Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker Part 21

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

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

"Stop it, Patricia," he said imperiously.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aymer, too, was silent.

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

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

Aymer ignored the irrelevant remark.

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

Nevil strolled across to his brother and sat on the edge of his couch.

He took up a sandy kitten, descendant of one of Christopher's early pets, and began playing with it, attempting to wrap it up in his handkerchief.

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

said Aymer steadily.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Very well," answered his brother meekly, "but it is. Aymer, don't be an a.s.s, 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 circ.u.mference, 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 pa.s.s him occasionally in a pa.s.sage, 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 subst.i.tuted. 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 hards.h.i.+p, 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 outs.h.i.+ne 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 pa.s.sed 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 bal.u.s.trades 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 s.p.a.ce 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 b.u.t.ton 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?"