Part 63 (2/2)
It was a never-ceasing pleasure, and when it ended came the greater, deeper joy of his undivided love. If the aim of man is happiness, he had achieved that end as far as any human being might do so.
Yet all the while a black thread wove itself into the warp of his existence. He tried not to see it, for recognition of it would cancel that white web of life that grew daily beneath his hand. Still it was there, and the white web became uneven and knotted. He was restless, even irritable, the white turned to grey, yet still he resisted the unknown forces that pressed him onward to the dissolution of this present beautiful life. And Patricia herself, with her unbroken faith in his readiness to follow the highest when he saw it, fought with the silent Powers till at length that silence was broken by a cry so imperious that even his dogged will could refuse sight and hearing no longer.
CHAPTER x.x.xIV
As Christopher was preparing to leave the works one Sat.u.r.day afternoon he was told that a man had just arrived from Birmingham who refused to give his name, but who asked for him. Christopher hung for a moment on the step of his car and then descending again went straight to the room where his unknown visitor was waiting. He proved to be a spare, stooping man, with lips so thin and white as to be almost invisible.
His eyes, which he hardly raised from the floor, were bright with the fire of fever, and his shaking hands, one of which held a cap, concealing the other, were narrow, and the knuckles stood out with cruel prominence.
”What do you want with me?” Christopher demanded shortly.
The man looked at him sideways and did not move, but he spoke in an uncertain, quavering voice.
”You are Masters' son, ar'n't you?”
Christopher turned on him with fierce amazement, and checked himself.
”Answer my question, if you have anything to say to me, and leave my private affairs alone,” he said sternly.
”There you are,” grinned the man, the thin mouth widening to a distorted semblance of a smile, ”seems to me, seems to my mates 'tain't such a private affair, neither, leastways we pay for it.”
Christopher's instinct to turn the man out struggled with his curiosity to know what it all meant. He stood still, therefore, with his eyes fixed on the weirdly displeasing face and neglected to look at the twitching hands.
”It were bad enough when Masters were alive, curse him, with his 'system' and his 'single chance,' and his sticking to his word, but we knew where we was then. Now, none of us knows. Here's one turned off cos he broke some rule he'd never heard of; another for telling a foreman what he thought of him; my mate's chucked out for fighting--_outside the Mill Gate_, look you--What concern be it of yours what we do outside? It's a blessed show you do for us outside, isn't it? I tell you it don't concern you anyhow, you lazy bloodsucker--and look at me--I've worked for your father fifteen year, and you turn me off--you and your precious heads of departments,--because I was a day behind with my job. Well, what if I was? Hadn't I a wife what was dying with her sixth baby, and not a decent soul to come to her? We've been respectable people, we have, till we came to live in the blooming gaudy houses at Carson.”
”That's the Steel Axle Company's works, isn't it?” put in Christopher quietly. He had not moved; he was intent on picking up the clue to the mad indictment that lay in the seething flow of words.
”Yah. Don't know your own purse-strings,” spluttered the denouncer, growing incoherent with rising fury; ”sit at home with your little play-box of a works down here, with fancy hutches for your rabbits of workmen, clubs, toys, kitchen ranges, hot and cold laid on. Oh, I've seen it all. Who pays for it, that's what I want to know? who pays for your blooming model works and houses?”
”I pay for it,” said Christopher still quietly, ”or rather the company does. It comes out of working expenses.”
The man gave an angry snarl of disbelief. ”You pays, does you? I tell you it's we who pays. You take our money and spend it on this toy of yours here. I'll----”
Christopher put up his hand. ”You are utterly mistaken,” he said, ”I have no more to do with the late Peter Masters' works or his money than the men in the yards out there.”
The black ignorance, the fierce words interlarded with unwritable terms, the mad personal attack, filled him with a shame and pity that drowned all indignation. There had been injustice and wrong somewhere that had whipped this poor mind to frenzy, to an incoherent claim to rights he could not define.
”Why do you come to me?”
The man gave almost a scream of rage.
”Come to you? Ain't you his son? Don't it all belong to you, whether you takes it or whether you don't? Are you going to skulk behind them heads in Birmingham and leave us at their mercy, let 'em grind us to powder for their own profit and no one to say them yea or nay? There was a rumour of that got about, how you was going to shunt us on to them, you skulking blackguard. I wouldn't believe it. I told 'em as how Masters' son, if he had one, wouldn't be a d.a.m.ned scoundrel like that. He'd see to his own rights.”
What was that in the shaking hands beneath the cap? Christopher's eyes, still on the tragically foul face, never dropped to catch the metallic gleam; his whole mind lay in dragging out the truth entangled in the wild words. The voice quivered more and more as if under spur of some mental effort that urged the speaker to a climax he could not reach but on the current of the crazy syllables.
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