“You still mean him to stick to his Road Engineering?”
“He is perfectly free to do as he likes.”
Charles Aston put in a word.
“He is twenty-two now, and he knows his own mind a good deal better than most boys of that age. He seems bent on carrying out his Road scheme, and there seems no reason why he should not.” He pushed over a box of cigars to his visitor.
“No, exactly. No reason at all.” Peter selected a cigar carefully. “I expect you find it very interesting watching how he turns out, don’t you, Aymer?”
“It is not uninteresting.”
“You’ve not seen Nevil yet,” suggested Mr. Aston. “He is just out of a spell of work; come out in the garden and find him while you smoke.”
“Well, perhaps we might, if you don’t mind being left, Aymer?” Peter’s voice was full of kindly interest. To him the great catastrophe was ever a new and awful thing, and Aymer an invalid to be considered and treated with such attention as he knew how.
“Not in the least,” said Aymer politely, marvelling how exactly his father had gauged the limits of his endurance. When the heavy curtained door had shut out voices and footsteps and only the stillness of the room was with him the forced passivity slipped from Aymer like a mask, and his was again the face of a fighter, of one still fighting against fearful odds.
He lay with clenched hands and rigid face, and great beads of perspiration stood on his forehead, for that passive indifference towards what had become a matter of life and death to him was the fruit of a victory that had to be won again and again each time his perilous position was assailed by the appearance of Peter Masters. 209