CHAPTER XXI Christopher stood for a moment inside the great hall at Stormly Park and looked round. It was quite beautiful. Peter Masters, having chosen the best man in England for his purpose, had had the sense to let him alone. There was no discordant note anywhere and Christopher was quite alive to its perfections. But coming straight from Stormly Town the contrast was too glaring and too crude. It was not that Peter Masters was rich and his people were poor. Poverty and riches have run hand in hand down the generations of men, but here, the people were poor in all things, in morals, in desire, in beauty, in all that lifted them in the scale of humanity, in order that he, Peter Masters, should be superfluously rich, outrageously so! Christopher struggled hard to be just: he knew it was not the superfluous money that was grudged, it was the more precious time and thought saved with a greed that was worse than the hunger of a miser--for no purpose but to add to over-filled stores. He knew all Peter Masters' arguments in defence of his System already: That he compelled no man to serve him, that none did so except on a clear understanding of the terms; that for the hours they toiled for him he paid highly, and his responsibility ceased when those hours were over. If Peter Masters was no philanthropist at least he was no humbug. He said openly he worked his System because it paid him. If he could have made more by being philanthropical he would have been so, but he would not have called it philanthropy: it would have been a financial method. The grim selfishness of it all crushed Christopher as an intolerable burden that was none of his, and yet, because he was here accepting a part of its results, he could not clear himself of its shadow. So, twenty-two years ago, had his mother thought until the terror of that shadow outweighed all dread of further evil, and she had fled from its shade into a world where sun and shadow were checkered and evil and good a twisted rope by which to hold. Some dim note from that long struggle and momentous decision had its influence with her son now. Without knowing it he was hastening to the same conclusions she had reached. He lunched alone and then to escape the persistence of his thoughts decided to explore the west wing of the house which he had hardly entered. At the end of a long corridor a square of yellow sunlight fell across the purple carpet from an open door and he stopped to look in. It was a pretty room with three windows opening on to a terrace and a door communicating with a room beyond. The walls were panelled with pale blue silk and the chairs and luxurious couches covered with the same. There were several pictures of great value, on a French writing table lay an open blotter, but the blotting paper was crumbling and dry and the ink in the carved brass inkstand was dry also.