“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.” 140
“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.”