Despite his honest intention never to stand between Christopher and
any fate that might serve to draw him into connection with his father,
Aymer had a hard fight to master his keen desire to put Peter's letter
in the fire and say nothing about it. Surely, after all, he had the
best right to say what his adopted charge's future should be. It was
he who had rescued him from obscurity, who had lavished on him the
love and care his selfish, erratic father, for his own ambitious ends,
denied him. Aymer believed, moreover, that a career under Peter's
influence would mean either the blunting if not the utter destruction
of every generous and admirable quality in the boy, or a rapid
unbalanced development of those socialistic tendencies, the seeds of
which were sown by his mother and nurtured in the hard experience of
his early days. Besides this, Peter's interest in the boy was probably
a mere freak, or at the best, sprang from a desire to serve his
cousin, unless by any remote chance he had stumbled on a clue to
Christopher's identity.
This last suspicion wove itself like a black thread into the grey woof
of Aymer's existence. His whole being by now had become concentrated
in the boy's life. It was a renewal of youth, hopes, ambitions, again
possible in the person of this child, and for the second time a
fierce, restless jealousy of his cousin began to stir in the inner
depths of Aymer's being, as fire which may yet break into life beneath
the grey, piled-up ashes which conceal it.
He sought help and advice from none and fought hard alone for his own
salvation through the long watches of a black night--fought against
the jealousy that prompted him to hedge Christopher about with
precautions and restrictions which, however desirable they might seem
to his finite wisdom, yet were, he knew, only the outcome of his
smouldering jealousy, and might well grow to formidable barriers for
Christopher to climb in later years. Aymer fought, too, for that sense
of larger faith that in the midst of careful action yet leaves room
for the hand of God and does not confound the little ideas of the
builder with the vast plan of the Great Architect.
So the letter--the little fact which stood for such great
possibilities--was shown to Christopher, to whom it was a mere
nothing, to be tossed aside with scorn.
"I don't want to be under him," he commented indignantly, "I don't
care about his old axles," and then because Cæsar was silent and he
felt himself in the wrong, he apologised.
"All the same, I don't want to go to him unless you particularly wish
it, Cæsar," he insisted.
But Cæsar did not answer directly.
"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 Cæsar 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,
embarrassed, 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 Cæsar did not guess at it. Cæsar, however, saw it all more
clearly than Christopher himself and was not abashed but well
content.
The boy went back to Cæsar'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, Cæsar, 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; Cæsar 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
aptitude," 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 passion 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 Cæsar 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, Cæsar?"
"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 Cæsar. Cæsar'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 Cæsar 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,
Cæsar?"
"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."
"I won't do it again," said his father deprecatingly. "I apologise."
Aymer gravely bowed his head and the subject was dropped. But when
they were alone that evening, Mr. Aston reverted to it.
"What are you going to do with Sam Sartin?" he asked, "and why are you
doing it?"
"Sam must settle the first question himself," said Aymer, idly drawing
appalling pictures of steamrollers on the fly-leaf of a book, "as to
the second--" he paused in his drawing, put the book down and turned
to his father.
"Christopher's got the makings of a rabid socialist in him. If he's
not given good data to go on he will be a full disciple when he's
twenty-one, all theories and dreams, caught in a mesh of words. I
don't want that. It's natural too, for, after all, Christopher is not
of the People, any more than--than his mother was." He examined his
pencil critically. "She always credited them with the fine aspirations
and pure passions of her own soul, instead of allowing them the very
reasonable and just aspirations and ambitions that they have and
should be able to reach. Sam may be an exception, but I don't think he
is. I'm quite ready to give Christopher a free hand to help him,
provided he knows what he wants himself."
"To provide an object lesson for Christopher?"
"Yes, precisely."
"Is it quite fair on Sam?"
Aymer looked up quickly.
"He benefits anyway."
"Possibly; but you do not care about that."
"Christopher does."
"Ah, yes. Christopher does. That is worth considering. Otherwise----"
"Otherwise?"
"How far are we justified in experimenting with our fellow-creatures,
I wonder?"