Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker

by Marguerite Bryant

All the while, as he went through the day’s particular and general business, the wild words in the rasping, incoherent voice haunted Christopher so persistently that he heard them through the enthusiastic platitudes of congratulations, the calm official statements of plain facts, behind even Patricia’s healing voice of love. It was not till the following Sunday he awoke to find a stillness instead of clamour, calm instead of turmoil. He rose early while the day was still holding the hand of dawn and went out to the cliff edge, as if there in the heaving waters he might read the Eternal Meaning and Purpose of it all. He thought how every individual man is one with the great tide of humanity, advancing with it, receding with it, subject to one eternal law he could not read. How the suffering and sin of one was the burden of all: the heroic endeavours and victories of one the gain of all. The little isolated aim of the individual must subject itself to the wider meaning or be swept back to nothingness, just as the stranded pools among the rocks that for a few hours caught the sunshine and reflected the heavenly lamp, but were overswept each tide and their being mingled again with the great sea.

Christopher knew the work he had done had been good, that hundreds were the happier for his direct concern with their lives, that he indeed had made the Road of Life more possible for those who would set out thereon for far or nearer goals. It was all he aspired to do. He knew it was not his to show them the goal, or to direct them thereto; that was for themselves and others; but it was his to make the way possible, that they need not stumble on unbroken ground, or toil in blinding dust of ages, or wade in clogging mud of tradition, these children of the world who tramped with patient feet to a vague end.

What was wrong was that he had chosen his own 365 ground, that when he had stood at the cross roads of life he held himself qualified as a god to say “that road is evil and this good,” taking council only of what was most in accord with his own will, forgetting that the Great Power embraces all within itself, knowing no good or evil, but seeing only a means to fulfil the eternal purpose of creation. It is we who must be the alchemists to transmute what we term evil into good, we, who are the servants and instruments by which that purpose must be achieved. If, seeing evil, we pass by on the other side, how shall the waste places of the earth be cleansed or the wilderness break forth into song?

The message so roughly delivered had sunk into Christopher’s heart at last. Looking back at his life he saw how everything had fitted him for the task he had refused. How he was born to it, trained to its needs unconsciously by his mother and Cæsar, shaped by his own experience, armed by the completion of his inner life in his marriage. He had refused it with blindness, had closed his ears to the voice of thousands who had called to him in the unattractive voice of a conventional law. It had taken the deafening report of a madman’s pistol and the sight of a dead child to teach him the lesson.

At that thought he hid his face in his arm on the short turf and lay very still.

The sea sung its endless Te Deum below him, a lark soared high to heaven with its morning hymn, and the wind, rustling along the cliff edge, breathed strength to the land. Day stood free and open upon earth and called for service from those to whom the Dominion of the earth is promised. Only by service comes lordship, only by obedience can be found command.

At the moment of renunciation, Christopher realised for the first time the greatness of the cost and knew 366 how dear his life and surroundings were to him. The Roadmaker had been his own master; the successor of Peter Masters must be the servant of thousands. The work here would go on, there were men ready to take his place, but he found no salve in the thought. Deep in his heart he knew he feared the grim struggle that lay before him, the uprooting of the old “system,” the antagonism, the necessary compromises, the slow result. His age, or rather his youth, would be a heavy weapon against him. How could he hope to make his voice heard above the dictates of a dozen committees of men intent on their personal interests? He told himself passionately the thing was Impossible, and as quickly came the remembrance of the hoarse cry for help that had made itself heard above the report of Plent’s pistol.

Step by step through the door of humility he reached the hall of Audience and in silence surrendered himself to the eternal Purpose.

At length he again stood on the edge and looked out to sea and for the moment the simplicity instead of the complexity of life visible and invisible, was written on the face of the deep. He stood bareheaded and read the message thankfully and went back to the house with peace in his heart.

He found a new beauty in the house he had made for himself, and as Patricia came down the garden path to meet him, he was glad for the real worth of the outward things he must surrender.