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 spacious 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 91 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 illustrated 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 CÆsar 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 CÆsar 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 assuredly, 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 attitude 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 92 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 93 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. CÆsar 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 CÆsar’s room to find sympathy and comfort. He tumbled in at the window with Sir Joshua in his arms, and flung himself on CÆsar 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, 94 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 unobserved; but CÆsar 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 95 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.

CÆsar was playing with his favourite long tortoise-shell 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. 96

“A cute lad,” remarked Mr. Masters; “what are you going to do with him?”

“I do not know yet.”

“Put him in the iron trade. ’Prentice him to me. There’s something in him. Did you say you didn’t know who his father was?” He shot one of his quick glances at Aymer.

The tortoise-shell paper-knife snapped in two. Aymer fitted the ends together neatly.

“No, I didn’t,” he answered very deliberately. “I told you he was my adopted son. I adopted him in order to have something to do.”

“Oh, yes. Of course, of course.” A slow smile spread over his big face. “Think of Aymer Aston of all men in the world playing at being a family man!”

He leant back in his chair and laughed out his great hearty laugh whose boyish ring, coupled with the laugher’s easy careless manners, had snared so many fish into the financial net.

“They’d like to make a family man of me again—do their dear little best—but I’m not such a fool as they think me. Men with brains and ambitions don’t want a wife. You miss less than you think, old chap,” he went on with the colossal tactlessness habitual to him when his own interests were not at stake; “a wife plays the devil with one’s business. I know.” He nodded gloomily, the smile lost under a heavy frown.

Aymer put down very carefully the broken toy he had been playing with. Peter’s elephantine tread was so great that it had almost overstepped its victim. At all events Aymer gave no outward sign that he felt it except in his deepened colour and a faint straightening of the lips.

“What on earth do you do with yourself?” went on Peter thoughtfully; “the care of a kid like that doesn’t absorb all your brains, I know.” 97

“What would you recommend me to do?” asked Aymer quietly.

“With your head for figures and your leisure you should take to the Market. Have a machine and tapes fitted up in reach, and, by Jove! in a quiet spot like this, out of the way of other men’s panics and nonsense, you could rule the world.”

“The Market, I think you said.”

“Same thing. Think of it, Aymer,” he went on eagerly and genuinely interested in his proposition, whether spontaneous or not. He began walking up and down the room, working out his idea with that grasp of detail that had made him the millionaire he was.

“You could have the instruments and a private wire fixed up along the wall there, and your sofa by them. A clerk over there: it would be a sort of companion. You’ve plenty of capital to start with, and wouldn’t have to lose your head at the first wrong deal. Of course you’d want someone the other end, a figurehead and mouthpiece, and someone to show you the lines, start you off; I’d be pleased to do it. We could make a partnership concern of it, if you liked.”

There was a quick sidelong glint in his eyes towards Aymer as he came to a stand near the sofa.

“What particular results would you expect?” inquired Aymer, knowing the only plan to keep the enthusiast at bay was to humour him.

“Why, man, you might be the greatest power in the world—you—the unseen, unknown, mysterious Brain—you would have time—you would escape the crazy influences that ruin half the men ‘on ’Change’—and you’ve got the head for it. Calculation, nerve, everything. It would be just the thing for you. You’d forget all about not being able to walk in a week. I wonder why none of us have thought of it before.”

“I’m getting used to it after twelve years,” said 98 Aymer, with shut teeth; “the objection to your scheme is that I do not happen to want money.”

“Power, power, man,” cried the other impatiently. “Money is just metal, its value lies in the grip it gives you over other men, and if you don’t even care for that, there’s the joy of chancing it. And you were a born gambler, Aymer, you can’t deny that,” he laughed heartily, but also again came the quick sidelong glint of his eyes. “Think of it, old fellow,” he said carelessly, dropping his enthusiastic tone, “it would be a good deal better for you than doing nothing. It’s such wicked waste.”

For the first time Aymer winced.

“I’ll think of it, and let you know if it’s likely to be entertained. I have the boy, you know; that gives me something to do.”

“Poof! Let him bring himself up if you want to make a successful man of him. The more he educates himself, the better he’ll get on. If you do it, you’ll make him soft. I know! Public School: University: Examinations, and £200 a year if he’s lucky. That’s your education! All very well if you are born with a golden spoon in your mouth and can afford to be a fool. If you can’t, better learn to rough-and-tumble it in the world. Education doesn’t make successful men.”

“You were not exactly uneducated, Peter,” said Aymer drily.

Peter grinned.

“Ah, but I was a genius. I couldn’t help it. It would have been the same had I been born in the gutter. No, I believe in the rough-and-tumble school to make hard-headed men.”

“Well, for all you know, Christopher may be a genius, or be born with a golden spoon in his mouth.”

The other looked up sharply.

“Nevil has a boy of his own, hasn’t he?” 99

“Don’t be a fool if you can help it, Peter. Other people have golden spoons besides the gilded Aston family.”

Peter shrugged his shoulders. “It’s no business of mine, of course, but the boy looks sharp. Pity to spoil him. Ha, Ha. I don’t spoil mine.”

He got up yawning and sauntered over to the fireplace and so did not see Aymer’s rigid face go white and then red.

“I’ve got a boy—I think it’s a boy—somewhere. Daresay you’ve forgotten. You weren’t very sociable, poor old chap, when it happened. About a year after your accident. He’s about somewhere or other. Oh, I back my own theories! I don’t suppose he’s a genius, so the rough-and-tumble school for him.”

“You know the school?”

“I can put my hand on him when I want to—that’s not yet. The world can educate him till I’m ready to step in.”

“If he’ll have you.”

Peter chuckled. “He won’t be a fool—even if he’s not a genius. Well, you think of my proposition, I’ll go halves.”

“How you have disappointed me, Peter. I thought you called from a disinterested desire to see me after all these years.”

“Twelve years, isn’t it? Well, you look better than you did then. I didn’t think you would come through—didn’t think you meant to. I’m sorry to miss Cousin Charles. He doesn’t approve of me, but he’s too polite to say so, even in a letter. How does he wear?”

“Well, on the whole. He works too hard.”

The other spread out his hands.

“Works. And to what end? I’m glad to have seen you again. It’s like old times, if you weren’t on that beastly sofa, poor old chap.”

“Perhaps you will call again when father is in,” 100 said Aymer steadily, with a mute wonder if a square inch of him was left unbruised.

“To tell the truth, I’m rarely in London. I work from Birmingham and New York, and calling is an expensive amusement to a busy man.”

“Produces nothing?”

“Yes, a good deal of pleasure. It’s worth it occasionally.”

He stood over his cousin, looking down at him with quite genuine concern and liking in his eyes. His size, his aggressiveness, his blundering disregard of decency towards trouble, everything about him was on such a gigantic scale that one could not weigh him by any accepted standard. Aymer knew it, and notwithstanding Peter’s unique powers of hurting him to the soul, he made no attempt to scale him, but met him on his own ground and ignored the torture.

“What has it cost you exactly, this visit?”

Peter considered quite gravely.

“Let me see. I was to have seen Tomlands. He’s ceding his rights in the Lodal Valley Affair and his figure goes up each day.” He considered again. “Three thousand,” he answered with a wide grin.

“I am abashed at my value,” said Aymer gravely. “I daren’t ask you to come again now.”

“Oh, I’ll have an extravagant fit again, some day. Where’s the boy?” His hand was in his pocket and Aymer heard the chink of coin.

“At work, or should be. Don’t tip him, please, Peter. He has as much as he needs.”

“How do you know? A boy needs as much as he can get. Well, don’t forget my advice. Don’t educate him.”

He was gone at last. Presumably to gather in the Lodal Rights before their value further increased.

Charles Aston did not betray any particular sorrow at missing the visitor. 101

“It’s rather odd his turning up again now after forgetting our existence so long,” he remarked, frowning. “Of course we’ve had correspondence—not very agreeable either.”

“I can hardly wonder at his not coming to see me, at all events. It’s nearly twelve years since we met, and I wasn’t very polite to him that time,” said Aymer wearily.

“There was a reasonable excuse for you.”

“I’m afraid I did not consider reason much in those days, sir. If he’d been a saint in disguise I should have behaved like a brute just the same.”

Charles Aston came and stood looking down with a kind, quiet, satisfied smile. The attitude was the same as Peter Masters’ and Aymer, remembering it, smiled too.

“What did he really want, Aymer? He never came for nothing.”

“To induce me to go on the Stock-Exchange in partnership with him, I think. Thought it would be less boring than lying here all day with nothing to do.”

Charles Aston opened his mouth to protest and shut it resolutely, turned and walked down the room ruffling his hair, so that when he went back to Aymer, his iron-grey thatch was more picturesque than neat.

Aymer laughed.

“Who’s lost his temper now?” he demanded.

His father looked in a glass and, perceiving the devastation, attempted to remedy it.

“I’m awfully sorry,” he said with much contrition, “but I can’t keep my temper over Peter. Has he improved?”

“Not a bit. He doesn’t hurt, father, he’s too big,” he paused a moment, “he saw Christopher.”

Mr. Aston gave Aymer a scrutinising glance.

“It was unavoidable, I suppose.” 102

“I did not try to stop it.”

“And the result?”

“There was no result except he appeared impressed with his mental capacity.”

Mr. Aston ruffled his hair again in a perturbed manner.

“Didn’t he see his likeness to his mother, Aymer?”

“Apparently not. It’s not so strong as it was. He offered me advice on his upbringing.”

“Did he?” with an indignant shake of the head.

“All in good faith,” said Aymer steadily, “he said he didn’t approve of education; as a proof of his sincerity, he cited the line he was taking with his own boy.”

There was a silence.

“He said he could put his hand on him when he liked.” Aymer’s voice was quite level and inexpressive, but his father leant forward and put his hand on his, saying hastily.

“He always says that. He believes it just a matter of money. It was his one answer to all my remonstrances. When he wanted him he could find him—not before. Aymer, I wish I’d been at home. Why did you see him?”

“I could hardly refuse; it would have been churlish—unpolitic. I did not know why he came. He was evidently struck with Christopher.”

He laughed a little unsteadily, but his father smothered a sigh and watched him with curious solicitude. The unwritten law that Christopher had learnt so well had been very heavily infringed, and Charles Aston had no liking for the man who had infringed it, though he was his first cousin.

He was weighing in his mind what his son must have suffered in that interview, and trying to see if it could have been foreseen and prevented.

Peter and Aymer, who was only five years his 103 junior, had been great friends in the far-off days before the tragedy, but the former was too nearly, though half unconsciously, connected with that to be a possible intimate for Aymer now. The possibility of his turning up in this casual manner, ignoring with ruthless amiability all that had passed, had really never occurred to either father or son, and they were both unprepared for a narrowly escaped crisis. But Aymer was evidently not going to own frankly how great had been the strain and how badly he had suffered under it. He set his pride to heal his bruised feelings, however, applauding himself secretly for not betraying to his cousin the torture to which he had unintentionally put him. But he could not, having done this, altogether put it from him, and the subject of Peter Masters cropped up next morning when Christopher was sitting on the edge of CÆsar’s bed.

Aymer asked him abruptly what he thought of the visitor of the previous day.

“I don’t like him at all. I think he’s beastly,” was Master Christopher’s emphatic verdict.

“He is my second cousin, his mother was an Aston, and he is one of the richest men in England, if not quite the richest. He is thought rich even in America.”

“And horrid, too, just the same: only perhaps I oughtn’t to say so as he is your cousin,” added the boy with sudden confusion.

Aymer regarded him with an introspective air.

“He is a strange man, though many people don’t like him. We were great friends once.”

Christopher opened his eyes very wide.

“You—and Mr. Masters?”

“Yes—when I was a young man like others. We quarrelled—or rather I quarrelled—he came to see me when I was first—ill,” he jerked the word out awkwardly, but never took his eyes from Christopher’s 104 face. “I was perfectly brutal to him. That’s twelve years ago. Most men would never have spoken to me again, but he doesn’t bear malice.”

“He wouldn’t mind what anyone said to him,” persisted Christopher; “fancy your being friends!”

“You like me best then?”

Master Christopher caught up a pillow and hurled it at him, and then made a violent effort to smother him under it.

“I think you’re almost as nasty—when you say things like that, CÆsar.”

“Then retreat from my company and tell Vespasian his baby is waiting to be dressed.”

Vespasian found his master in one of his rare inconsequent moods, talking nonsense with provoking persistence and exercising his wits in teasing everyone who came in his way.

Vespasian smiled indulgently and spent his leisure that day in assisting Christopher to construct a man-of-war out of empty biscuit boxes and cotton reels, for he was dimly possessed of the idea that the boy was in some way connected with his master’s unusually good spirits.