Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker Part 15

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 a.s.sent, 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 s.p.a.cious 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 ill.u.s.trated 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 Caesar 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 Caesar 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 a.s.suredly, 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 att.i.tude 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. Caesar 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 Caesar's room to find sympathy and comfort. He tumbled in at the window with Sir Joshua in his arms, and flung himself on Caesar 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 un.o.bserved; but Caesar 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.

Caesar was playing with his favourite long tortoise-sh.e.l.l 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."