Mrs. Milton Caukins had her trials, but they were of a kind some people would call "blessed torments." The middle-aged mother of eight children, six boys, of whom Romanzo was the eldest, and twin girls, Elvira Caukins might with justice lay claim to a superabundance of a certain kind of trial. Every Sunday morning proved the crux of her experience, and Mrs. Caukins' nerves were correspondingly shaken. To use her own words, she "was all of a tremble" by the time she was dressed for church.
On such occasions she was apt to speak her mind, preferably to the Colonel; but lacking his presence, to her family severally and collectively, to 'Lias, the hired man, or aloud to herself when busy about her work. She had been known, on occasion, to acquaint even the collie with her state of mind, and had assured the head of the family afterwards that there was more sense of understanding of a woman's trials in one wag of a dog's tail than in most men's head-pieces.
"Mr. Caukins!" she called up the stairway. She never addressed her husband in the publicity of domestic life without this prefix; to her children she spoke of him as "your pa"; to all others as "the Colonel."
"Yes, Elvira."
The Colonel's voice was leisurely, but muffled owing to the extra heavy lather he was laying about his mouth for the Sunday morning shave. His wife's voice shrilled again up the staircase:
"It's going on nine o'clock and the boys are nowheres near ready; I haven't dressed the twins yet, and the boys are trying to shampoo each other—they've got your bottle of bay rum, and not a single shoe have they greased. I wish you'd hurry up and come down; for if there's one thing you know I hate it's to go into church after the beginning of the first lesson with those boys squeaking and scrunching up the aisle behind me. It makes me nervous and upsets me so I can't find the place in my prayer book half the time."
"I'll be down shortly." The tone was intended to be conciliatory, but it irritated Mrs. Caukins beyond measure.
"I know all about your 'shortlies,' Mr. Caukins; they're as long as the rector's sermon this very Whit-sunday—the one day in the whole year when the children can't keep still any more than cows in fly time. Did you get their peppermints last night?"
"'Gad, my dear, I forgot them! But really—", his voice was degenerating into a mumble owing to the pressure of circumstances, "—matters of such—er—supreme importance—came—er—to my knowledge last evening that—that—"
"That what?"
"—That—that—mm—mm—" there followed the peculiar noise attendant upon a general clearing up of much lathered cuticle, "—I forgot them."
"What matters were they? You didn't say anything about 'supreme importance' last night, Mr. Caukins."
"I'll tell you later, Elvira; just at present I—"
"Was it anything about the quarries?"
"Mm—"
"Whatwas it?"
"I heard young Googe was expected next week."
"Well, I declare! I could have told you that much myself if you'd been at home in any decent season. It seems pretty poor planning to have to run down three miles to The Greenbush every Saturday evening to find out what you could know by just stepping across the bridge to Aurora's. She told me yesterday. Was that all?"
"N—no—"
"For mercy's sake, Mr. Caukins, don't keep me waiting here any longer! It's almost church time."
"I wasn't aware that I was detaining you, Elvira." The Colonel's protest was mild but dignified. There were sounds above of renewed activity.
"Dulcie," said Mrs. Caukins, turning to a little girl who was standing beside her, listening with erected ears to her mother's questions and father's answers, "go up stairs into mother's room and see if Doosie's getting ready, there's a good girl."
"Doosie is with me, Elvira; I would let well enough alone for the present, if I were you," said the Colonel admonishingly. His wife wisely took the hint. "Come up, Dulcie," he called, "father's ready." Dulcie hopped up stairs.
"You haven't said what matters of importance kept you last night." Mrs. Caukins returned to her muttons with redoubled energy.
"Champney came home unexpectedly last evening, and the syndicate has offered him a position, a big one, in New York—treasurer of the Flamsted Quarries Company; and our Romanzo's got a chance too—"
"You don't say! What is it?" Mrs. Caukins started up stairs whence came sounds of an obstreperous bootjack.
"Paymaster, here in town; I'll explain in more propitious circumstances. Has 'Lias harnessed yet, Elvira?"
Without deigning to answer, Mrs. Caukins freed her mind.
"Well, Mr. Caukins, I must say you grow more and more like that old ram of 'Lias's that has learned to butt backwards just for the sake of going contrary to nature. I believe you'd rather tell a piece of news backwards than forwards any day! Why didn't you begin by telling me about Romanzo? If your own child that's your flesh and blood and bone isn't of most interest to you, I'd like to know what is!"
The Colonel's reply was partly inaudible owing to a sudden outbreak of altercation among the boys in the room below. Mrs. Caukins, who had just reached the landing, turned in her tracks and hurried to the rescue.
The Colonel smiled at the rosy, freshly-shaved face reflected in the mirror of the old-fashioned dressing-case, and, at the same time, caught the reflection of another image—that of his hired man, 'Lias, who was crossing the yard. He went to the window and leaned out, stemming his hands on the sill.
"There seems to be the usual Sunday morning row going on below, 'Lias. I fear the boys are shampooing each other's heads with the backs of their brushes from the sounds."
'Lias smiled, and nodded understandingly.
"Just look in and lend a hand in case Mrs. Caukins should be outnumbered, will you? I'm engaged at present." And deeply engaged he was to the twins' unspeakable delight. Whistling softly an air from "Il Trovatore," he rubbed some orange-flower water on his chin and cheeks; then taking a fresh handkerchief, dabbed several drops on the two little noses that waited upon him weekly in expectation of this fragrant boon. He was rewarded by a few satisfactory kisses.
"Now run away and help mother—coach leaves at nine forty-fivepre-cisely. I forgot the peppermints, but—" he slapped his trousers' pockets significantly.
The twins shouted with delight and rushed away to impart the news to the boys.
"I wish you would tell me the secret of your boys' conduct in church, Colonel Caukins; it's exemplary. I don't understand it, for boys will be boys," said the rector one Sunday several years before when all the boys were young. He had taken note of their want of restlessness throughout the sermon.
The Colonel's mouth twitched; he answered promptly, but avoided his wife's eyes.
"All in the method, I assure you. We Americans have spent a generation in experimenting with the inductive, the subjective method in education, and the result is, to all intents and purposes, a dismal failure. The future will prove the value of the objective, the deductive—which is mine," he added with a sententious emphasis that left the puzzled rector no wiser than before.
"Whatever the method, Colonel, you have a fine family; there is no mistake about that," he said heartily.
The Colonel beamed and responded at once:
"'Blessed is the man that hath his quiver full'—"
At this point Mrs. Caukins surreptitiously poked the admonitory end of her sunshade between the Colonel's shoulder blades, and the Colonel, comprehending, desisted from further quotation of scripture. It was not his strong point. Once he had been known to quote, not only unblushingly but triumphantly, during a touch-and-go discussion of the labor question in the town hall:—"The ass, gentlemen, is worthy of his hire"; and in so doing had covered Mrs. Caukins with confusion and made a transient enemy of every wage-earner in the audience.
But his boys behaved—that was the point. What boys wouldn't when their heart's desire was conveyed to them at the beginning of the sermon by a secret-service-under-the-pew process wholly delightful to the young human male? Who wouldn't be quiet for the sake of the peppermints, a keen three-bladed knife, or a few gelatine fishes that squirmed on his warm moist palm in as lively a manner as if just landed on the lake shore? Their father had been a boy, and at fifty had a boy's heart within him—this was the secret of his success.
Mrs. Caukins appeared at last, radiant in the consciousness of a new chip hat and silk blouse. Dulcie and Doosie in white lawn did their pains-taking mother credit in every respect. The Colonel gallantly presented his wife with a small bunch of early roses—an attention which called up a fine bit of color into her still pretty face. 'Lias helped her into the three-seated wagon, then lifted in the twins; the boys piled in afterwards; the Colonel took the reins. Mrs. Caukins waved her sunshade vigorously at 'Lias and gave a long sigh of relief and satisfaction.
"Well, we're off at last! I declare I miss Maggie every hour in the day. I don't know what I should have done all these years without that girl!"
The mention of "Maggie" emphasizes one of the many changes in Flamsted during the six years of Champney Googe's absence. Mrs. Caukins, urged by her favorite, Aileen, and advised by Mrs. Googe and Father Honoré, had imported Margaret O'Dowd, the "Freckles" of the asylum, as mother's helper six months after Aileen's arrival in Flamsted. For nearly six years Maggie loyally seconded Mrs. Caukins in the care of her children and her household. Slow, but sure and dependable, strong and willing, she made herself invaluable in the stone house among the sheep pastures; her stunted affections revived and flourished apace in that household of well-cared-for children to whom both parents were devoted. It cost her a heartache to leave them; but six months ago burly Jim McCann, one of the best workmen in the sheds—although of unruly spirit and a source of perennial trouble among the men—began to make such determined love to the mother's helper that the Caukinses found themselves facing inevitable loss. Maggie had been married three months; and already McCann had quarrelled with the foreman, and, in a huff, despite his wife's tears and prayers, sought of his own accord work in another and far distant quarry.
"Maggie told me she'd never leave off teasing Jim to bring her back," said the fifth eldest Caukins.—"Oh, look!" he cried as they rumbled over the bridge; "there's Mrs. Googe and Champney on the porch waving to us!"
The Colonel took off his hat with a flourish; the boys swung theirs; Mrs. Caukins waved her sunshade to mother and son.
"I declare, I'd like to stop just a minute," she said regretfully, for the Colonel continued to drive straight on. "I'm so glad for Aurora's sake that he's come home; I only hope our Romanzo will do as well."
"It would be an intrusion at such a time, Elvira. The effusions of even the best-intentioned friends are injudicious at the inopportune moment of domestic reunion."
Mrs. Caukins subsided on that point. She was always depressed by the Colonel's grandiloquence, which he usually reserved for The Greenbush and the town-meeting, without being able to account for it.
"He'll see a good many changes here; it's another Flamsted we're living in," she remarked later on when they passed the first stone-cutters' shed on the opposite shore of the lake; and the family proceeded to comment all the way to church on the various changes along the route.
It was in truth another Flamsted, the industrial Flamsted which the Colonel predicted six years before on that memorable evening in the office of The Greenbush.
To watch the transformation of a quiet back-country New England village into the life-centre of a great and far-reaching industry, is in itself a liberal education, not only in economics, but in inherited characteristics of the human race. Those first drops of "the deluge," the French priest and the Irish orphan, were followed by an influx of foreigners of many nationalities: Scotch, Irish, Italians, Poles, Swedes, Canadian French; and with these were associated a few American-born.
Their life-problem, the earning of wages for the sustenance of themselves and their families, was one they had in common. Its solution was centred for one and all in their work among the granite quarries of The Gore and in the stone-cutters' sheds on the north shore of Lake Mesantic. These two things the hundreds belonging to a half-dozen nationalities possessed in common—these, and their common humanity together with the laws to which it is subject. But aside from this, their speech, habits, customs, religions, food, and pastimes were polyglot; on this account the lines of racial demarkation were apt, at times, to be drawn all too sharply. Yet this very fact of differentiation provided hundreds of others—farmers, shopkeepers, jobbers, machinists, mechanics, blacksmiths, small restaurant-keepers, pool and billiard room owners—with ample sources of livelihood.
This internal change in the community of Flamsted corresponded to the external. During those six years the very face of nature underwent transformation. The hills in the apex of The Gore were shaved clean of the thin layer of turf, and acres of granite laid bare to the drill. Monster derricks, flat stone-cars, dummy engines, electric motors, were everywhere in evidence. Two glittering steel tracks wound downwards through old watercourses to the level of the lake, and to the huge stone-cutting sheds that stretched their gray length along the northern shore. Here the quarried stones, tons in weight, were unloaded by the great electric travelling crane which picks up one after the other with automatic perfection of silence and accuracy, and deposits them wherever needed by the workmen.
A colony of substantial three-room houses, two large boarding-houses, a power house and, farther up beyond the pines, a stone house and a long low building, partly of wood, partly of granite waste cemented, circled the edges of the quarry.
The usual tale of workmen in the fat years was five hundred quarrymen and three hundred stone-cutters. This population of working-men, swelled to three thousand by the addition of their families, increased or diminished according as the years and seasons proved fat or lean. A ticker on Wall Street was sufficient to give to the great industry abnormal life and activity, and draw to the town a surplus working population. A feeling of unrest and depression, long-continued in metropolitan financial circles, was responded to with sensitive pulse on these far-away hills of Maine and resulted in migratory flights, by tens and twenties, of Irish and Poles, of Swedes, Italians, French Canucks, and American-born to more favorable conditions. "Here one day and gone the next"; even the union did not make for stability of tenure.
In this ceaseless tidal ebb and flow of industrials, the original population of Flamsted managed at times to come to the surface to breathe; to look about them; to speculate as to "what next?" for the changes were rapid and curiosity was fed almost to satiety. A fruitful source of speculation was Champney Googe's long absence from home, already six years, and his prospects when he should have returned. Speculation was also rife when Aurora Googe crossed the ocean to spend a summer with her son; at one time rumors were afloat that Champney's prospective marriage with a relation of the Van Ostends was near at hand, and this was said to be the cause of his mother's rather sudden departure. But on her return, Mrs. Googe set all speculation in this direction at rest by denying the rumor most emphatically, and adding the information for every one's benefit that she had gone over to be with Champney because he did not wish to come home at the time his contract with Mr. Van Ostend permitted.
Once during the past year, the village wise heads foregathered in the office of The Greenbush to discuss the very latest:—the coming to Flamsted of seven Sisters, Daughters of the Mystic Rose, who, foreseeing the suppression of their home institution in France, had come to prepare a refuge for their order on the shores of America and found another home and school among the quarrymen in this distant hill-country of the new Maine—an echo of the old France of their ancestors. This was looked upon as an undreamed-of innovation exceeding all others that had come to their knowledge; it remained for old Joel Quimber to enter the lists as champion of the newcomers, their cause, and their school which, with Father Honoré's aid, they at once established among the barren hills of The Gore.
"Hounded out er France, poor souls, just like my own great-great-great-granther's father!" he said, referring to the subject again on that last Saturday evening when the frequenters of The Greenbush were to be stirred shortly by the news they considered best of all: Champney Googe's unexpected arrival. "I was up thar yisterd'y an' it beats all how snug they're fixed! The schoolroom's ez neat as a pin, an' pitchers on the walls wuth a day's journey to see. They're havin' a room built onto the farther end—a kind of er relief hospital, so Father Honoré told me—ter help out when the quarrymen git a jammed foot er finger, so's they needn't be took home to muss up their little cabins an' worrit their wives an' little 'uns. I heerd Aileen hed ben goin' up thar purty reg'lar lately for French an' sich; guess Mis' Champney's done 'bout the right thing by her, eh, Tave?"
Octavius nodded. "And Aileen's done the right thing by Mrs. Champney. 'T isn't every young girl that would stick to it as Aileen's done the last six years—not in the circumstances."
"You're right, Tave. I heerd not long ago thet she was a-goin' on the stage when she'd worked out her freedom, and by A. J. she's got the voice for it! But I'd hate ter seeherthar. She's made a lot er sunshine in this place, and I guess from all I hear there's them thet would stan' out purty stiff agin it; they say Luigi Poggi an' Romanzo Caukins purty near fit over her t' other night."
"You needn't believe all you hear, Joel, but you can believe me when I tell you there'll be no going on the stage for Aileen—not if I know it, or Father Honoré either."
He spoke so emphatically that his brother Augustus looked at him in surprise.
"What's up, Tave?" he inquired.
"I mean Aileen's got a level head and isn't going to leave just as things are beginning to get interesting. She's stood it six year and she can stand it six more if she makes up her mind to it, and I'd ought to know, seeing as I've lived with her ever since she come to Flamsted."
"To be sure, Tave, to be sure; nobody knows better'n you, 'bout Aileen, an' I guess she's come to look on you, from all I hear, as her special piece of property." His brother spoke appeasingly.
Octavius smiled. "Well, I don't deny but she lays claim to me most of the time; it's 'Octavius' here and 'Octavius' there all day long. Sometimes Mrs. Champney ruffs up about it, but Aileen has a way of smoothing her down, generally laughs her out of it. Is that the Colonel?" He listened to a step on the veranda. "Don't let on 'bout anything 'twixt Romanzo and Aileen before the Colonel, Joel."
"You don't hev ter say thet to me," said old Quimber resentfully; "anybody can see through a barn door when thar's a hole in it. All on us know Mis' Champney's a-breakin'; they do say she's hed a shock, leastwise I heerd so, an' Aileen'll look out for A No. 1. I ain't lived to be most eighty in Flamsted for nothin', an' I've seen an' heerd more'n I've ever told, Tave; more'n even you know 'bout some things. You don't remember the time old Square Googe took Aurory inter his home to bring up an' Judge Champney said he was sorry he'd got ahead of him for he wanted to adopt her for a daughter himself; them's his words; I heerd him. An' I can tell more'n—"
"Shut up, Quimber," said Octavius shortly; and Joel Quimber "shut up," but, winking knowingly at Augustus Buzzby, continued to chuckle to himself till the Colonel entered who, beginning to expatiate upon the subject of Champney Googe's prospects when he should have returned to the home-welcome awaiting him, was happily interrupted by the announcement of that young man's unexpected arrival on the evening train.
Champney Googe was beginning to realize, as he stood on the porch with his mother and waved to his old neighbors, the Caukinses, the changed conditions he was about to face. He was also realizing that he must change to meet these conditions. On his way up from the train Saturday evening, he noted the power house at The Corners and the substantial line of comfortable cottages that extended for a mile along the highroad to the entrance of the village. He found Main Street brilliant with electric lights and lined nearly its entire length with shops, large and small, which were thronged with week-end purchasers. An Italian fruit store near The Greenbush bore the proprietor's name, Luigi Poggi; as he drove past he saw an old Italian woman bargaining with smiles and lively gestures over the open counter. Farther on, from an improvised wooden booth, the raucous voice of the phonograph was jarring the night air and entertaining a motley group gathered in front of it. Across the street a flaunting poster announced "Moving Picture Show for a Nickel." Vehicles of all descriptions, from a Maine "jigger" to a "top buggy," were stationary along the village thoroughfare, their various steeds hitched to every available stone post. In front of the rectory some Italian children were dancing to the jingle of a tambourine.
On nearing The Bow the confusion ceased; the polyglot sounds were distinguishable only as a murmur. In passing Champ-au-Haut, he looked up at the house; here and there a light shone behind drawn shades. Six years had passed since he was last there; six years—and time had not dulled the sensation of that white pepper in his nostrils! He smiled to himself. He must see Aileen before he left, for from time to time he had heard good reports of her from his mother with whom she had become a favorite. He thought she must be mighty plucky to stand Aunt Meda all this time! He gathered from various sources that Mrs. Champney was growing peculiar as she approached three score and ten. Her rare letters to him, however, were kind enough. But he was sure Aileen's anomalous place in the household at Champ-au-Haut—neither servant nor child of the house, never adopted, but only maintained—could have been no sinecure. Anyway, he knew she had kept the devotion of her two admirers, Romanzo Caukins and Octavius Buzzby. From a hint in his aunt's last letter, he drew the conclusion that Aileen and Romanzo would make a match of it before long, when Romanzo should be established. At any rate, Aileen had wit enough, he was sure, to know on which side her bread was buttered, and from all he heard by the way of letters, Romanzo Caukins was not to be sneezed at as a prospective husband—a steady-going, solid sort of a chap who, he was told, had a chance now like himself in the quarry business. He must credit Aunt Meda with this one bit of generosity, at least; Mr. Van Ostend told him she had applied to him for some working position for Romanzo in the Flamsted office, and not in vain; he was about to be put in as pay-master.
As he drove slowly up the highroad towards The Gore, he saw the stone-cutters' sheds stretching dim and gray in the moonlight along the farther shore. A standing train of loaded flat-cars gleamed in the electric light like a long high-piled drift of new-fallen snow. Here and there, on approaching The Gore, an arc-light darkened the hills round about and sent its blinding glare into the traveller's eyes. At last, his home was in sight—his home!—he wondered that he did not experience a greater thrill of home-coming—and behind and above it the many electric lights in and around the quarries produced hazy white reflections concentrated in luminous spots on the clear sky.
His mother met him on the porch. Her greeting was such that it caused him to feel, and for the first time, that where she was, there, henceforth, his true home must ever be.
"It will be hard work adjusting myself at first, mother," he said, turning to her after watching the wagonload of Caukinses out of sight, "harder than I had any idea of. A foreign business training may broaden a man in some ways, but it leaves his muscles flabby for real home work here in America. You make your fight over there with gloves, and here only bare knuckles are of any use; but I'm ready for it!" He smiled and squared his shoulders as to an imaginary load.
"You don't regret it, do you, Champney?"
"Yes and no, mother. I don't regret it because I have gained a certain knowledge of men and things available only to one who has lived over there; but I do regret that, because of the time so spent, I am, at twenty-seven, still hugging the shore—just as I was when I left college. After all these years I'm not 'in it' yet; but I shall be soon," he added; the hard determined ring of steadfast purpose was in his voice. He sat down on the lower step: his mother brought forward her chair.
"Champney," she spoke half hesitatingly; she did not find it easy to question the man before her as she used to question the youth of twenty-one, "would you mind telling me if there ever was any truth in the rumor that somehow got afloat over here three years ago that you were going to marry Ruth Van Ostend? Of course, I denied it when I got home, for I knew you would have told me if there had been anything to it."
Champney clasped his hands about his knee and nursed it, smiling to himself, before he answered:
"I suppose I may as well make a clean breast of the whole affair, which is little enough, mother, even if I didn't cover myself with glory and come out with colors flying. You see I was young and, for all my four years in college, pretty green when it came to the real life of those people—"
"You mean the Van Ostends?"
"Yes, their kind. It's one thing to accept their favors, and it's quite another to make them think you are doing them one. So I sailed in to make Ruth Van Ostend interested in me as far as possible, circumstances permitting—and you'll admit that a yachting trip is about as favorable as they make it. You know she's three years older than I, and I think it flattered and amused her to accept my devotion for a while, but then—"
"But, Champney, did you love her?"
"Well, to be honest, mother, I hadn't got that far myself—don't know that I ever should have; any way, I wanted to get her to the point before I went through any self-catechism on that score."
"But, Champney!" She spoke with whole-hearted protest.
He nodded up at her understandingly. "I know the 'but', mother; but that's how it stood with me. You know they were in Paris the next spring and, of course, I saw a good deal of them—and of many others who were dancing attendance on the heiress to the same tune that I was. But I caught on soon, and saw all the innings were with one special man; and, well—I didn't make a fool of myself, that's all. As you know, she was married the autumn after your return, three years ago."
"You're sure you really didn't mind, Champney?"
He laughed out at that. "Mind! Well, rather! You see it knocked one of my little plans higher than a kite—a plan I made the very day I decided to accept Mr. Van Ostend's offer. Of course I minded."
"What plan?"
"Wonder if I'd better tell you, mother? I'd like to stand well in your good graces—"
"Oh, Champney!"
"Fact, I would. Well, here goes then: I decided—I was lying up under the pines, you know that day I didn't want to accept his offer?"—she nodded confirmatorily—"that if I couldn't have an opportunity to get rich quick in one way, I would in another; and, in accepting the offer, I made up my mind to try for the sister and her millions; if successful, I intended to take by that means a short cut to matrimony and fortune."
"Oh, Champney!"
"Young and fresh and—hardened, wasn't it, mother?"
"You were so young, so ignorant, so unused to that sort of living; you had no realization of the difficulties of life—of love—."
She began speaking as if in apology for his weakness, but ended with the murmured words "life—love", in a voice so tense with pain that it sounded as if the major dominant of youth and ignorance suddenly suffered transcription into a haunting minor.
Her son looked up at her in surprise.
"Why, mother, don't take it so hard; I assure you I didn't. It brought me down to bed rock, for I was making a conceited ass of myself that's all, in thinking I could have roses for fodder instead of thistles—and just for the asking! It did me no end of good. I shall never rush in again where even angels fear to tread except softly—I mean the male wingless kind—worth a couple of millions; she has seven in her own right.—But we're the best of friends."
He spoke without bitterness. His mother felt, however, at the moment, that she would have preferred to hear a note of keen disappointment in his explanation rather than this tone of lightest persiflage.
"I don't see how—" she began, but checked herself. A slight flush mounted in her cheeks.
"See how what, mother? Please don't leave me dangling; I'm willing to take all you can give. I deserve it."
"I wasn't going to blame you, Champney. I'm the last one to do that—Life teaches each in her own way. I was only thinking I didn't see how any girlcouldresist loving you, dear."
"Oh, ho! Don't you, mother mine! Well, commend me to a doting—"
"I'mnotdoting, Champney," she protested, laughing; "I know your faults better than you know them yourself."
"A doting mother, I say, to brace up a man fallen through his pride. Do you mean to say"—, he sprang to his feet, faced her, his hands thrust deep in his pockets, his face alive with the fun of the moment,—"do you mean to say that if you were a girl I should prove irresistible to you? Come now, mother, tell me, honor bright."
She raised her eyes to his. The flush faded suddenly in her cheeks, leaving them unnaturally white; her eyes filled with tears.
"I should worship you," she said under her breath, and dropped her head into her hands. He sprang up the steps to her side.
"Why, mother, mother, don't speak so. I'm not worthy of it—it shames me. Here, look up," he took her bowed head tenderly between his hands and raised it, "look into my face; read it well—interpret, and you will cease to idealize, mother."
She wiped her eyes, half-smiling through her tears. "I'm not idealizing, Champney, and I didn't know I could be so weak; I think—I think the telegram and your coming so unexpectedly—"
"I know, mother," he spoke soothingly, "it was too much; you've been too long alone. I'm glad I'm at home at last and can run up here almost any time." He patted her shoulder softly, and whistled for Rag. "Come, put on your shade hat and we'll go up to the quarries. I want to see them; do you realize they are the largest in the country? It's wonderful what a change they've made here! After all, it takes America to forge ahead, for we've got the opportunities and the money to back them—and what more is needed to make us great?" He spoke lightly, expecting no answer.
She brought her hat and the two went up the side road under the elms to the quarry.
Ay, what more is needed to make us great? That is the question. There comes a time when a man, whose ears are not wholly deafened by the roar of a trafficking commercialism, asks this question of himself in the hope that some answer may be vouchsafed to him. If it come at all, it comes like the "still small voice"after the whirlwind; and the man who asks that question in the expectation of a response, must first have suffered, repented, struggled, fought, at times succumbed to fateful overwhelming circumstance, before his soul can be attuned so finely that the "still small voice" becomes audible. Youth and that question are not synchronous.
"I've not been so much alone as you imagine, Champney," said his mother. They were picking their way over the granite slopes and around to Father Honoré's house. "Aileen and Father Honoré and all the Caukinses and, during this last year, those sweet women of the sisterhood have brought so much life into my life up here among these old sheep pastures that I've not had the chance to feel the loneliness I otherwise should. And then there is that never-to-be-forgotten summer with you over the ocean—I feed constantly on the remembrance of all that delight."
"I'm glad you had it, mother."
"Besides, this great industry is so many-sided that it keeps me interested in every new development in spite of myself."
"By the way, mother, you wrote me that you had invested most of that twenty thousand from the quarry lands in bank stock, didn't you?"
"Yes; Mr. Emlie is president now; he is considered safe. The deposits have quadrupled these last two years, and the dividends have been satisfactory."
"Yes, I know Emlie's safe enough, but you don't want to tie up your money so that you can't convert it at once into cash if advisable. You know I shall be on the inside track now and in a position to use a little of it at a time judiciously in order to increase it for you. I'd like to double it for you as Aunt Meda has doubled her inheritance from grandfather—Who's that?"
He stopped short and, shading his eyes with his hat, nodded in the direction of the sisterhood house that stood perhaps an eighth of a mile beyond the pines. His mother, following his look, saw the figure of a girl dodge around the corner of the house. Before she could answer, Rag, the Irish terrier, who had been nosing disconsolately about on the barren rock, suddenly lost his head. With one short suppressed yelp, he laid his heels low to the slippery granite shelves and scuttled, scurried, scrambled, tore across the intervening quarry hollow like a bundle of brown tow driven before a hurricane.
Mrs. Googe laughed. "No need to ask 'who' when you see Rag go mad like that! It's Aileen; Rag has been devoted to her ever since you've been gone. I wonder why she isn't at church?"
The girl disappeared in the house. Again and again Champney whistled for his dog but Rag failed to put in an appearance.
"He'll need to be re-trained. It isn't well, even for a dog, to be under such petticoat government as that; it spoils him. Only I'm afraid I sha'n't be at home long enough to make him hear to reason."
"Aileen has him in good training. She knows the dog adores her and makes the most of it. Oh, I forgot to tell you I sent word to Father Honoré this morning to come over to tea to-night. I knew you would like to see him, and he has been anticipating your return."
"Has he? What for I wonder. By the way, where did he take his meals after he left you?"
"Over in the boarding-house with the men. He stayed with me only three months, until his house was built. He has an old French Canadian for housekeeper now."
"He's greatly beloved, I hear."
"The Gore wouldn't be The Gore without him," Mrs. Googe spoke earnestly. "The Colonel"—she laughed as she always did when about to quote her rhetorical neighbor—"speaks of him to everyone as 'the heart of the quarry that responds to the throb of the universal human,' and so far as I know no one has ever taken exception to it, for it's true."
"I remember—he was an all round fine man. I shall be glad to see him again. He must find some pretty tough customers up here to deal with, and the Colonel's office is no longer the soft snap it was for fifteen years, I'll bet."
"No, that's true; but, on the whole, there is less trouble than you would expect among so many nationalities. Isn't it queer?—Father Honoré says that most of the serious trouble comes from disputes between the Hungarians and Poles about religious questions. They are apt to settle it with fists or something worse. But he and the Colonel have managed well between them; they have settled matters with very few arrests."
"I can't imagine the Colonel in that rôle." Champney laughed. "What does he do with all his rhetorical trumpery at such times? I've never seen him under fire—in fact, he never had been when I left."
"I know he doesn't like it. He told me he shouldn't fill the office after another year. You know he was obliged to do it to make both ends meet; but since the opening of the quarries he has really prospered and has a market right here in town for all the mutton he can raise. I'm so glad Romanzo's got a chance."
They rambled on, crossing the apex of The Gore and getting a good view of the great extent of the opened quarries. Their talk drifted from one thing to another, Champney questioning about this one and that, until, as they turned homewards, he declared he had picked up the many dropped stitches so fast, that he should feel no longer a stranger in his native place when he should make his first appearance in the town the next day. He wanted to renew acquaintance with all the people at Champ-au-Haut and the old habitués of The Greenbush.
He walked down to Champ-au-Haut the next afternoon. Here and there on the mountain side and along the highroad he noticed the massed pink and white clusters of the sheep laurel. Every singing bird was in full voice; thrush and vireo, robin, meadow lark, song-sparrow and catbird were singing as birds sing but once in the whole year; when the mating season is at its height and the long migratory flight northwards is forgotten in the supreme instinctive joy of the ever-new miracle of procreation.
When he came to The Bow he went directly to the paddock gate. He was hoping to find Octavius somewhere about. He wanted to interview him before seeing any one else, in regard to Rag who had not returned. The recalcitrant terrier must be punished in a way he could not forget; but Champney was not minded to administer this well-deserved chastisement in the presence of the dog's protectress. He feared to make a poor first impression.
He stopped a moment at the gate to look down the lane—what a beautiful estate it was! He wondered if his aunt intended leaving anything of it to the girl she had kept with her all these years. Somehow he had received the impression, whether from Mr. Van Ostend or his sister he could not recall, that she once said she did not mean to adopt her. His mother never mentioned the matter to him; indeed, she shunned all mention, when possible, of Champ-au-Haut and its owner.
In his mind's eye he could still see this child as he saw her on the stage at the Vaudeville, clad first in rags, then in white; as he saw her again dressed in the coarse blue cotton gown of orphan asylum order, sitting in the shade of the boat house on that hot afternoon in July, and rubbing her greasy hands in glee; as he saw her for the third time leaning from the bedroom window and listening to his improvised serenade. Well, he had a bone to pick with her about his dog; that would make things lively for a while and serve for an introduction. He reached over to unlatch the gate. At that moment he heard Octavius' voice in violent protest. It came from behind a group of apple trees down the lane in the direction of the milking shed.
"Now don't go for to trying any such experiment as that, Aileen; you'll fret the cow besides mussing your clean dress."
"I don't care; it'll wash. Now, please, do let me, Tave, just this once."
"I tell you the cow won't give down her milk if you take hold of her. She'll get all in a fever having a girl fooling round her." There followed the rattle of pails and a stool.
"Now, look here, Octavius Buzzby, who knows best about a cow, you or I?"
"Well, seeing as I've made it my business to look after cows ever since I was fifteen year old, you can't expect me to give in to you and sayyoudo."
Her merry laugh rang out. Champney longed to echo it, but thought best to lie low for a while and enjoy the fun so unexpectedly provided.
"Tavy, dear, that only goes to prove you are a mere man; a dear one to be sure—but then! Don't you flatter yourself for one moment that you, or any other man, really know any creature of the feminine gender from a woman to a cow. You simply can't, Tavy, because you aren't feminine.Canyou comprehend that? Can you say on your honor as a man that you have ever been able to tell for certain what Mrs. Champney, or Hannah, or I, for instance, or this cow, or the cat, or Bellona, when she hasn't been ridden enough, or the old white hen you've been trying to force to sit the last two weeks, is going to do next? Now, honor bright, have you?"
Octavius was grumbling some reply inaudible to Champney.
"No, of course you haven't; and what's more you never will. Not that it's your fault, Tavy, dear, it's only your misfortune." Exasperating patronage was audible in her voice. Champney noted that a trace of the rich Irish brogue was left. "Here, give me that pail."
"I tell you, Aileen, you can't do it; you've never learned to milk."
"Oh, haven't I? Look here, Tave, now no more nonsense; Romanzo taught me how two years ago—but we both took care you shouldn't know anything about it. Give me that pail." This demand was peremptory.
Evidently Octavius was weakening, for Champney heard again the rattle of the pails and the stool; then a swish of starched petticoat and a cooing "There, there, Bess."
He opened the gate noiselessly and closing it behind him walked down the lane. The golden light of the June sunset was barred, where it lay upon the brilliant green of the young grass, with the long shadows of the apple-tree trunks. He looked between the thick foliage of the low-hanging branches to the milking shed. The two were there. Octavius was looking on dubiously; Aileen was coaxing the giant Holstein mother to stand aside at a more convenient angle for milking.
"Hold her tail, Tave," was the next command.
She seated herself on the stool and laid her cheek against the warm, shining black flank; her hands manipulated the rosy teats; then she began to sing:
"O what are you seeking my pretty colleen,So sadly, tell me now!"—"O'er mountain and plainI'm searching in vainKind sir, for my Kerry cow."
"O what are you seeking my pretty colleen,So sadly, tell me now!"—"O'er mountain and plainI'm searching in vainKind sir, for my Kerry cow."
The milk, now drumming steadily into the pail, served for a running accompaniment to the next verses.
"Is she black as the night with a star of whiteAbove her bonny brow?And as clever to clearThe dykes as a deer?"—"That's just my own Kerry cow.""Then cast your eye into that field of wheatShe's there as large as life."—"My bitter disgrace!Howe'er shall I faceThe farmer and his wife?"
"Is she black as the night with a star of whiteAbove her bonny brow?And as clever to clearThe dykes as a deer?"—"That's just my own Kerry cow."
"Then cast your eye into that field of wheatShe's there as large as life."—"My bitter disgrace!Howe'er shall I faceThe farmer and his wife?"
What a voice! And what a picture she made leaning caressingly against the charmed and patient Bess! She was so slight, yet round and supple—strong, too, with the strength of perfect health! The thick fluffed black hair was rolled away from her face and gathered into a low knot in the nape of her neck. Her dress cut low at the throat enhanced the white purity of her face and the slim round grace of her neck which showed to advantage against the ebony flank of the mother of many milky ways. Her lips were red and full; the nose was a saucy stub; the eyes he could not see; they were downcast, intent upon her filling pail and the rising creamy foam; but he knew them to be an Irish blue-gray.