Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker Part 23

"You are certain you want to be an engineer?" he asked at length.

"Certain,--only--" Christopher stopped, went over to the window and looked out.

They were in London and it was an evening in early spring. There was a faint primrose glow in the sky and a blackbird was whistling at the end of the garden. The hum of the great town was as part of the silence of the room.

Now at last must come the moment when Christopher must speak plainly of his darling purpose that had been striving for expression these many months, that purpose which had grown out of a childish fancy in the long ago days when his mother and he toiled along the muddy wearisome roads, or wended painfully through choking white dust under a blazing sun----

"Mother, how does roads get made here in the country, are they made like in London?"

"Yes, Jim, they were made somewhere by men, not over well, I think, for walkers such as we are."

"I'll make roads when I'm big," announced Jim, "real good ones that you can walk on easily."

So Christopher broke his purpose to Caesar abruptly.

"I want to be a Road Engineer."

"A what?"

"A Roadmaker. To make high roads,--not in towns, but across countries.

Roads that will be easy to travel on and will last." Again he stopped, embarra.s.sed, for the vision before him which he only half saw, made him hot and confused. Yet it was a good vision, perhaps that was why--a picture of countless toiling human beings travelling on his roads all down the coming ages, knowing them for good roads, and praising the maker. But he was a boy and was abashed at the vision and hoped Caesar did not guess at it. Caesar, however, saw it all more clearly than Christopher himself and was not abashed but well content.

The boy went back to Caesar's side. The thing was done, spoken of, made alive, and now he could plead for it, work to gain his end,--also there was a glow in his face and a new eagerness in his manner.

"Oh, Caesar, do say it's possible. I always wanted to do it, even when I was a little chap, and watched men breaking stones on the road."

"It's quite possible, only it will want working out. You must go abroad--France--Germany--I must see where to place you."

"Yes, I must learn how they are made everywhere, and then--then there must be roads to be made somewhere--in new countries if not here."

They talked it out earnestly; Caesar himself caught the boy's enthusiasm, and the moment Mr. Aston came in he too was drawn into the discussion and offered good advice.

Thus Christopher's future was decided upon as something to be worked out quite independent of Peter Masters and his millions. Perhaps because he had seen the vision which covered Christopher with shy confusion, Aymer became very prosaic and practical over the details, and Mr. Aston was the only one of the trio who gave any more thought to the boy's dream on its sentimental side. He used to sit in the evenings watching the two poring over maps, letters and guidebooks, thinking far thoughts for them both, occasionally uttering them.

"I wonder," he remarked one night, "if you know what a lucky young man you are, Master Christopher, not only in having a real wish concerning your own future--which is none too common a lot--but in being free to follow it."

Christopher looked up from the map he was studying.

"Yes, I know I'm lucky, St. Michael. It must be perfectly horrible to have to be something one does not want to be. I suppose that's why lots of people never get on in the world. It seems beastly unfair."

"Yet I've known men to succeed at work for which they had no original apt.i.tude," returned Mr. Aston quietly.

"Mightn't they have succeeded better at what they did like?"

"That is beside the mark, so that they did not fail altogether. I knew a soldier once," he went on dreamily, "just a private. A good chap. He was a soldier because he was born and bred in the midst of a regiment, but his one pa.s.sion was music. He taught himself a little instead of learning his drill. In the end he deserted and joined a German band. That argues nothing for his musical taste, you say. He just thought it a stepping-stone, but it was a tombstone. He was quite a smart soldier, too."

"Well, I think it was jolly hard lines on him to have to be a soldier at all, if he didn't like it. He wanted a Caesar to help him out. I think all fellows ought to have a chance, there should be someone or something to say, 'what do you want to be?'"

"You'd be surprised how few could answer. Prove your point yourself anyway, my dear boy. Succeed."

"I mean to," said Christopher with shut teeth and an intonation that reminded both men of Peter Masters himself.

"We are all of us Roadmakers of one kind or another," went on Mr.

Aston meditatively, "making the way rougher or smoother for those who come after us. Happy if we only succeed in rolling in a few of the stones that hurt our own feet."

"You _are_ rather like a steam roller," remarked Aymer quietly, "it hadn't struck me before."

Mr. Aston rumpled his hair distractedly and Christopher giggled.

"I wasn't talking of myself at all," said Mr. Aston hastily. "I was merely thinking of you making things smooth for Christopher. You are much more like a steam roller than I am. You are bigger."

Christopher began to laugh helplessly, and Aymer protested rather indignantly.

"I deny the likeness. But if rolling has to be done, it is better to do it heavily, I suppose. Whose roads shall we roll, Christopher?"

Christopher looked up, suddenly grave.

"What do you mean, Caesar?"

"You say everyone should have a chance and my father insists we are bound by some unknown Board of Guardians to level our neighbours'

roads, so where will you start?"

"On Sam Sartin!"

He sat upright, his face glowing, looking straight at Caesar. Caesar's tone might be flippant, but if he meant what Christopher supposed him to mean, he must not let the golden opportunity slip.

"I thought Sam was in a greengrocer's shop," said Caesar in a drawling, indifferent manner.

"So he is. But would anyone be in a greengrocer's shop if they could be in anything else? When we were kids, he and I, we used to plan we'd be Lord Mayors--A greengrocer!"

"An honest and respectable calling, if a little dirty," murmured Mr.

Aston. "The greengrocers, I mean not the Lord Mayors."

"Sam's got a head on his shoulders. He's really awfully sharp. He could be anything he liked," urged Christopher. "Could you help him, Caesar?"

"You might if you liked."

"Make what I like of him?"

"No. Most emphatically, no. Make what he likes of himself. A crossing sweeper, if he fancies that. Buy him a crossing and a broom, you know."

"But really, what he likes; not joking?"

"Sober earnest. I'll see to-morrow, and tell you. Now, will you kindly find that place you were looking for when we were so inopportunely interrupted with irrelevant moralisings."