Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker Part 42

The other looked disappointed and stopped.

"I'm sorry," he said. "We thought you were. There were rumours"--he hesitated, "if you are not coming perhaps it is no good showing you.

It makes a difference."

"I want to see where the people live," insisted Christopher, looking him squarely in the face.

The other nodded and they went on and came to a narrow street of mean, two-storied houses, with cracked walls and warped door-posts, blackened with smoke, begrimed with dirt. As much of the spring sunshine as struggled through the haze overshadowing the place served but to emphasise the hideous squalor of it. Children, for the most part st.u.r.dy-limbed and well-developed, swarmed in the road, women in a more or less dishevelled condition stared out of open doors at them as they pa.s.sed.

To the secret surprise of Fulner his companion made no remark, betrayed no sign of disgust or distaste. He looked at it all; his face was grave and impa.s.sive and Fulner was again disappointed.

They pa.s.sed a glaring new public house, the only spot in the neighbourhood where the sun could find anything to reflect his clouded brightness.

"We wanted that corner for a club," said Fulner bitterly, "but the brewer outbid us."

"Who's the landlord?" demanded Christopher sharply.

Fulner paused a moment before he answered.

"You are a cousin of Mr. Masters, aren't you?"

"No relation at all. Is he the landlord?"

"The land here is all his. Not what is on it."

A woman was coming down the road, a woman in a bright green dress with a dirty lace blouse fastened with a gold brooch. She had turquoise earrings in her ears and rings on her fingers.

She stopped Fulner.

"Mr. Fulner," she said in a quavering voice, "they say the master's at the works and that Scott's given Jim away to save his own skin. It isn't true, is it?"

Fulner looked at her with pity. Christopher liked him better than ever.

"I'm afraid it's true, Mrs. Lawrie, but Scott couldn't help himself.

Mr. Masters spotted the game when we were in the big engine-room. You go down to the main gate and wait for Jim. Perhaps you'll get him home safe if you take him the short cut, not this way." He nodded his head towards the public house they had pa.s.sed.

"It's a shame," broke out the woman wildly, but her sentences were overlaid with unwomanly words, "they all does it. I ask now, how's we to get coal at all if we don't get the leavings. Jim only does what they all does. What's 'arf a pail of coal to 'im? I'd like to talk to 'un, I would. Jim will go mad again, and I've three of 'un now to think of, the brats." She flung up her arms with a superbly helpless gesture and stumbled off down the road.

Christopher looked after her with a white face.

"What does it mean?" he asked.

"The men have a way of appropriating the remains of the last measure of coal they put on before going off duty. It's wrong of course: it's been going on for ages. I warned Scott--he's the foreman. They've been complaining about the coal supply at headquarters. Mr. Masters caught Jim Lawrie at it to-day as we left the big engine-room."

"Is it a first offence?"

"There's no first offence here," returned Fulner grimly. "There's one only. There's the club room. We have to pay 20 a year rent for the ground and then to keep it going."

"But surely, Mr. Masters----" began Christopher and stopped.

"Mr. Masters has nothing to do with the place outside the works. It is not part of the System. He pays 6d. a head more than any other employer and that frees him. There's the station."

He paused as if he would leave his companion to make his way on alone.

He was obviously dissatisfied and uneasy.

"Won't you come to the station with me?" Christopher asked, and as they walked he began to speak slowly and hesitatingly, as one who must choose from words that were on the verge of overflowing. "I was brought up in Lambeth, Mr. Fulner. I am used to poverty and bad sights. Don't go on thinking I don't care. These people earn fortunes beside those I have known, but in all London I've never seen anything so horrible as this, nothing so hideous, sordid--" he stopped with a gasp, "the women--the children--the lost desire--the ugliness."

They walked on silently. Presently he spoke again.

"You are a plucky man, Mr. Fulner. I couldn't face it."

"I've no choice. I don't know why I showed you it, except I thought you were coming and I wanted your help."

"Are there many who care?"

"No. It's too precarious. Mr. Masters doesn't approve of fools. Mind you, the men have no grievances inside the works. The unions have no chance now. It's fair to remember that."

"Is it the same everywhere?"

"The System's the same. I know nothing about the other works but that.

There's the train: we must hurry."

"What do you want for your club?" Christopher asked as he entered his carriage.

"A billiard table, gym fittings, books. We've a license. We sell beer to members," his eyes were eager: the man's heart was in his hopeless self-imposed work.

Christopher nodded. "I shall not forget."

So they parted: each wondering over the other--would have wondered still more if they had known in what relationship they would stand to each other when they next met.

CHAPTER XXI

Christopher stood for a moment inside the great hall at Stormly Park and looked round. It was quite beautiful. Peter Masters, having chosen the best man in England for his purpose, had had the sense to let him alone. There was no discordant note anywhere and Christopher was quite alive to its perfections. But coming straight from Stormly Town the contrast was too glaring and too crude. It was not that Peter Masters was rich and his people were poor. Poverty and riches have run hand in hand down the generations of men, but here, the people were poor in all things, in morals, in desire, in beauty, in all that lifted them in the scale of humanity, in order that he, Peter Masters, should be superfluously rich, outrageously so!

Christopher struggled hard to be just: he knew it was not the superfluous money that was grudged, it was the more precious time and thought saved with a greed that was worse than the hunger of a miser--for no purpose but to add to over-filled stores. He knew all Peter Masters' arguments in defence of his System already: That he compelled no man to serve him, that none did so except on a clear understanding of the terms; that for the hours they toiled for him he paid highly, and his responsibility ceased when those hours were over.

If Peter Masters was no philanthropist at least he was no humbug. He said openly he worked his System because it paid him. If he could have made more by being philanthropical he would have been so, but he would not have called it philanthropy: it would have been a financial method.

The grim selfishness of it all crushed Christopher as an intolerable burden that was none of his, and yet, because he was here accepting a part of its results, he could not clear himself of its shadow. So, twenty-two years ago, had his mother thought until the terror of that shadow outweighed all dread of further evil, and she had fled from its shade into a world where sun and shadow were checkered and evil and good a twisted rope by which to hold.

Some dim note from that long struggle and momentous decision had its influence with her son now. Without knowing it he was hastening to the same conclusions she had reached.

He lunched alone and then to escape the persistence of his thoughts decided to explore the west wing of the house which he had hardly entered.

At the end of a long corridor a square of yellow sunlight fell across the purple carpet from an open door and he stopped to look in.

It was a pretty room with three windows opening on to a terrace and a door communicating with a room beyond. The walls were panelled with pale blue silk and the chairs and luxurious couches covered with the same. There were several pictures of great value, on a French writing table lay an open blotter, but the blotting paper was crumbling and dry and the ink in the carved bra.s.s inkstand was dry also.