II
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 girl could resist loving you, dear."
"Oh, ho! Don't you, mother mine! Well, commend me to a doting—"
"I'm not doting, 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.
III
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 say you do."
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. Can you 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 plain
I'm searching in vain
Kind 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 white
Above her bonny brow?
And as clever to clear
The dykes as a deer?"—
"That's just my own Kerry cow."
"Then cast your eye into that field of wheat
She's there as large as life."—
"My bitter disgrace!
Howe'er shall I face
The 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.
