtfully.
"It is for him to decide." Aymer's tone was earnestly emphatic.
"Father, we've done our part. We can't alter it if we would. Leave him
free."
"It is the crown of your success that you can do so, my dear old
fellow."
"The coronation has not taken place yet," returned Cæsar, with a touch
of dry humour that reassured his father more than any words that all
was well with his son.
* * * * *
Meanwhile, hour after hour, Christopher's car raced over the white
roads. The twinkling lights in the villages through which he sped grew
fewer and at last ceased. A more solid blackness was the only inkling
of dwellings on either hand. Once the low, vibrating hum of the car
seemed to bring a light to a high window, but it fell back into the
dark before he had caught more than a faint glimmer on the blind.
He met nothing: the road for all he knew was utterly empty of life. In
the silent, motionless darkness it was like a path into illimitable
space. He knew every mile of it, yet in the night the miles stretched
out and raced with him.
It was far from village or town when at last Christopher wrenched his
mind from the mechanical power that held it prisoner, and realised
that town or no town, bed or no bed, he must stop. He brought the car
to a standstill under the lea of a low ridge of downs, at a point
where an old chalk pit reared its white face, glimmering faintly in
the darkness. He hazarded a fair guess as to his whereabouts.
Whitmansworth must be fifteen or twenty miles ahead. It was nearly
midnight now. He would get no lodging even if he went on. He backed
the car off the road into the circle of the chalk pit, made as
comfortable a resting place as he could with rugs and cushions between
the motor and the white wall, and extinguished the lamps. The cool,
still night had him to herself, and cradled him to sleep as a mother
her child, under the folds of her dark mantle.
He woke when the first fingers of dawn busied themselves with the hem
of that dusky cloak, and sound as faint and tremulous as the light
itself whispered across the earth. He watched a while to see the dim
shapes reform under the glowing light, and the clouds that still
curtained the sky, take on themselves a sombre grey uniform. But
directly the line of white road took distinctness Christopher struck
camp, and boldly raced to meet the full day. An early shepherd paused
to watch him pass, returning impassively to work as he disappeared.
Two or three labouring men also stared; one even commented to a fellow
worker that "these yere motors take no more heed o' decent hours than
o' natural distances. Five in the mornin' weren't part o' the gentry's
day when I were a boy," he grumbled, "and five miles were five miles,
no more nor less. 'Tisn't more nor a mile now."
At wayside farms life was in full swing. Dumbly impatient cows
listened for the clatter of milk-pails, and solemn cart horses trudged
to the upland fields. Presently he passed through a town where his own
Patrimondi made pleasant, easy going. The town servants were cleaning
the smooth, elastic surface with big jets of water. Christopher went
slowly by with an eye on his handiwork. He fancied he saw a small
defect at a turn and stopped to examine it. An indignant worker told
him brusquely he needn't try to pick holes in their roads because
there weren't any, and Christopher returned meekly he thought they
looked good, but fancied the mark he examined was a flaw.
"It ain't any business of yours, anyway," was the angry retort, "the
men who laid this knew what they was a-doin'."
Another man had joined him who had worked on the new road when
Christopher was to and fro there, and recognised him. He plucked the
other by the sleeve.
"Shut up, you fool," he growled, though not so low but Christopher
heard him. "It's the Roadmaker himself. Mornin', sir."
Christopher gave him a few words of recognition and went on.
The slate roofs of Whitmansworth came into sight as the church clock
struck six. He could see the white Union House high on the hill to the
left, but he had no mind to halt there. He stopped the car at the gate
of the town cemetery. It was not a beautiful place. Just a little
square field with an avenue of young trees and an orderly row of green
mounds and haphazard monuments, but in one corner amongst a row of
unmarked graves was a white cross. "In remembrance of my mother," was
the sole inscription it bore. Christopher stood and looked at it
gravely. The thought of another grave amongst the family tombs in the
trim churchyard at Stormly crossed his mind. It was better here in the
little, plain unpretentious cemetery amongst the very poor whose
sorrows she had made her own. She would sleep more quietly so.
But he found no message from her here, nor had he expected it. Her
actual presence had not consecrated the spot for him, and he was
impatient to gain the road made sacred by reason of the tired, failing
footsteps that made their last effort there: the Via Dolorosa of his
mother's life.
He passed the milestone where he had waited for his fortune fifteen
years ago, and saw it in his mind's eye hastening towards him from the
east in the person of Charles Aston. That was the _true_
Fortune,--this spurious thing they were trying to harness to his back
was evil to the core. Had not that been the very meaning of those
painful steps that had struggled away from it along this very
road--the meaning of the lonely grave amongst the broken-down poor of
Whitmansworth Union?
He stopped the car near a little bridge where a thin brooklet made a
noisy chatter, and sat still, his chin on his hand, thinking deeply.
This was the spot for which he had raced all these hours, for here he
and she had rested that terrible night to gather strength for the last
mile that lay between the woman and rest.
* * * * *
"It's better to be tired and hungry oneself, Jim, than to make other
people so. Don't forget that."
"I am not really tired," the child maintained stoutly, "but it's going
to rain again. Can't you come on?"
"Presently."
"You think it is the right road?"
"I don't know, Jim. I was sure of it at first, but I'm sure of nothing
now."
* * * * *
The words and scene were as clear to him as the day they happened. He
saw in it now a deeper significance, a possible meaning that was the
last note of tragedy to his mother's story. For that note is reached
only when the faith in which we have lived, acted and endured, fails
us. That is the bitterness and foretaste of death. Then only can the
shadow of it fall on us, and in great mercy gather us into its shade.
The Right Road! There was no doubt or shadow for Christopher yet. He
had taken the first step on the Road he had chosen, and he would not
look back. He would not stultify his mother's sacrifice. Such faint
echoes as he heard calling him back were temptations to which he must
turn a deaf ear. He would go forward on his chosen path, and Peter
Masters' millions must look after themselves.
That was the final decision. Yet he sat there, still figuring the
persons of the woman and the child trudging down the road towards
him, and as he gazed, without conscious effort, the forms changed. The
boy grew to manhood: the woman took to herself youth, youth with a
crown of golden hair and the form of Patricia.
A throb of exultation leapt through him. Here were the real riches and
fulness of life within his grasp and he, in blunt stupidity, had not
chosen to see, had set material good and vague uncertainties before
his own incomparable gain and happiness. Whatever had held him back
before, the clouded life or personal ambition, or Cæsar's need, it was
swept away now like some low-lying mist before the wind, and left the
clear vision, the man and the woman together on the long, smooth Road
he would lay for her tender feet.
There should be no more delay than the needed time to race from here
to her. Twenty-five miles of country that his car was eager to devour.
He slipped away swiftly from the past as he had done before on this
very road--to a new future.