Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker Part 43

In the middle of the room surrounded by a pile of Holland covers and hangings stood Mrs. Eliot, the housekeeper. Christopher had seen her once or twice and she was the only servant, except the butler, with whom he had heard Peter Masters exchange a word. "Lor', sir, how you made me jump!" she cried at sight of him in the doorway. "It isn't often one hears a footfall down here, they girls keep away or I'd be about 'em as they know very well."

"May I come in?" asked Christopher. "What a pretty room."

The woman glanced round hesitatingly. "Well, now, you're here. Yes.

It's pretty enough, sir."

"Are you getting ready for visitors?"

He had no intention of being curious, he was only thankful to find some distraction from his own thoughts, and there seemed no reason why he should not chat to the kindly portly lady in charge.

"No visitors here, sir. We don't have much company. Just a gentleman now and then, as may be yourself."

She pulled a light pair of steps to the window and mounted them cautiously one step at a time, dragging a long Holland curtain in her hand.

"Do you want to hang that up?" asked Christopher, watching her with idle interest. "Do let me do it, Mrs. Eliot, you'll fall off those steps if you go higher. I can't promise to catch you, but I can promise to hang curtains much better than you can." Mrs. Eliot, who was already panting with exertion and the fatigue of stretching up her ample figure to unaccustomed heights, looked down at him doubtfully.

"Whatever would Mr. Masters say, sir?"

"He would be quite pleased his visitor found so harmless an amus.e.m.e.nt.

You come down, Mrs. Eliot. Curtain-hanging is a pa.s.sion with me, but what a shame to cover up those pretty curtains with dingy Holland!"

"They wouldn't be pretty curtains now, sir," said Mrs. Eliot, descending with elaborate care, "if they hadn't been covered up these twenty years and more."

"What a waste," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Christopher now on the steps, "isn't the room ever used?"

"Never since Mrs. Masters went out of it. 'Eliot,' says the master--I was first housemaid then--'keep Mrs. Masters' rooms just as they are, ready for use. She will want them again some day.' So I did."

Christopher shifted the steps and hung another curtain.

"I didn't know there had been a Mrs. Masters."

"Most folk have forgotten it, I think, sir."

"This was her boudoir, I suppose."

"Yes. And I think he's never been in here since she went, but once, and that was five years after. The boudoir bell rang and I came, all of a tremble, to hear it for the first time after so long. He was standing as it may be there. 'That cushion's faded, Eliot,' he said, 'get another made like it. You are to replace everything that gets torn or faded or worn without troubling me. Keep the rooms just as they are.' He had a pile of photographs in his hand and a little picture, and he locked them up in that cabinet, and I don't suppose it's been opened since. He never made any fuss about it from the first. No, nor altered his ways either." She drew a cover over a chair and tied the strings viciously. "It's for all the world as if he'd never had a wife at all."

Christopher had hung the three sets of curtains now and he sat on the top step and looked round the room curiously. It was less oppressively modern that the rest of the house and he had an idea the master of Stormly was not responsible for that. He felt a vivid interest in the late Mrs. Masters, Why had she gone and why had neither Aymer nor St.

Michael mentioned her existence? He longed to override his own sense of etiquette and question Mrs. Eliot, who continued to ramble on in her own way.

"I takes off the coverings every two months, and brushes it all down myself," she explained, "and I've never had anyone to help me before.

If I were to let them girls in they'd break every vase in the place with their frills and their 'didn't see's.'"

"Do those sheets hang over the panels?"

"I couldn't think of troubling you! But if you will, sir, why then, that's the sheet for there. They are all numbered."

Christopher covered up the dainty walls regretfully. Why had she left it? Had she and Peter quarrelled? It seemed to Christopher, in his present mood towards Mr. Masters, they might well have done so.

"Do you remember Mrs. Masters?" he was tempted to ask presently.

"Indeed I do, seeing I was here when he brought her home. Tall, thin, and like a queen the way she walked, a great lady, for all she was simple enough by birth, they say. But she went, and where she went none of us know to this day, and some say the Master doesn't either, but I don't think it myself."

Christopher straightened a pen and ink sketch of a workman on the wall. It was a clever piece of work, life-like and sympathetic.

"She did that," said Mrs. Eliot with a proprietor's pride. "She was considered clever that way, I've been told. That's another of hers on the easel over there."

Christopher examined it and gave a gasp. It was a bold sketch of two men playing cards at a table with a lamp behind them. The expression on the players' faces was defined and forcible, but it was not their artistic merit that startled him, but their ident.i.ty. One--the tolerant winner--was Peter himself--the other--the easy loser--was Aymer Aston.

So Aymer did know of Mrs. Masters' existence, knew her well enough for her to make this intimate likeness of him.

"Was it done here?" he asked slowly.

"No, she brought it with her. I don't know who the other gentleman is, but it's a beautiful picture of the master, isn't it? so life-like."

"Yes."

He looked again round the room, fighting again with his desire to search for more traces of its late owner, and then grew hot with shame at his curiosity. He left Mrs. Eliot rather abruptly and wandered out of the house, but the unknown mistress of the place haunted him, glided before him across the smooth lawns, he could almost hear the rustle of her dress on the gravel, and then recollected with relief it was only the memory of the old game he used to play at Aston House with his dead mother, transferred by some mental suggestion to Stormly Park. Presently he saw the bulky form of Peter Masters on the steps and joined him reluctantly.

"I want to see you, Christopher," said Peter as he approached. "Come into my room. I shan't be able to go to London this week to buy the car, so you must stay until Monday and go up with me then," he announced, and without waiting for a.s.sent or protest plunged into his subject with calculated abruptness.

"This road business of yours, is there money in it?"

"I think so. It is not done yet."

"How long will it take you to perfect it?"

"How can I tell? It may mean weeks, it may mean months."

"What are you going to do when you've found it?"

"Get someone to take it up, I suppose."

Christopher was answering against his will, but the swift sharp questions left him no time to fence.

"I'll take it up now. Fit you up a laboratory and experimenting ground and give you two years to perfect it--and a partnership when it's started."

Christopher looked up with incredulous amazement.

"But it's a purely scientific speculation at present. There are just about half a dozen people on the track. We are all racing each other."

"Well, you've got to win, and I'll back you. You shall have every a.s.sistance you want--money shan't count. You can live here and have the North Park for trials, as many men as you want and no interruption."

"But it's impossible. It's not a certainty even."

"No speculation is a certainty. If you bring it off it will mean a fortune, properly managed. I can do that for you far better than Aymer. We should share profits, of course, and I should have to risk money. It's a fancy thing, but it pleases me."

Christopher got up and went to the open window. The tussle between them had come. It would need all his strength to keep himself free from this man's toils. However generous in appearance, Christopher knew they were toils for him, and must be avoided.