"Watch out, now," said Flibbertigibbet excitedly on the way down into the basement for supper and dishwashing, for it was their turn this week, "an' yer'll see me dance yer a minute in the yard ter-morrow."
"Yer can't dance it alone," replied doubting Freckles; "yer've got to have a boy."
"I don't want one; I'll take you, Freckles, for a boy." Clumsy Freckles blushed with delight beneath her many beauty-spots at such promise of unwonted graciousness on the part of her chum, and wondered what had come over Flibbertigibbet lately.
A few hours afterwards when they went up to bed, they whispered together again concerning the dance, and begged Sister Angelica to let them have just one peep from the dormitory window at their house of delight—a request she was glad to grant. They opened one of the inside blinds a little way, and exclaimed at the sight. It was snowing. The children oh'ed and ah'ed under their breath, for a snowstorm at Christmas time in the great city is the child's true joy. At their opposite neighbor's a faint light was visible in the balcony room; the wet soft flakes had already ridged the balustrade, powdered the dwarf evergreens, topped the cap of the electric arc-light and laid upon the concrete a coverlet of purest white.
The long bare dormitory filled with the children—the fatherless and motherless children we have always with us. Soon each narrow cot held its asylum number; the many heads, golden, brown, or black, busied all of them with childhood's queer unanchored thoughts, were pillowed in safety for another night.
And without the snow continued to fall upon the great city. It graced with equal delicacy the cathedral's marble spires and the forest of pointed firs which made the numberless Christmas booths that surrounded old Washington Market. It covered impartially, and with as pure a white, the myriad city roofs that sheltered saint and sinner, whether among the rich or the poor, among the cherished or castaways. It fell as thickly upon the gravestones in Trinity's ancient churchyard as upon the freshly turned earth in a corner of the paupers' burying ground; and it set upon black corruption wherever it was in evidence the seal of a transient stainlessness.
"Really, I am discouraged about that child," said Sister Agatha just after Easter. She was standing at one of the schoolroom windows that overlooked the yard; she spoke as if thoroughly vexed.
"What is it now—208 again?" Sister Angelica looked up from the copybook she was correcting.
"Oh, yes, of course; it's always 208."
"Oh, she doesn't mean anything; it's only her high spirits; they must have some vent."
"It's been her ruin being on the stage even for those few weeks, and ever since the Van Ostends began to make of her and have her over for that Christmas luncheon and the Sunday nights, the child is neither to have nor to hold. What with her 'make believing' and her 'acting' she upsets the girls generally. She ought to be set to good steady work; the first chance I get I'll put her to it. I only wish some one would adopt her—"
"I heard Father Honoré—"
"Look at her now!" exclaimed Sister Agatha interrupting her.
Sister Angelica joined her at the window. They could not only see but hear all that was going on below. With the garbage house as a stage-setting and background to the performance, Flibbertigibbet was courtesying low to her audience; the skirt of her scant gingham dress was held in her two hands up and out to its full extent. The orphans crouched on the pavement in a triple semi-circle in front of her.
"All this rigmarole comes of the theatre," said Sister Agatha grimly.
"Well, where's the harm? She is only living it all over again and giving the others a little pleasure at the same time. Dear knows, they have little enough, poor things."
Sister Agatha made no reply; she was listening intently to 208's orders. The little girl had risen from her low courtesy and was haranguing the assembled hundreds:
"Now watch out, all of yer, an' when I do the minute yer can clap yer hands if yer like it; an' if yer want some more, yer must clap enough to split yer gloves if yer had any on, an' then I'll give yer the coon dance; an' then if yer likethat, yer can play yer gloves are busted with clappin' an' stomp yer feet—"
"But we can't," Freckles entered her prosaic protest, "'cause we're squattin'."
"Well, get up then, yer'll have to; an' then if you stomp awful, an' holler 'On-ko—on-ko!'—that's what they say at the thayertre—I'll give yer somethin' else—"
"Wot?" demanded 206 suspiciously.
"Don't yer wish I'd tell!" said 208, and began the minuet.
It was marvellous how she imitated every graceful movement, every turn and twist and bow, every courtesy to the imaginary partner—Freckles had failed her entirely in this role—whose imaginary hand she held clasped high above her head; her clumsy shoes slid over the flagging as if it had been a waxed floor under dainty slippers. There was an outburst of applause; such an outburst that had the audience really worn gloves, every seam, even if French and handsewed, must have cracked under the healthy pressure.
208 beamed and, throwing back her head, suddenly flung herself into the coon dance which, in its way, was as wild and erratic as the minuet had been stately and methodical. Wilder and wilder grew her gyrations—head, feet, legs, shoulders, hair, hands, arms, were in seemingly perpetual motion. The audience grew wildly excited. They jumped up, shouting "On-ko—on-ko!" and accompanied their shouts with the stamping of feet. A dexterous somersault on the dancer's part ended the performance; her cheeks were flushed with exercise and excitement, her black mane was loosened and tossed about her shoulders. The audience lost their heads and even 206 joined in the prolonged roar:
"On-ko, 208—on-ko-o-o-oor! On-ko, Flibbertigibbet—some more—some more!"
"It's perfectly disgraceful," muttered Sister Agatha, and made a movement to leave the window; but Sister Angelica laid a gently detaining hand on her arm.
"No, Agatha, not that," she said earnestly; "you'll see that they will work all the better for this fun—Hark!"
There was a sudden and deep silence. 208 was evidently ready with her encore, a surprise to all but the performer. She shook back the hair from her face, raised her eyes, crossed her two hands upon her chest, waited a few seconds until a swift passenger train on the track behind the fence had smothered its roar in the tunnel depths, then began to sing "The Holy City." Even Sister Agatha felt the tears spring as she listened. A switch engine letting off steam drowned the last words, and there was no applause. Flibbertigibbet looked about her inquiringly; but the girls were silent. Such singing appeared to them out of the ordinary—and so unlike 208! It took them a moment to recover from their surprise; they gathered in groups to whisper together concerning the performance.
Meanwhile Flibbertigibbet was waiting expectantly. Where was the well earned applause? And she had reserved the best for the last! Ungrateful ones! Her friends in the stone house always praised her when she did her best,—but these girls—
She stamped her foot, then dashed through the broken ranks, making faces as she ran, and crying out in disgust and anger:
"Catch me givin' yer any more on-kos, yer stingy things!" and with that she ran into the basement followed by Freckles who was intent upon appeasing her.
The two sisters, pacing the dim corridor together after chapel that evening, spoke again of their little wilding.
"I didn't finish what I was going to tell you about 208," said Sister Angelica. "I heard the Sister Superior tell Father Honoré when he was here the other day that Mr. Van Ostend had been to see her in regard to the child. It seems he has found a place for her in the country with some of his relations, as I understand it. He said his interest in her had been roused when he heard her for the first time on the stage, and that when he found Flibbertigibbet was the little acquaintance his daughter had made, he determined to further the child's interests so far as a home is concerned."
"Then there is a prospect of her going," Sister Agatha drew a breath of relief. "Did you hear what Father Honoré said?"
"Very little; but I noticed he looked pleased, and I heard him say, 'This is working out all right; I'll step across and see Mr. Van Ostend myself.'—I shall miss her so!"
Sister Agatha made no reply. Together the two sisters continued to pace the dim corridor, silent each with her thoughts; and, pacing thus, up and down, up and down, the slender, black-robed figures were soon lost in the increasing darkness and became mere neutral outlines as they passed the high bare windows and entered their respective rooms.
Even so, a few weeks later when Number 208 left the Orphan Asylum on ----nd Street, they passed quietly out of the child's actual life and entered the fitfully lighted chambers of her childish memory wherein, at times, they paced with noiseless footsteps as once in the barren halls of her orphanage home.
A land of entrancing inner waters, our own marvellous Lake Country of the East, lies just behind those mountains of Maine that sink their bases in the Atlantic and are fitly termed in Indian nomenclatureWaves-of-the-Sea. Bight and bay indent this mountainous coast, in beauty comparable, if less sublime yet more enticing, to the Norwegian fjords; within them are set the islands large and small whereon the sheep, sheltered by cedar coverts, crop the short thick turf that is nourished by mists from the Atlantic. Above bight and bay and island tower the mountains. Their broad green flanks catch the earliest eastern and the latest western lights. Their bare summits are lifted boldly into the infinite blue that is reflected in the waters which lap their foundations.
Flamsted lies at the outlet of Lake Mesantic, on the gentle northward slope of theseWaves-of-the-Sea, some eighteen miles inland from Penobscot Bay. Until the last decade of the nineteenth century it was unconnected with the coast by any railroad; but at that time a branch line from Hallsport on the Bay, encouraged by the opening of a small granite quarry in the Flamsted Hills, made its terminus at The Corners—a sawmill settlement at the falls of the Rothel, a river that runs rapidly to the sea after issuing from Lake Mesantic. A mile beyond the station the village proper begins at its two-storied tavern, The Greenbush.
From the lower veranda of this hostelry, one may look down the shaded length of the main street, dignified by many an old-fashioned house, to The Bow, an irregular peninsula extending far into the lake and containing some two hundred acres. This estate is the ancestral home of the Champneys, known as Champ-au-Haut, in the vernacular "Champo." At The Bow the highway turns suddenly, crosses a bridge over the Rothel and curves with the curving pine-fringed shores of the lake along the base of the mountain until it climbs the steep ascent that leads to Googe's Gore, the third division of the town of Flamsted.
As in all New England towns, that are the possessors of "old families," so in Flamsted;—its inhabitants are partisans. The result is, that it has been for years as a house divided against itself, and heated discussion of the affairs of the Googes at the Gore and the Champneys at The Bow has been from generation to generation an inherited interest. And from generation to generation, as the two families have ramified and intermarriages occurred more and more frequently, party spirit has run higher and higher and bitter feelings been engendered. But never have the factional differences been more pronounced and the lines of separation drawn with a sharper ploughshare in this mountain-ramparted New England town, than during the five years subsequent to the opening of the Flamsted Quarries which brought in its train the railroad and the immigrants. This event was looked upon by the inhabitants as the Invasion of the New.
The interest of the first faction was centred in Champ-au-Haut and its present possessor, the widow of Louis Champney, old Judge Champney's only son. That of the second in the Googes, Aurora and her son Champney, the owners of Googe's Gore and its granite outcrop.
The office room of The Greenbush has been for two generations the acknowledged gathering place of the representatives of the hostile camps. On a cool evening in June, a few days after the departure of several New York promoters, who had formed a syndicate to exploit the granite treasure in The Gore and for that purpose been fully a week in Flamsted, a few of the natives dropped into the office to talk it over.
When Octavius Buzzby, the factotum at Champ-au-Haut and twin of Augustus Buzzby, landlord of The Greenbush, entered the former bar-room of the old hostelry, he found the usual Saturday night frequenters. Among them was Colonel Milton Caukins, tax collector and assistant deputy sheriff who, never quite at ease in the presence of his long-tongued wife, expanded discursively so soon as he found himself in the office of The Greenbush. He was in full flow when Octavius entered.
"Hello, Tave," he cried, extending his hand in easy condescension, "you're well come, for you're just in time to hear the latest; the deal's on—an A. 1 sure thing this time. Aurora showed me the papers to-day. We're in for it now—government contracts, state houses, battle monuments, graveyards; we've got 'em all, and things'll begin to hum in this backwater hole, you bet!"
Octavius looked inquiringly at his brother. Augustus answered by raising his left eyebrow and placidly closing his right eye as a cautionary signal to lie low and await developments.
It was the Colonel's way to boom everything, and simply because he could not help it. It was not a matter of principle with him, it was an affair of temperament. He had boomed Flamsted for the last ten years—its climate, its situation, its scenery, its water power, its lake-shore lands as prospective sites for mansion summer cottages, and the treasures of its unopened quarries. So incorrigible an optimist was Milton Caukins that any slight degree of success, which might attend the promotion of any one of his numerous schemes, caused an elation that amounted to hilarity. On the other hand, the deadly blight of non-fulfilment, that annually attacked his most cherished hopes for the future development of his native town, failed in any wise to depress him, or check the prodigal casting of his optimistic daily bread on the placid social waters where, as the years multiplied, his enthusiasms scarce made a ripple.
"I see Mis' Googe yisterd'y, an' she said folks hed been down on her so long for sellin' thet pass'l of paster for the first quarry, thet she might ez well go the hull figger an' git 'em down on her for the rest of her days by sellin' the rest. By Andrew Jackson! she's got the grit for a woman—and the good looks too! She can hold her own for a figger with any gal in this town. I see the syndicaters a-castin' sheeps' eyes her ways the day she took 'em over The Gore prospectin'; but, by A. J.! they hauled in their lookin's when she turned them great eyes of her'n their ways.—What's the figger for the hull piece? Does anybody know?"
It was Joel Quimber, the ancient pound-master, who spoke, and the silence that followed proved that each man present was resenting the fact that he was not in a position to give the information desired.
"I shall know as soon as they get it recorded, that is, if they don't trade for a dollar and if they ever do get it recorded." The speaker was Elmer Wiggins, druggist and town clerk for the last quarter of a century. He was pessimistically inclined, the tendency being fostered by his dual vocation of selling drugs and registering the deaths they occasionally caused.
Milton Caukins, or the Colonel, as he preferred to be called on account of his youthful service in the state militia and his present connection with the historical society of The Rangers, took his cigar from his lips and blew the smoke forcibly towards the ceiling before he spoke.
"She's got enough now to put Champ through college. The first forty acres she sold ten years ago will do that."
"I ain't so sure of thet." Joel Quimber's tone implied obstinate conviction that his modestly expressed doubt was a foregone conclusion. "Champ's a devil of a feller when it comes to puttin' through anything. He's a chip off the old block. He'll put through more 'n his mother can git out if he gits in any thicker with them big guns—race hosses, steam yachts an' fancy fixin's. He could sink the hull Gore to the foundations of Old Time in a few of them suppers I've heerd he gin arter the show. I heerd he gin ten dollars a plate for the last one—some kind of primy-donny, I heerd. But Champ's game though. I heerd Mr. Van Ostend talkin' 'bout him to one of the syndicaters—mebbe they're goin' to work him in with them somehow; anyway, I guess Aurory don't begrutch him a little spendin' money seein' how easy it come out of the old sheep pasters. Who'd 'a' thought a streak of granite could hev made sech a stir!"
"It's a stir that'll sink this town in the mud." Mr. Wiggins' voice was what might be called thorough-bass, and was apt to carry more weight with his townspeople than his opinions, which latter were not always acceptable to Colonel Caukins. "Look at it now! This town has never been bonded; we're free from debt and a good balance on hand for improvements. Now along comes three or four hundred immigrants to begin with—trade following the flag, I supposeyoucall it, Colonel," (he interpolated this with cutting sarcasm)—"a hodge-podge of Canucks, and Dagos, and Polacks, and the Lord knows what—a darned set of foreigners, foreign to our laws, our ways, our religion; and behind 'em a lot of men that would be called windbags if it wasn't for their money-bags. And between 'em our noses are going to be held right down on the grindstone. I tell you we'll have to bond this town to support the schooling for these foreign brats, and there's a baker's dozen of 'em every time; and there'll be tooting and dancing and singing and playing on Sunday with their foreign gimcranks,—mandolin-banjos and what-all—"
"Good heavens, my dear fellow!" the Colonel broke in with an air of impatience, "can't you see that it's this very 'stir,' as you term it, that is going to put this town into the front rank of the competing industrial thousands of America?"
The Colonel, when annoyed at the quantity of cold water thrown upon his redhot enthusiasm, was apt to increase the warmth of his patronizing address by an endearing term.
"I see farther than the front ranks of your 'competing industrial thousands of America,' Milton Caukins; I see clear over 'em to the very brink, and I see a struggling wrestling mass of human beings slipping, sliding to the bottomless pit of national destitution, helped downwards by just such darned boomers of what you call 'industrial efficiency' as you are, Milton Caukins." He paused for breath.
Augustus Buzzby, who was ever a man of peace, tried to divert this raging torrent of speech into other and personal channels.
"I ain't nothin' 'gainst Mis' Googe as a woman, but she played me a mean trick when she sold that first quarry. It killed my trade as dead as a door nail. You can't hire them highflyers to put themselves into a town their money's bankin' on to ruin in what you might call a summer-social way. I foundthatout 'fore they left this house last week."
"Yes, and she's played a meaner one now." Mr. Wiggins made the assertion with asperity and looked at the same time directly at Octavius Buzzby. "I know all about their free dispensaries that'll draw trade away from my very counter and take the bread and butter out of my mouth; and as for the fees—there won't be a chance for recording a homestead site; there isn't any counting on such things, for they're a homeless lot, always moving from pillar to post with free pickings wherever they locate over night, just like the gypsies that came through here last September."
"It's kinder queer now, whichever way you've a mind to look at it," Joel Quimber remarked meditatively. His eyes were cast up to the ceiling; his fore-fingers and thumbs formed an acute triangle over the bridge of his nose; the arms of his chair supported his elbows. "Queer thet it's allus them upper tens an' emigrants thet keep a-movin' on, fust one place then t'other. Kinder looks ez if, arter all, there warn't no great real difference when it comes to bein' restless. Take us home folks now, we're rooted in deep, an' I guess if we was to be uprooted kinder suddin', p'raps we'd hev more charity for the furriners. There's no tellin'; I ain't no jedge of sech things, an' I'm an out-an-out American. But mebbe my great-great-great-granther's father could hev' told ye somethin' wuth tellin'; he an' the Champneys was hounded out of France, an' was glad 'nough to emigrate, though they called it refugeein' an' pioneerin' in them days."
Augustus Buzzby laid his hand affectionately on the old man's shoulder. "You're a son of the soil, Joel; I stand corrected. I guess the less any of us true blue Americans say 'bout flinging stones at furriners the safer 'twill be for all on us."
But Mr. Wiggins continued his diatribe: "There ain't no denying it, the first people in town are down on the whole thing. Didn't the rector tell me this very day that 'twas like ploughing up the face of nature for the sake of sowing the seeds of political and social destruction—his very words—in this place of peace and happy homes? He don't blame Mrs. Champney for feeling as she does 'bout Aurora Googe. He said it was a shame that just as soon as Mrs. Champney had begun to sell off her lake shore lands so as her city relatives could build near her, Mrs. Googe must start up and balk all her plans by selling two hundred acres of old sheep pasture for the big quarry."
"Humph!" It was the first sound that Octavius Buzzby had uttered since his entrance and general greeting. Hearing it his brother looked warningly in his direction, for he feared that the factional difference, which had come to the surface to breathe in his own and Elmer Wiggins' remarks, might find over-heated expression in the mouth of his twin if once Tave's ire should be aroused. But his brother gave no heed and, much to Augustus' relief, went off at a tangent.
"I heard old Judge Champney talk on these things a good many times in his lifetime, an' he was wise, wiser'n any man here." He allowed himself this one thrust at Mr. Wiggins and the Colonel. "He used to say: 'Tavy, it's all in the natural course of things, and it's got to strike us here sometime; not in my time, but in my boy's. No man of us can say he owns God's earth, an' set up barriers an' fences, an' sometimes breastworks, an' holler "hands off" to every man that peeks over the wall, "this here is mine or that is ours!" because 't isn't in the natural order of things, and what isn't in the natural order isn't going to be, Tavy.' That's what the old Judge said to me more'n once."
"He was right, Tavy, he was right," said Quimber eagerly and earnestly. "I can't argify, an' I can't convince; but I know he was right. I've lived most a generation longer'n any man here, an' I've seen a thing or two an' marked the way of nater jest like the Jedge. I've stood there where the Rothel comes down from The Gore in its spring freshet, rarin', tearin' down, bearin' stones an' rocks along with its current till it strikes the lowlands; then a racin' along, catchin' up turf an' mud an' sand, an' foamin' yaller an' brown acrost the medders, leavin' mud a quarter of an inch thick on the lowlands; and then a-rushin' into the lake ez if 't would turn the bottom upside down—an' jest look what happens! Stid of kickin' up a row all along the banks it jest ain't nowhere when you look for it! Only the lake riled for a few furlongs off shore an' kinder humpin' up in the middle. An' arter a day or two ye come back an' look agin, an' where's the rile? All settled to the bottom, an' the lake as clear as a looking-glass. An' then ye look at the medders an' ye see thet, barrin' a big boulder or two an' some stuns thet an ox-team can cart off, an' some gullyin' out long the highroad, they ain't been hurt a mite. An' then come 'long 'bout the fust of July, an' ye go out an' stan' there and look for the silt—an' what d' ye see? Why, jest thet ye're knee deep in clover an' timothy thet hez growed thet high an' lush jest on account of thet very silt!
"Thet's the way 't is with nateral things; an' thet's what the old Jedge meant. This furrin flood's a-comin'; an' we've got to stan' some scares an' think mebbe The Gore dam'll bust, an' the boulders lay round too thick for the land, an' the mud'll spile our medders, an' the lake show rily so's the cattle won't drink—an' we'll find out thet in this great free home of our'n, thet's lent us for a while, thet there's room 'nough for all, an', in the end—not in my time, but in your'n—our Land, like the medders, is goin' to be the better for it."
"Well put, well put, Quimber," said the Colonel who had been showing signs of restlessness under the unusual and protracted eloquence of the old pound-master. "We're making the experiment that every other nation has had to make some time or other. Take old Rome, now—what was it started the decay, eh?"
As no one present dared to cope with the decline of so large a subject, the Colonel had the floor. He looked at each man in turn; then waved the hand that held his cigar airily towards the ceiling. "Just inbreeding, sir, inbreeding. That's what did it. We Americans, are profiting by the experience of the centuries and are going to take in fresh blood just as fast as it can attain to an arterial circulation in the body politic, sir; an arterial circulation, I say—" the Colonel was apt to roll a fine phrase more than once under his tongue when the sound thereof pleased him,—"and in the course of nature—I agree perfectly with the late Judge Champney and our friend, Quimber—there may be, during the process, a surcharge of blood to the head or stomach of the body politic that will cause a slight attack of governmental vertigo or national indigestion. But it will pass, gentlemen, it will pass; and I assure you the health of the Republic will be kept at the normal, with nothing more than passing attacks of racial hysteria which, however undignified they may appear in the eyes of all right-minded citizens, must ever remain the transient phenomena of a great nation in the making."
The Colonel, having finished his peroration with another wave of his cigar towards the ceiling, lowered his feet from their elevated position on the counter, glanced anxiously at the clock, which indicated a quarter of nine, and remarked casually that, as Mrs. Caukins was indisposed, he felt under obligations to be at home by half-past nine.
Joel Quimber, whom such outbursts of eloquence on the Colonel's part in the usual town-meeting left in a generally dazed condition of mind and politics, remarked that he heard the whistle of the evening train about fifteen minutes ago, and asked if Augustus were expecting any one up on it.
"No, but the team's gone down to meet it just the same. Maybe there'll be a runner or two; they pay 'bout as well as the big guns after all; and then there's a chance of one of the syndicaters coming in on me at any time now.—There's the team."
He went out on the veranda. The men within the office listened with intensified interest, strengthened by that curiosity which is shown by those in whose lives events do not crowd upon one another with such overwhelming force, that the susceptibility to fresh impressions is dulled. They heard the land-lord's cordial greeting, a confusion of sounds incident upon new arrivals; then Augustus Buzzby came in, carrying bags and travelling shawl, and, following him, a tall man in the garb of a priest of the Roman Catholic Church. Close at his side was a little girl. She was far from appearing shy or awkward in the presence of strangers, nodding brightly to Octavius, who sat nearest the door, and smiling captivatingly upon Joel Quimber, whereupon he felt immediately in his pockets for a peppermint which, to his disappointment, was not there.
The Colonel sprang to his feet when the guests entered, and quickly doffed his felt hat which was balancing in a seemingly untenable position on the side of his head. The priest, who removed his on the threshold, acknowledged the courtesy with a bow and a keen glance which included all in the room; then he stepped to the desk on the counter to enter his name in the ponderous leather-backed registry which Augustus opened for him. The little girl stood beside him, watching his every movement.
The Flamstedites saw before them a man in the prime of life, possibly forty-five. He was fully six feet in height, noticeably erect, with an erectness that gave something of the martial to his carriage, spare but muscular, shoulders high and square set, and above them a face deeply pock-marked, the features large but regular, the forehead broad and bulging rather prominently above the eyes. The eyes they could not see; but the voice made itself heard, and felt, while he was writing. The men present unconsciously welcomed it as a personality.
"Can you tell me if Mrs. Louis Champney lives near here?" he said, addressing his host.
"Yes, sir; just about a mile down the street at The Bow."
"Oh, please, yer Riverence, write mine too," said the child who, by standing on tiptoe at the high counter, had managed to follow every stroke of the pen.
The priest looked at the landlord with a frankly interrogatory smile.
"To be sure, to be sure. Ain't you my guest as long as you're in my home?" Augustus replied with such whole-souled heartiness that the child beamed upon him and boldly held out her hand for the pen.
"Let me write it," she said decidedly, as if used to having her way. Colonel Caukins sprang to place a high three-legged stool for the little registree, and was about to lift her on, but the child, laughing aloud, managed to seat herself without his assistance, and forthwith gave her undivided attention to the entering of her name.
Those present loved in after years to recall this scene: the old bar, the three-legged stool, the little girl perched on top, one foot twisted over the round—so busily intent upon making a fine signature that a tip of her tongue was visible held tightly against her left cheek—the coarse straw hat, the clean but cheap blue dress, the heavy shoes that emphasized the delicacy of her ankles and figure; and above her the leaning priest, smiling gravely with fatherly indulgence upon this firstling of his flock in Flamsted.
The child looked up for approval when she had finished and shaken, with an air of intense satisfaction, a considerable quantity of sand over the fresh ink. Evidently the look in the priest's eyes was reward enough, for, although he spoke no word, the little girl laughed merrily and in the next moment hopped down rather unexpectedly from her high place and busied herself with taking a survey of the office and its occupants.
The priest took an envelope from his pocket and handed it to Augustus, saying as he did so:
"This is Mr. Buzzby, I know; and here is a letter from Mr. Van Ostend in regard to this little girl. Her arrival is premature; but the matron of the institution, where she has been, wished to take advantage of my coming to Flamsted to place her in my care. Mr. Van Ostend would like to have her remain here with you for a few days if Mrs. Champney is not prepared to receive her just now."
There was a general movement of surprise among the men in the office, and all eyes, with a question-mark visible in them, were turned towards Octavius Buzzby. Upon him, the simple announcement had the effect of a shock; he felt the need of air, and slipped out to the veranda, but not before he received another bright smile from the little girl. He waited outside until he saw Augustus show the newcomers upstairs; then he re-entered the office and went to the register which was the speculative focus of interest for all the others. Octavius read:
June 18, 1889—Fr. John Francis Honoré, New York. Aileen Armagh, Orphan Asylum, New York City.
June 18, 1889—Fr. John Francis Honoré, New York. Aileen Armagh, Orphan Asylum, New York City.
The Colonel was in a state of effervescing hilarity. He rubbed his hands energetically, slapped Octavius on the back, and exclaimed in high feather:
"How's this for the first drops of the deluge, eh, Tave?"
Octavius made no reply. He waited, as usual, for the evening's mail. The carrier handed him a telegram from New York for Mrs. Champney. It had just come up on the train from Hallsport. He wondered what connection its coming might have with the unexpected arrival of this orphan child?
On his way home Octavius Buzzby found himself wondering, as he had wondered many times before on occasion, how he could checkmate this latest and most unexpected move on the part of the mistress of Champ-au-Haut. His mind was perturbed and he realized, while making an effort to concentrate his attention on ways and means, that he had been giving much of his mental strength during the last twenty years to the search for ulterior motives on the part of Mrs. Louis Champney, a woman of sixty now, a Googe by birth (the Googes, through some genealogical necromancy, traced their descent from Sir Ferdinando Gorges. The name alone, not the blood, had, according to family tradition, suffered corruption with time), and the widow of Louis Champney, the late Judge Champney's only son.
The Champneys had a double strain of French blood in their veins, Breton and Flemish; the latter furnished the collateral branch of the Van Ostends. This intermixture, flowing in the veins of men and women who were Americans by the birthright of more than two centuries' enjoyment of our country's institutions, had produced for several generations as fine a strain of brains and breeding as America can show.
Louis Champney, the last of the line in direct descent, was looked upon from his boyhood up as the culmination of these centuries' flowering. When, at forty, he died without having fulfilled in any wise the great expectations of his townspeople and relations, the interest of the community, as well as of the family, centred in the prospects of Louis Champney Googe, his namesake, and nephew on his wife's side. Here, again, numerous family interests as well as communal speculations were disappointed. The Champney estate was left entire to the widow, Almeda Googe Champney, to dispose of as she might deem fit. Her powers of administratrix were untrammelled save in one respect: Octavius Buzzby was to remain in his position as factotum on the Champney estate and adviser for its interests.
It was at this juncture, when Louis Champney died without remembering his nephew-in-law by so much as a book from his library and the boy was ten years old, that a crisis was discovered to be imminent in the fortunes of the Googe-Champney families, the many ramifications of which were intricately interwoven in the communal life of Flamsted. This crisis had not been averted; for Aurora Googe, the sister-in-law of Mrs. Champney and mother of young Champney, sold a part of her land in The Gore for the first granite quarry, and in so doing changed for all time the character and fortunes of the town of Flamsted.
For many years Octavius Buzzby had championed openly and in secret the cause of Aurora Googe and her only son. To-night, while walking slowly homewards, he was pondering what attitude of mind he must assume, before he could deal adequately with the momentous event which had been foreshadowed from the moment he learned from the priest's lips that Mr. Van Ostend was implicated in the coming of this orphan child. He recalled that little Alice Van Ostend prattled much about this same child during the week she had spent recently with her father at Champ-au-Haut.
Was the mistress of Champ-au-Haut going to adopt her?
Almeda Champney had never wanted the blessing of a child, and, contrary to her young husband's wishes—he was her junior by twelve years—she had had her way. Her nature was so absorbingly tenacious of whatever held her narrow interests, that a child at Champ-au-Haut would have broken, in a measure, her domination of her weaker-willed husband, because it would have centred in itself his love and ambition to "keep up the name." That now, eleven years after Louis Champney's death, she should contemplate the introduction into her perfectly ordered household of a child, an alien, was a revelation of appalling moment to Octavius. He scouted the idea that she would enter the house as an assistant. None was needed; and, moreover, those small hands could accomplish little in the next ten years. She meant to adopt her then! An alien was to inherit the Champney property! Octavius actually shivered at the thought.
Was it, could it be an act of spite against Aurora Googe? Was it a final answer to any expectations of her nephew, Champney Googe, her husband's namesake and favorite? Was this little alien waif to be made a catspaw for her revenge? She was capable of such a thing, was Almeda Champney.Heknew her; none better! Had not her will, thus far in her life, bent everything with which it had come in contact; crushed whatever had opposed it; broken irrevocably whosoever for a while had successfully resisted it?
His thin lips drew to a straight line. All his manhood's strength of desire for fair play, a desire he had been fated to see unfulfilled during the last twenty years, rose in rebellion to champion the cause of the little newcomer who smiled on him so brightly in the office of The Greenbush. Nor did he falter in his resolution when he presented himself at the library door with the telegram in his hand.
"Come in, Octavius; was there any mail?"
"Only a telegram from New York." He handed it to her.
She opened and read it; then laid it on the table. She removed her eyeglasses, for she had grown far-sighted with advancing years, in order to look at the back of the small man who was leaving the room. If he had seen the smile that accompanied the action, he might well have faltered in his resolution to champion any righteous cause on earth.
"Wait a moment, Octavius."
"Now it's coming!" he thought and faced her again; he was bracing himself mentally to meet the announcement.
"Did you see the junk man at The Corners to-day about those shingle nails?"
In the second of hesitation before replying, he had time inwardly to curse her. She was always letting him down in this way. It was a trick of hers when, to use his own expression, she had "something up her sleeve."
"Yes; but he won't take them off our hands."
"Why not?" She spoke sharply as was her way when she suspected any thwarting of her will or desire.
"He says he won't give you your price for they ain't worth it. They ain't particular good for old iron anyway; most on 'em's rusty and crooked. You know they've been on the old coach house for good thirty years, and the Judge used to say—"
"What will he give?"
"A quarter of a cent a pound."
"How many pounds are there?"
"Fifty-two."
"Fifty-two—hm-m; he sha'n't have them. They're worth a half a cent a pound if they're worth anything. You can store them in the workshop till somebody comes along that does want them, and will pay." He turned again to leave her.
"Just a moment, Octavius." Once more he came back over the threshold.
"Were there any arrivals at The Greenbush to-night?"
"I judged so from the register."
"Did you happen to see a girl there?"
"I saw a child, a little girl, smallish and thin; a priest was with her."
"A priest?" Mrs. Champney looked nonplussed for a moment and put on her glasses to cover her surprise. "Did you learn her name, the girl's?"
"It was in the register, Aileen Armagh, from an orphan asylum in New York."
"Then she's the one," she said in a musing tone but without the least expression of interest. She removed her glasses. Octavius took a step backwards. "A moment more, Octavius. I may as well speak of it now; I am only anticipating by a week or two, at the most, what, in any case, I should have told you. While Mr. Van Ostend was here, he enlisted my sympathy in this girl to such an extent that I decided to keep her for a few months on trial before making any permanent arrangement in regard to her. I want to judge of her capability to assist Ann and Hannah in the housework; Hannah is getting on in years. What do you think of her? How did she impress you? Now that I have decided to give her a trial, you may speak freely. You know I am guided many times by your judgment in such matters."
Octavius Buzzby could have ground his teeth in impotent rage at this speech which, to his accustomed ears, rang false from beginning to end, yet was cloaked in terms intended to convey a compliment to himself. But, instead, he smiled the equivocal smile with which many a speech of like tenor had been greeted, and replied with marked earnestness:
"I wouldn't advise you, Mrs. Champney, to count on much assistance from a slip of a thing like that. She's small, and don't look more 'n nine, and—"
"She's over twelve," Mrs. Champney spoke decidedly; "and a girl of twelve ought to be able to help Ann and Hannah in some of their work."
"Well, I ain't no judge of children as there's never been any of late years at Champo." He knew his speech was barbed. Mrs. Champney carefully adjusted her glasses to the thin bridge of her straight white nose. "And if there had been, I shouldn't want to say what they could do or what they couldn't at that age. Take Romanzo, now, he's old enough to work if you watch him; and now he's here I don't deny but what you had the rights of it 'bout my needing an assistant. He takes hold handy if you show him how, and is willing and steady. But two on 'em—I don't know;" he shook his head dubiously; "a growing boy and girl to feed and train and clothe—seems as if—" Octavius paused in the middle of his sentence. He knew his ground, or thought he knew it.
"You said yourself she was small and thin, and I can give her work enough to offset her board. Of course, she will have to go to school, but the tuition is free; and if I pay school taxes, that are increasing every year, I might as well have the benefit of them, if I can, in my own household."
There seemed no refutation needed to meet such an argument, and Octavius retreated another step towards the door.
"A moment more, Octavius," she said blandly, for she knew he was longing to rid her of his presence; "Mr. Emlie has been here this evening and drawn up the deeds conveying my north shore property to the New York syndicate. Mr. Van Ostend has conducted all the negotiations at that end, and I have agreed to the erection of the granite sheds on those particular sites and to the extension of a railroad for the quarries around the head of the lake to The Corners. The syndicate are to control all the quarry interests, and Mr. Van Ostend says in a few years they will assume vast proportions, entailing an outlay of at least three millions. They say there is to be a large electric plant at The Corners, for the mill company have sold them the entire water power at the falls.—I hope Aurora is satisfied with what she has accomplished in so short a time. Champney, I suppose, comes home next month?"
Octavius merely nodded, and withdrew in haste lest his indignation get the upper hand of his discretion. It behooved him to be discreet at this juncture; he must not injure Aurora Googe's cause, which he deemed as righteous a one as ever the sun shone upon, by any injudicious word that might avow his partisanship.
Mrs. Champney smiled again when she saw his precipitous retreat. She had freighted every word with ill will, and knew how to raise his silent resentment to the boiling point. She rose and stepped quickly into the hall.
"Tavy," she called after him as he was closing the door into the back passage. He turned to look at her; she stood in the full light of the hall-lamp. "Just a moment before you go. Did you happen to hear who the priest is who came with the girl?"
"His name was in the ledger. The Colonel said he was a father—Father Honoré, I can't pronounce it, from New York."
"Is he stopping at The Greenbush?"
"He's put up there for to-night anyway."
"I think I must see this priest; perhaps he can give me more detailed information about the girl. That's all."
She went back into the library, closing the door after her. Octavius shut his; then, standing there in the dimly lighted passageway, he relieved himself by doubling both fists and shaking them vigorously at the panels of that same door, the while he simulated, first with one foot then with the other, a lively kick against the baseboard, muttering between his set teeth:
"The devil if it's all, you devilly, divelly, screwy old—"
The door opened suddenly. Simultaneously with its opening Octavius had sufficient presence of mind to blow out the light. He drew his breath short and fumbled in his pocket for matches.
"Why, Tavy, you here!" (How well she knew that the familiar name "Tavy" was the last turn of the thumbscrew for this factotum of the Champneys! She never applied it unless she knew he was thoroughly worsted in the game between them.) "I was coming to find you; I forgot to say that you may go down to-morrow at nine and bring her up. I want to look her over."
She closed the door. Octavius, without stopping to relight the lamp, hurried up to his room in the ell, fearful lest he be recalled a fifth time—a test of his powers of mental endurance to which he dared not submit in his present perturbed state.
Mrs. Champney walked swiftly down the broad main hall, that ran through the house, to the door opening on the north terrace whence there was an unobstructed view up the three miles' length of Lake Mesantic to the Flamsted Hills; and just there, through a deep depression in their midst, the Rothel, a rushing brook, makes its way to the calm waters at their gates. At this point, where the hills separate like the opening sepals of a gigantic calyx, the rugged might of Katahdin heaves head and shoulder into the blue.
The irregular margin of the lake is fringed with pines of magnificent growth. Here and there the shores rise into cliffs, seamed at the top and inset on the face with slim white lady birches, or jut far into the waters as rocky promontories sparsely wooded with fir and balsam spruce.
Mrs. Champney stepped out upon the terrace. Her accustomed eyes looked upon this incomparable, native scene that was set in the full beauty of mid-summer's moonlight. She advanced to the broad stone steps, that descend to the level of the lake, and, folding her arms, her hands resting lightly upon them, stood immovable, looking northwards to the Flamsted Hills—looking, but not seeing; for her thoughts were leaping upwards to The Gore and its undeveloped resources; to Aurora Googe and the part she was playing in this transitional period of Flamsted's life; to the future years of industrial development and, in consequence, her own increasing revenues from the quarries. She had stipulated that evening that a clause, which would secure to her the rights of a first stockholder, should be inserted in the articles of conveyance.
The income of eight thousand from the estate, as willed to her, had increased under her management, aided by her ability to drive a sharp bargain and the penuriousness which, according to Octavius, was capable of "making a cent squeal", to twelve thousand. The sale of her north shore lands would increase it another five thousand. Within a few years, according to Mr. Van Ostend—and she trusted him—her dividends from her stock would net her several thousands more. She was calculating, as she stood there gazing northwards, unseeing, into the serene night and the hill-peace that lay within it, how she could invest this increment for the coming years, and casting about in her mathematically inclined mind for means to make the most of it in interest per cent. She felt sure the future would show satisfactory results.—And after?
That did not appeal to her.
She unfolded her arms, and gathering her skirt in both hands went down the steps and took her stand on the lowest. She was still looking northwards. Her skirt slipped from her left hand which she raised half mechanically to let a single magnificent jewel, that guarded the plain circlet of gold on her fourth finger, flash in the moonlight. She held it raised so for a moment, watching the play of light from the facets. Suddenly she clinched her delicate fist spasmodically; shook it forcibly upwards towards the supreme strength of those silent hills, which, in comparison with the human three score and ten, may well be termed "everlasting", and, muttering fiercely under her breath, "Youshall never have a penny of it!", turned, went swiftly up the steps, and entered the house.
Had the mistress of Champ-au-Haut stood on the terrace a few minutes longer, she might have seen with those far-sighted eyes of hers a dark form passing quickly along the strip of highroad that showed white between the last houses at The Bow. It was Father Honoré. He walked rapidly along the highway that, skirting the base of the mountain, follows the large curve of the lake shore. Rapid as was the pace, the quickened eyes were seeing all about, around, above. In passing beneath a stretch of towering pines, he caught between their still indefinite foliage the gleam of the lake waters. He stopped short for a full minute to pommel his resonant chest; to breathe deep, deep breaths of the night balm. Then he proceeded on his way.
That way led northwards along the lake shore; it skirted the talus that had fallen from the cliff which rose three hundred feet above him. He heard the sound of a rolling stone gathering in velocity among the rubble. He halted in order to listen; to trace, if possible, its course. The dull monotone of its rumbling rattle started a train of thought: perhaps his foot, treading the highway lightly, had caused the sensitive earth to tremble just sufficiently to jar the delicately poised stone and send it from its resting place! He went on. Thoughts not to be uttered crowded to the forefront of consciousness as he neared the cleft in the Flamsted Hills, whence the Rothel makes known to every wayfarer that it has come direct from the heart of The Gore, and brought with it the secrets of its granite veins.
The road grew steeper; the man's pace did not slacken, but the straight back was bent at an angle which showed the priest had been accustomed to mountain climbing. In the leafy half-light, which is neither dawn nor twilight, but that reverential effulgence which is made by moonlight sifting finely through midsummer foliage, the Rothel murmured over its rocky bed; once, when in a deep pool its babble wholly ceased, an owl broke the silence with his "witti-hoo-hoo-hoo".
Still upwards he kept his way and his pace until he emerged into the full moonlight of the heights. There he halted and looked about him. He was near the apex of The Gore. To the north, above the foreground of the sea of hilltops, loomed Katahdin. At his right, a pond, some five acres in extent, lay at the base of cliff-like rocks topped with a few primeval pines. Everywhere there were barren sheep pastures alternating with acres of stunted fir and hemlock, and in sheltered nooks, adjacent to these coverts, he could discern something which he judged to be stone sheepfolds. Just below him, on the opposite side of the road and the Rothel, which was crossed by a broad bridging of log and plank, stood a long low stone house, to the north of which a double row of firs had been planted for a windbreak. Behind him, on a rise of ground a few rods from the highway, was a large double house of brick with deep granite foundations and white granite window caps. Two shafts of the same stone supported the ample white-painted entrance porch. Ancestral elms over-leafed the roof on the southern side. One light shone from an upper window. Beyond the elms, a rough road led still upwards to the heights behind the house.
The priest retraced his steps; turned into this road, for which the landlord of The Greenbush had given him minute instructions, and followed its rough way for an eighth of a mile; then a sudden turn around a shoulder of the hill—and the beginning of the famous Flamsted granite quarries lay before him, gleaming, sparkling in the moonlight—a snow-white, glistening patch on the barren hilltop. Near it were a few huts of turf and stone for the accommodation of the quarrymen. This was all. But it was the scene, self-chosen, of this priest's future labors; and while he looked upon it, thoughts unutterable crowded fast, too fast for the brain already stimulated by the time and environment. He turned about; retraced his steps at the same rapid pace; passed again up the highroad to the head of The Gore, then around it, across a barren pasture, and climbed the cliff-like rock that was crowned by the ancient pines. He stood there erect, his head thrown back, his forehead to the radiant heavens, his eyes fixed on the pale twinklings of the seven stars in the northernmost constellation of the Bear—rapt, caught away in spirit by the intensity of feeling engendered by the hour, the place. Then he knelt, bowing his head on a lichened rock, and unto his Maker, and the Maker of that humanity he had elected to serve, he consecrated himself anew.
Ten minutes afterwards, he was coming down The Gore on his way back to The Greenbush. He heard the agitated ringing of a bell-wether; then the soft huddling rush of a flock of sheep somewhere in the distance. A sheep dog barked sharply; a hound bayed in answer till the hills north of The Gore gave back a multiple echo; but the Rothel kept its secrets, and with inarticulate murmuring made haste to deposit them in the quiet lake waters.
"But, mother—"
There was an intonation in the protest that hinted at some irritation. Champney Googe emptied his pipe on the grass and knocked it clean against the porch rail before he continued.
"Won't it make a lot of talk? Of course, I can see your side of it; it's hospitable and neighborly and all that, to give the priest his meals for a while, but,—" he hesitated, and his mother answered his thought.
"A little talk more or less after all there has been about the quarry won't do any harm, and I'm used to it." She spoke with some bitterness.
"Ithasstirred up a hornet's nest about your ears, that's a fact. How does Aunt Meda take this latest move? Meat-axey as usual? I didn't see her when I went there yesterday; she's in Hallsport for two days on business, so Tave says."
His mother smiled. "I haven't seen her since the sale was concluded, but I hear she has strengthened the opposition in consequence. I get my information from Mrs. Caukins."
At the mention of that name Champney laughed out. "Good authority, mother. I must run over and see her to-night. Well, we don't care, do we? I mean about the feeling. Mother, I just wish you were a man for one minute."
"Why?"
"Because I'd like to go up to you, man fashion, grip your hand, slap you on the back, and shout 'By Jove, old man, you've made a deal that would turn the sunny side of Wall Street green with envy!' How did you do it, mother? And without a lawyer! I'll bet Emlie is mad because he didn't get a chance to put his finger in your pie."
"I was thinking of you, of your future, and how you have been used by Almeda Champney; and that gave me the confidence, almost the push of a man—and I dealt with them as a man with men; but I felt unsexed in doing it. I've wondered what they think of me."
"Think of you! I can tell you what one man thinks of you, and that's Mr. Van Ostend. I had a note from him at the time of the sale asking me to come to his office, an affidavit was necessary, and I found he had had eyes in his head for the most beautiful woman in the world—"
"Champney!"
"Fact; and, what's more, I got an invitation to his house on the strength of his recognition of that fact. I dined with him there; his sister is a stunning girl."
"I'm glad such homes are open to you; it is your right and—it compensates."
"For what, mother?"
"Oh, a good many things. How do they live?"
"The Van Ostends?"
"Yes."
Champney Googe hugged his knees and rocked back and forth on the step before he answered. His merry face seemed to lengthen in feature, to harden in line. His mother left her chair and sewing to sit down on the step beside him. She looked up inquiringly.
"Just asImean to live sometime, mother,"—his fresh young voice rang determined and almost hard; his mother's eyes kindled;—"in a way that expresses Life—as you and I understand it, and don't live it, mother; as you and I have conceived of it while up here among these sheep pastures." He glanced inimically for a moment at the barren slopes above them. "I have you to thank for making me comprehend the difference." He continued the rocking movement for a while, his hands still clasping his knees. Then he went on:
"As for his home on the Avenue, there isn't its like in the city, and as a storehouse of the best in art it hasn't its equal in the country; it's just perfect from picture gallery to billiard room. As for adjuncts, there's a shooting box and abona fidecastle in the Scottish Highlands, a cottage at Bar Harbor with the accessory of a steam yacht, and a racing stud on a Long Island farm. As a financier he's great!"
He sat up straight, and freely used his fists, first on one knee then on the other, to emphasize his words; "His right hand is on one great lever of interstate traffic, his left on the other of foreign trade, and two continents obey his manipulations. His eye exacts trained efficiency from thousands; his word is a world event; Wall Street is his automaton. Oh, the power of it all! I can't wait to get out into the stream, mother! I'm only hugging the shore at present; that's what has made me kick against this last year in college; it has been lost time, for I want to get rich quick."
His mother laid her hand on his knee. "No, Champney, it's not lost time; it's one of your assets as a gentleman."
He looked up at her, his blue eyes smiling into her dark ones.
"I can be a gentleman all right without that asset; you said father didn't go."
"No, but the man for whom you are named went, and he told me once a college education was a 'gentleman's asset.' That expression was his."
"Well, I don't see that the asset did him much good. It didn't seem to discount his liabilities in other ways. Queer, how Uncle Louis went to seed—I mean, didn't amount to anything along any business or professional line. Only last spring I met the father of a second-year man who remembers Uncle Louis well, said he was a classmate of his. He told me he was banner man every time and no end popular; the others didn't have a show with him."
His mother was silent. Champney, apparently unheeding her unresponsiveness, rose quickly, shook himself together, and suddenly burst into a mighty laughter that is best comparable to the inextinguishable species of the blessed gods. He laughed in arpeggios, peal on peal, crescendo and diminuendo, until, finally, he flung himself down on the short turf and in his merriment rolled over and over. He brought himself right side up at last, tears in his eyes and a sigh of satisfying exhaustion on his lips. To his mother's laughing query:
"What is it now, Champney?" He shook his head as if words failed him; then he said huskily:
"It's Aunt Meda'sprotégée. Oh, Great Scott! She'll be the death by shock of some of the Champo people if she stays another three months. I hear Aunt Meda has had her Waterloo. Tavy buttonholed me out in the carriage house yesterday, and told me the whole thing—oh, but it's rich!" He chuckled again. "He got me to feel his vest; says he can lap it three inches already and she has only been here two weeks; and as for Romanzo, he's neither to have nor to hold when the girl's in sight—wits topsy-turvy, actually, oh, Lord!"—he rolled over again on the grass—"what do you think, mother! She got Roman to scour down Jim—you know, the white cart-horse, the Percheron—with Hannah's cleaning powder, and the girl helped him, and together they got one side done and then waited for it to dry to see how it worked. Result: Tave dead ashamed to drive him in the cart for fear some one will see the yellow-white calico-circus horse, that the two rapscallions have left on his hands, and doesn't want Aunt Meda to know it for fear she'll turn down Roman. He says he's going to put Jim out to grass in the Colonel's back sheep pasture, and when Aunt Meda comes home lie about sudden spavin or something. And the joke of it is Roman takes it all as a part of the play, and has owned up to Tave that, by mistake, he blacked Aunt Meda's walking boots, before she went to Hallsport, with axle grease, while the girl was 'telling novels' to him! Tave said Roman told him she knew a lot of the nobility, marchionesses and 'sich'; and now Roman struts around cocksure, high and mighty as if he'd just been made K.C.B., and there's no getting any steady work out of him. You should have seen Tave's face when he was telling me!"
His mother laughed. "I can imagine it; he's worried over this new move of Almeda's. I confess it puzzles me."
"Well, I'm off to see some of the fun—and the girl. Tave said he didn't expect Aunt Meda before to-morrow night, and it's a good time for me to rubber round the old place a little on my own hook;—and, mother,"—he stooped to her; Aurora Googe raised her still beautiful eyes to the frank if somewhat hard blue ones that looked down into hers; a fine color mounted into her cheeks,—"take the priest for his meals, for all me. It's an invasion, but, of course, I recognize that we're responsible for it on account of the quarry business. I suppose we shall have to make some concessions to all classes till we get away from here for good and all—then we'll have our fling, won't we, mother?"
He was off without waiting for a reply. Aurora Googe watched him out of sight, then turned to her work, the flush still upon her cheeks.
Champney leaned on the gate of the paddock at Champ-au-Haut and looked about him. The estate at The Bow had been familiar to him throughout his childhood and boyhood. He had been over every foot of it, and at all seasons, with his Uncle Louis. He was realizing that it had never seemed more beautiful to him than now, seen in the warm light of a July sunset. In the garden pleasance, that sloped to the lake, the roses and lilies planted there a generation ago still bloomed and flourished, and in the elm-shaded paddock, on the gate of which he was leaning, filly and foal could trace their pedigree to the sixth and seventh generation of deep-chested, clean-flanked ancestors.
The young man comprehended in part only, the reason of his mother's extreme bitterness towards Almeda Champney. His uncle had loved him; had kept him with him much of the time, encouraging him in his boyish aims and ambitions which his mother fostered—and Louis Champney was childless, the last in direct descent of a long line of fine ancestors—.
Here his thought was checked; those ancestors were his, only in a generation far removed; the Champney blood was in his mother's veins. But his father was Almeda Champney's only brother—why then, should not his mother count on the estate being his in the end? He knew this to have been her hope, although she had never expressed it. He had gained an indefinite knowledge of it through old Joel Quimber and Elmer Wiggins and Mrs. Milton Caukins, a distant relative of his father's. To be sure, Louis Champney might have left him his hunting-piece, which as a boy he had coveted, just for the sake of his name—
He stopped short in his speculations for he heard voices in the lane. The cows were entering it and coming up to the milking shed. The lane led up from the low-lying lake meadows, knee deep with timothy and clover, and was fenced on both sides from the apple orchards which arched and overshadowed its entire length. The sturdy over-reaching boughs hung heavy with myriads of green balls. Now and then one dropped noiselessly on the thick turf in the lane, and a noble Holstein mother, ebony banded with ivory white, her swollen cream-colored bag and dark-blotched teats flushed through and through by the delicate rose of a perfectly healthy skin, lowered her meek head and, snuffing largely, caught sideways as she passed at the enticing green round.
At the end of this lane there swung into view a tall loose-jointed figure which the low strong July sunshine threw into bold relief. It was Romanzo Caukins, one of the Colonel's numerous family, a boy of sixteen who had been bound out recently to the mistress of Champ-au-Haut upon agreement of bed, board, clothes, three terms of "schooling" yearly, and the addition of thirty dollars to be paid annually to the Colonel.
The payment of this amount, by express stipulation, was to be made at the end of each year until Romanzo should come into his majority. By this arrangement, Mrs. Champney assured to herself the interest on the aforesaid thirty dollars, and congratulated herself on the fact that such increment might be credited to Milton Caukins as a minus quantity.
Champney leaped the bars and went down the lane to meet him.
"Hello, Roman, how are you?"
The boy's honest blue eyes, that seemed always to be looking forward in a chronic state of expectancy for the unexpected, beamed with goodness and goodwill. He wiped his hands on his overalls and clasped Champney's.
"Hullo, Champ, when'd you come?"
"Only yesterday. I didn't see you about when I was here in the afternoon. How do you like your job?"
The youth made an uncouth but expressive sign towards the milk shed. "Sh—Tave'll hear you. He and I ain't been just on good terms lately; but 'tain't my fault," he added doggedly.
At that moment a clear childish voice called from somewhere below the lane:
"Romanzo—Romanzo!"
The boy started guiltily. "I've got to go, Champ; she wants me."
Champney seized him with a strong hand by the suspenders. "Here, hold on! Who, you gump?"
"The girl—le' me go." But Champney gripped him fast.
"No, you don't, Roman; let her yell."
"Ro—man—zo-o-o-o!" The range of this peremptory call was two octaves at least.
"By gum—she's up to something, and Tave won't stand any more fooling—le' me go!" He writhed in the strong grasp.
"I won't either. I haven't been half-back on our team for nothing; so stand still." And Romanzo stood still, perforce.
Another minute and Aileen came running up the lane. She was wearing the same heavy shoes, the same dark blue cotton dress, half covered now with a gingham apron—Mrs. Champney had not deemed it expedient to furnish a wardrobe until the probation period should have decided her for or against keeping the child. She was bareheaded, her face flushed with the heat and her violent exercise. She stopped short at a little distance from them so soon as she saw that Romanzo was not alone. She tossed back her braid and stamped her foot to emphasize her words:
"Why didn't yer come, Romanzo Caukins, when I cried ter yer!"
"'Coz I couldn't; he wouldn't let me." He spoke anxiously, making signs towards the shed. But Aileen ignored them; ignored, also, the fact that any one was present besides her slave.
Champney answered for himself. He promptly bared his head and advanced to shake hands; but Aileen jerked hers behind her.
"I'm Mr. Champney Googe, at your service. Who are you?"
The little girl was sizing him up before she accepted the advance; Champney could tell by the "East-side" look with which she favored him.
"I'm Miss Aileen Armagh, and don't yer forget it!—at your service." She mimicked him so perfectly that Champney chuckled and Romanzo doubled up in silent glee.
"I sha'n't be apt to, thank you. Come, let's shake hands, Miss Aileen Armagh-and-don't-yer-forget-it, for we've got to be friends if you're to stay here with my aunt." He held out both hands. But the little girl kept her own obstinately behind her and backed away from him.
"I can't."
"Why not?"
"'Coz they're all stuck up with spruce gum and Octavius said nothing would take it off but grease, and—" she turned suddenly upon Romanzo, blazing out upon him in her wrath—"I hollered ter yer so's yer could get some for me from Hannah, and you was just dirt mean not to answer me."
"Champ wouldn't let me go," said Romanzo sulkily; "besides, I dassn't ask Hannah, not since I used the harness cloth she gave to clean down Jim."
"Yer 'dassn't!' Fore I'd be a boy and say 'I dassn't!'" There was inexpressible scorn in her voice. She turned to Champney, her eyes brimming with mischief and flashing a challenge:
"And yer dassn't shake hands with me 'coz mine are all stuck up, so now!"
Champney had not anticipated thispronunciamento, but he accepted the challenge on the instant. "Dare not! You can't say that to me! Here, give me your hands." Again he held out his shapely well-kept members, and Aileen with a merry laugh brought her grimy sticky little paws into view and, without a word, laid them in Champney's palms. He held them close, purposely, that they might adhere and provide him with some fun; then, breaking into his gay laugh he said:
"Clear out, Roman; Tave 'll be looking for the milk pails. As for you, Miss Aileen Armagh-and-don't-yer-forget-it, you can't pull away from me now. So, come on, and we'll get Hannah to give us some lard and then we'll go down to the boat house where it is cool and cleanup. Come on!"
Holding her by both hands he raced her down the long lane, through the vegetable garden, all chassez, down the middle, swing your partner—Aileen wild with the fun—up the slate-laid kitchen walk to the kitchen door. His own laughter and the child's, happy, merry, care-free, rang out peal on peal till Ann and Hannah and Octavius paused in their work to listen, and wished that such music might have been heard often during their long years of faithful service in childless Champ-au-Haut.