I
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—"
"What was 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-five pre-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 see her thar. 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.