Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker Part 27

"I told you they had adopted me," said the other, frowning and rather red.

"I ought to have taken it in, but I didn't," continued Sam humbly, "and then you ask me here--and are going to give me a chance--Oh, lor',--what's it all for, I want to know? What does it mean?"

Christopher got up and walked away. Had Sam but known it, his chance in life was in dire peril at that moment. Seldom had Christopher felt so angry and never had he felt so out of touch with his companion. Why on earth couldn't Sam take his luck without wanting reasons. It was so preposterous, in Christopher's eyes, to want any. In the old days Sam had been ready to share his scant pennies and toys with his small friend. The offer of a ride in a van from the warehouse where Sartin senior worked would have included both of them or neither. What was the difference? What was the use of having plenty if not to share it with a friend?

To his credit he did not allow Sam to guess his irritation, but suggested a return to Caesar's room.

"Didn't it take you an awful long time to get used to all this?"

inquired Sam, as he followed him.

"I forget. No, I don't though. I hated it rather at first, the clothes and collars and having to change and be tidy, and all that, but I soon got used to it. Here we are."

Mr. Aston was there too now. Sam was duly introduced and behaved with great discretion. He was far less abashed by Mr. Aston than by Aymer, whose physical condition produced a shyness not inherent in the youth.

Mr. Aston talked to him in a friendly gossiping way, then looked across at Aymer with a faint nod.

Aymer unfolded his scheme of carrying out Sam's ambitions to a fruitful end. He was to go for a year to a commercial school, and after that to be put into a good firm as pupil or 'prentice with a chance of becoming a junior partner with a small capital if he did well.

"If you don't do well, of course it's off," concluded Aymer, rather wearily, "the future is in your hands, not ours: we only supply an opportunity."

Sam said stolidly he quite understood that: that he was much obliged, and he'd do his best.

"It will be a race between you," remarked Mr. Aston, looking from one boy to the other, "as to whether you become a full-fledged grocer first or Christopher a full-fledged engineer."

But late that night when Mr. Aston was bidding Aymer good-night, he remarked as he stood looking down at him:

"You have done a good piece of road-making to-day, old man."

"No, I haven't," retorted Aymer, rather crossly. "I've only supplied material for someone else to use if they like."

"Just to please Christopher?"

But Aymer did not answer that. Mr. Aston really needed no answer, for he knew that long ago Sam's mother had made smooth a very rough piece of road for another woman's feet, and that woman was Christopher's mother.

CHAPTER XIII

A thin, sickly-looking woman in a dingy black dress sat by the roadside with a basket of bootlaces and b.u.t.tons at her feet. She rested her elbows on her knees and gazed with unseeing eyes at the meadowland below.

The burst shoe, the ragged gown, and unkempt head proclaimed her a Follower of the Road, and the sordid wretchedness that reached its lowest depth in lack of desire for better things, was a sight to force Philanthropist or Socialist to sink differences in one energetic struggle to eradicate the type. If she thought at all it was in the dumb, incoherent manner of her cla.s.s: at the actual moment a vision of a hat with red flowers she had seen in a shop window flickered across her mind, chased away by a hazy wonder as to how much supper threepence halfpenny would provide. That thought, too, fell away before a sudden, shrewd calculation as to the possible harvest to be gleaned from the two people just coming over the brow of the hill.

These two, a boy and a young man, were walking with the swinging step and a.s.surance of those who have never bent before grim need.

"Young toffs," she decided, and wondered if it were worth while getting up or not.

The young man was listening eagerly to the equally eager chatter of his companion, and they walked quickly as those who were in haste to reach a goal until they were level with the tramp woman, who watched them with speculative eyes. The boy, who was about twelve years old, was as good a specimen of a well-trained, well-nurtured boy as one might find in the country, the product of generations of careful selection and high ideals, active, br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with vitality and joyousness, with clear-cut features perhaps a trifle too p.r.o.nounced for his age. But the elder of the two, who was twenty-one and might by appearance have been some few years older, was a far stronger type.

There was a certain steady strength in the set of his square head, in the straight look of his dark eyes. It was a face that might in time be over-stern if the kindly humorous lines of the mouth should fade.

The tramp woman saw nothing of this. She only observed their absorption in each other and abandoned hope of adding to her meagre fortune.

Max Aston's quick blue eyes saw her and were averted instantly, for she was not a pleasing object. But at sight of her the shadow of some dominant thought drove every expression from his companion's face but pity: and the pity of the strong for the weak lies near to reverence.

He crossed the road abruptly, his hand in his pocket. Max dawdled after him. The woman looked up with awakened interest.

"It's a long road, kind sir, and poor weather," she began in a professional drawl, and then stopped. The young face looking down on her had something in its expression to which she was not accustomed.

It was as if he checked her begging for very shame. She noticed dully, he held his cap in his hand.

He said nothing at all, but dropped a coin in her hand and went on, followed by Max, who was a little puzzled.

The woman looked after them and forgot she had not thanked him. She wished the moment would repeat itself and the young gentleman stand before her again. She had not taken it all in--taken _what_ in, she hardly knew.

She looked at the coin and it gleamed yellow in her hand. It was half a sovereign. Oh, what luck, what luck! It was a mistake of course--he had thought it was a sixpence no doubt, but he had gone, and she had it.

A vista of unlikely comforts opened before her, even the hat with red flowers was possible. It was careless of him though.

She got up suddenly and looked down the hill. The two were still in sight--the boy had stopped to tie his boot-lace.

She looked at the half-sovereign again, and then set off at a shuffling slipshod trot after them. They had resumed their walk before she reached them, but the boy looking back, saw her, and told the other, who wheeled round sharply, frowning a little.

"'Ere, please sir, I wants to see yer," she gasped, out of breath, choking a little with unwonted exertion. Christopher went back to her and waited gravely. She opened her hand and the half-sovereign glinted again in the light.

"Expect yer made a mistake, didn't yer, sir?" she asked in a hoa.r.s.e whisper, and saw a wave of hot colour under his brown skin.

"No," he said awkwardly, "I hadn't anything else. It was good of you to trouble to come though. Go and get some new boots and a good supper. It's bad going on the roads in autumn. I _know_, I've done it."

She gasped at him bewildered, her hand still open.

"Yer a gentleman, yer are,"--her tone hesitated as it were between the statement of a plain fact and doubt of his last words.

"Winchester is three miles on. You can get decent lodgings out by the Station Road to the left as you go under the arch. Good-bye." He raised his hat again and turned away. The woman looked after him, gave a prolonged sniff and limped back up the hill.

Max looked at Christopher out of the corner of his eye, a little doubtfully. He had not come near, fastidiousness outweighing curiosity.

"What did she want--and why did you take your hat off?"

Christopher grew hot again.

"Oh, she's a woman, and my mother and I tramped, you know."

Max did not know, and intimated that Christopher was talking rot.

Christopher decapitated a thistle and explained briefly, "Caesar adopted me straight out of a workhouse. My mother and I were tramping from London to Southampton, and she got ill at Whitmansworth, the other side of Winchester, and died there. The Union kept me till Mr.

Aston took me away. I thought everyone knew."

Embarra.s.sment and curiosity struggled for the mastery in the young aristocrat by his side.

"And you really did tramp?" he ventured at length.