Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker Part 64

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Who's dead?"

They looked at him uneasily, and at one another.

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

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

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

"It's Ann Barty's little chap as was pa.s.sing. We thought 'twere but the gla.s.s."

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

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

"One shall be taken, the other left."

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

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

Someone had gone, it appeared. Someone else had gone for a doctor.

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

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

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

"Where are you going, sir?"

The foreman ventured this much on sheer necessity.

"To Ann Barty."

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

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

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

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

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

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

Christopher found a group already a.s.sembled round

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

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

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

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

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

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

"They say he's dead, he's dead. My boy d.i.c.k," she moaned.

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

CHAPTER x.x.xV

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

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

Little d.i.c.k Barty received more honour in death than in life and the bereaved mother drew more consolation from the impressive funeral than poor Christopher.

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