“I understand the fortune well enough now,” said Christopher bitterly; “anyone can do it if they take one aspect of things and subordinate everybody and everything to it.”

He was at Marden again. It was a glorious spring evening and CÆsar’s couch was drawn up to the open window. Mr. Aston sat on the far side of it and Christopher leant against the window-frame smoking moodily.

“You will dissipate it fast enough at the rate you are going,” remarked CÆsar. His eyes followed every movement of the young man with a jealous hunger.

Christopher shook his head resignedly. “It can’t be done. It goes on making itself. We are going to allow ourselves ten thousand a year. It’s a fearful lot for two people”—his eyes wandered across the lawn to Patricia, where she sat with Renata—“or even three, but that’s what it costs to live properly at Stormly, and the rest has to be used somehow.”

“How about Stormly Park? Do you and Patricia like the place?”

He shook his head again. “I’m afraid we don’t. We both feel we are living in an hotel. But I must be there on the spot, and she too. As it is, we have only had time to do so little.”

“Cottages, schools, hospitals,” murmured Mr. Aston, softly.

“They are only means to an end,” returned Christopher quickly, “only what they are entitled to as human beings in a civilised world. Think of having to begin at that. We’ve got to make restitution before 381 we can make progress. They mistrust all one does, of course. They use the bathrooms as coal stores, their coppers for potatoes, their allotments as rubbish ground, but it’s better than the front yard, and, anyhow, the children will know a bit more about it.”

“You have laid down Patrimondi roads for them,” CÆsar put in.

“Of course,” Christopher answered, accepting it literally, “they appreciate that at least. The roads were beastly.”

Mr. Aston looked at CÆsar and they both smiled.

“I’ve persuaded Sam to open a shop in Stormly and put Jim into it. He says you can’t make a living honestly in grocery, but I’d take himself in preference to his word.”

“You’ve beaten him after all, old chap.”

It was CÆsar who spoke, and he held out his thin hand towards his big boy, who came and sat by him in silence a while. The twilight crept up over the earth and freed the soul of things as it stole their material forms. The two men looking out and watching the gentle robber, wasted no regrets on the day, no fears on the approaching night. Behind them, where Mr. Aston sat, it was dark already, and as his son watched Christopher, so he watched Aymer.

“We have made our roads,” he thought, “Aymer and I, and thank God we leave behind us a better Roadmaker still, who will make smooth paths for the children’s feet.”

Outside two white figures came slowly towards the house and were joined by a third, Nevil, to judge by his height.

“CÆsar,” said Christopher, “have you forgiven me taking my own way and giving up what you gave me?”

“Do you think I see anything to forgive in it?” 382

“You gave me my choice, and you gave me my chance. It looked on the surface so ungrateful,” persisted Christopher.

“You question the quality of my eyesight?”

“I doubt your forgiveness when you are so flippant, my best of fathers.”

“For what do you want forgiveness specifically?”

“For giving up my work as a Roadmaker.”

“I did not know you had given it up.”

In the quiet hours of the night Aymer Aston paced those even roads his feet had never trodden, saw them spreading far and wide across the earth, heard the echo of countless footsteps stepping down the ages, knew that life itself was made an easier road for thousands of little feet that would take their first steps on better ground than their parents had done, knew that there were less crippled, less maimed, less halt in the sum total of the world’s suffering by reason of one Roadmaker’s career.

But it was Aymer Aston with the crippled form and maimed life who had put the spade first into the Roadmaker’s hand.

Meanwhile the Roadmaker slept the sleep of the just and forgot all these things.