Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker Part 22

"Yes. He apologised for the delay, but thought it useless to send it until he had investigated the gallery itself."

"That's the business of his engineers. If he is not satisfied with them he should get others."

Mr. Foilet bowed, selected a paper from the sheaf he carried and handed it over. Peter Masters perused it with precisely the same kindly smiling countenance he wore when studying a paper or deciphering a friendly epistle. It was not a friendly letter at all, it was a curt, bald statement that a certain rich gallery in a certain mine was unsafe for working, though the opinion of two specialists differed on the point. The two reports were enclosed, and when all three reports were read Peter asked for the wage sheet of the mine.

There was no cause of complaint there.

"The articles of the last settlement between the firm and the men have been rigorously adhered to?" questioned Masters, flinging down the paper.

"Rigorously. I will say they have taken no advantage of their success."

Peter smiled. "It is for us to do that. Mr. Weirs p.r.o.nounces the gallery fit for working. The seam is one of the richest we have. What improvements can be done to the ventilation and propping before Monday are to be done, but the gallery is to be worked then, until the new shaft is completed. Then we will reconsider it."

Again Mr. Foilet bowed, but his hand fingered his gla.s.ses nervously.

"And if the men refuse?" he questioned in a low voice, with averted eyes.

Peter Masters waved his hand.

"There are others. Men who receive wages like that must expect to have a certain amount of danger to face. Danger is the spice of life." He leant back in his chair, humming a little tune and watched Mr. Foilet with smiling eyes. Mr. Foilet was wondering whether his chief was personally fond of spice, but he knew better than to say more. He left the room with a vague uneasy feeling at his heart. "A nice concern it will be if anything happens before the New Shaft's ready," he muttered; "if it wasn't for his wonderful luck, I'd have refused."

So he thought: but in reality he would have done no such thing.

The manager of the Stormby Foundry, which was a private property of Mr. Masters's, and no company, was the next visitor. He was a tall lank Scotchman with a hardy countenance and a soft heart when not fretted by the roll of the Machine. The question he brought was concerning the selling of some land in the neighbourhood of the works, for the erection of cottages.

"Surely you need no instructions on that point, Mr. Murray," said Peter a little more curtly than he had spoken to Mr. Foilet.

"There are two offers," said the Scotchman quietly. "Tennant will give 150 and Fortman 200."

"Then there is no question."

"Tennant will build decent cottages of good material and with proper foundations, and Fortman--well, you know what Fortman's hovels are like."

"No, I don't," said Peter drily. "He has never been my landlord."

Mr. Murray appeared to swallow something, probably a wish, with difficulty.

"They are mere hovels pretending to be villas."

"No one's obliged to live in them."

"There are no others," persisted Mr. Murray desperately, imperilling his own safety for the cause.

Masters frowned ominously.

"Mr. Murray," he said, "as I have before remarked, you are too far-sighted. Your work is to sell the ground for the benefit of the company, which, I may remind you, is for your benefit also. You have not to build the cottages or live in them. If the people don't like them they needn't take them. I do not profess to house the people. I pay them accordingly. They can afford to live in decent houses if they like."

"If they can get them," remarked the heroic Mr. Murray.

Peter smiled, his anger apparently having melted away.

"Let them arrange it with Fortman, and keep your obstinacy for more profitable business, Murray, and you'll be as rich as I am some day."

There was nothing apparently offensive in the words, yet the speaker seemed a singularly unlovable person as he spoke them, and Murray did not smile at the compliment, but went out with a grave air.

Neither he nor his business lingered on Peter's mind once the door had closed behind him. Peter got up and lounged to the window. He stood a while looking down into the street below with its crowd of strangely foreshortened figures. On the opposite side of the wide street was a shop where mechanical toys were sold, a paradise for boys. As Peter watched, a chubby-faced, stout little man with a tall, lanky boy at his side came to a stand before the windows. Peter knew the man to be one of the hardest-headed, shrewdest men in the iron trade, and he guessed the boy was his son. Both figures disappeared within the shop, the elder with evident reluctance, the younger with a.s.sured expectation. Peter waited a long time--a longer period than he would have supposed he had to spare, had he thought of it. They emerged at last in company with a big parcel, hailed a hansom and drove away.

Peter looked at the clock and chuckled. "To think Coblan is that sort of fool. Well, that youngster will add little to the fortunes of Coblan and Company. Toys!" He turned away from the window, and, seated again at his desk, began to scribble down some dates on a sc.r.a.p of paper. Then he leant back in his chair thoughtfully.

"Hibbault says that boy has just got a rise in that berth of his in Liverpool. I'll let him have a year or so more to prove his grit. I suppose Hibbault's to be trusted, but I might write to the firm and ask how he gets on! However, Aymer's boy shall have the vacancy!"

Therefore he took up his pen again and wrote the following brief letter:

PRINCES BUILDING, Birmingham, April 10.

DEAR AYMER:--

Are you going to 'prentice that boy of yours to me or not?

I've an opening now in the Steel Axle Company, if you like to take it.

Yours, PETER MASTERS.

Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker

PART II

CHAPTER XI

Despite his honest intention never to stand between Christopher and any fate that might serve to draw him into connection with his father, Aymer had a hard fight to master his keen desire to put Peter's letter in the fire and say nothing about it. Surely, after all, he had the best right to say what his adopted charge's future should be. It was he who had rescued him from obscurity, who had lavished on him the love and care his selfish, erratic father, for his own ambitious ends, denied him. Aymer believed, moreover, that a career under Peter's influence would mean either the blunting if not the utter destruction of every generous and admirable quality in the boy, or a rapid unbalanced development of those socialistic tendencies, the seeds of which were sown by his mother and nurtured in the hard experience of his early days. Besides this, Peter's interest in the boy was probably a mere freak, or at the best, sprang from a desire to serve his cousin, unless by any remote chance he had stumbled on a clue to Christopher's ident.i.ty.

This last suspicion wove itself like a black thread into the grey woof of Aymer's existence. His whole being by now had become concentrated in the boy's life. It was a renewal of youth, hopes, ambitions, again possible in the person of this child, and for the second time a fierce, restless jealousy of his cousin began to stir in the inner depths of Aymer's being, as fire which may yet break into life beneath the grey, piled-up ashes which conceal it.

He sought help and advice from none and fought hard alone for his own salvation through the long watches of a black night--fought against the jealousy that prompted him to hedge Christopher about with precautions and restrictions which, however desirable they might seem to his finite wisdom, yet were, he knew, only the outcome of his smouldering jealousy, and might well grow to formidable barriers for Christopher to climb in later years. Aymer fought, too, for that sense of larger faith that in the midst of careful action yet leaves room for the hand of G.o.d and does not confound the little ideas of the builder with the vast plan of the Great Architect.

So the letter--the little fact which stood for such great possibilities--was shown to Christopher, to whom it was a mere nothing, to be tossed aside with scorn.

"I don't want to be under him," he commented indignantly, "I don't care about his old axles," and then because Caesar was silent and he felt himself in the wrong, he apologised.

"All the same, I don't want to go to him unless you particularly wish it, Caesar," he insisted.

But Caesar did not answer directly.