Flamsted quarries Part 50

"I have tried so hard," she murmured, "so hard--and I cannot help it. I have despised myself for it--if only he hadn't been put _there_, I think it would have helped--but he is there, and my thoughts are with him there--I see him nights--in that cell--I see him daytimes _breaking stones_--I can't sleep, or eat, without comparing--you know. Oh, if he hadn't been put _there_, I could have conquered this weakness--"

"Aileen, _no_! It is no weakness, it is strength."

Father Honore withdrew his hand, that had been to the broken woman a silent benediction, and walked up and down the long room. "You would never have conquered; there was--there is no need to conquer. Such love is of G.o.d--trust it, my child; don't try any longer to thrust it forth from your heart, your life; for if you do, your life will be but a poor maimed thing, beneficial neither to yourself nor to others. I say, cherish this supreme love for the man who is expiating in a prison; hold it close to your soul as a shield and buckler to the spirit against the world; truly, you will need no other if you go forth from us into a world of strangers--but why, why need you go?"

He spoke gently, but insistently. He saw that the girl was hanging upon his every word as if he bespoke her eternal salvation. And, in truth, the priest was illumining the dark and hidden places of her life and giving her courage to love on which, to her, meant courage to live on.--Such were the demands of a nature, loyal, impulsive, warmly affectionate, sincere, capable of an all-sacrificing love that could give without return if need be, but a nature which, without love developing in her of itself just for the sake of love, would shrivel, become embittered, and like withered fruit on a tree drop useless to the ground to be trodden under the careless foot of man.

In the darkening room the firelight leaped and showed to Father Honore the woman's face transfigured under the powerful influence of his words.

She smiled up at him--a smile so brave in its pathos, so winning in its true womanliness, that Father Honore felt the tears bite his eyeb.a.l.l.s.

"Perhaps I don't need to go then."

"This rejoices me, Aileen--it will rejoice us all," he answered heartily to cover his emotion.

"But it won't be easy to stay where I am."

"I know--I know; you speak as one who has suffered; but has not Champney suffered too? Think of his home-coming!"

"Yes, he has suffered--in a way--but not my way."

Father Honore had a vision at that moment of Champney Googe's face when he said, "But you loved her with your whole manhood." He made no reply, but waited for Aileen to say more if she should so choose.

"I believed he loved me--and so I told him my love--I shall never, never get over that!" she exclaimed pa.s.sionately. "But I know now--I knew before he went away the last time, that I was mistaken; no man could say what he did and know even the first letter of love."

Her indignation was rising, and Father Honore welcomed it; it was a natural trait with her, and its suppression gave him more cause for anxiety than its expression.

"He didn't love me--not really--"

"Are you sure of this, Aileen?"

"Yes, I am sure."

"You have good reason to know that you are telling a fact in a.s.serting this?"

"Yes, altogether too good a reason." There was a return of bitterness in her answer.

Father Honore was baffled. Aileen spoke without further questioning.

Evidently she was desirous of making her position as well as Champney's plain to him and to herself. Her voice grew more gentle as she continued:--

"Father Honore, I've loved him so long--and so truly, without hope, you know--never any hope, and hating myself for loving where I was not loved--that I think I do know what love is--"

Father Honore smiled to himself in the half-dark; this voice was still young, and its love-wisdom was young-wise, also. There was hope, he told himself, that all would come right in the end--work together for good.

"But Mr. Googe never loved me as I loved him--and I couldn't accept less."

The priest caught but the lesser part of her meaning. Even his wisdom and years failed to throw light on the devious path of Aileen's thoughts at this moment. Of the truth contained in her expression, he had no inkling.

"Aileen, I don't know that I can make it plain to you, but--a man's love is so different from a woman's that, sometimes, I think such a statement as you have just made is so full of flaws that it amounts to sophistry; but there is no need to discuss that.--Let me ask you if you can endure to stay on with Mrs. Champney for a few months longer? I have a very special reason for asking this. Sometime I will tell you."

"Oh, yes;" she spoke wearily, indifferently; "I may as well stay there as anywhere now." Then with more interest and animation, "May I tell you something I have kept to myself all these years? I want to get rid of it."

"Surely--the more the better when the heart is burdened."

He took his seat again, and with pitying love and ever increasing interest and amazement listened to her recital of the part she played on that October night in the quarry woods--of her hate that turned to love again when she found the man she had both loved and hated in the extreme of need, of the 'murder'--so she termed it in her contrition--of Rag, of her swearing Luigi to silence. She told of herself--but of Champney Googe's unmanly temptation of her honor, of his mad pa.s.sion for her, she said never a word; her two p.r.o.nounced traits of chast.i.ty and loyalty forbade it, as well as the desire of a loving woman to shield him she loved in spite of herself.

Of the little handkerchief that played its part in that night's threatened tragedy she said nothing--neither did Father Honore; evidently, she had forgotten it.

Suddenly she clasped her hands hard over her heart.

"That dear loving little dog's death has lain here like a stone all these years," she said, and rose to go.

"You are absolved, Aileen," he said smiling. "It was, like many others, a little devoted life sacrificed to a great love."

He reached to press the b.u.t.ton that turned on the electric lights. Their soft brilliance caught in sparkling gleams on the points of a small piece of almost pure white granite among the specimens on the shelf above them. Father Honore rose and took it from its place.

"This is for you, Aileen," he said handing it to her.

"For me?" She looked at him in wonder, not understanding what he meant by this insignificant gift at such a time.

He smiled at her look of amazement.

"No wonder you look puzzled. You must be thinking you have 'asked me for bread and I am giving you a stone.' But this is for remembrance."

He hesitated a moment.

"You said once this afternoon, that for years it had been a h.e.l.l on earth for you--a strong expression to fall from a young woman's lips; and I said nothing. Sometime, perhaps, you will see things differently.

But if I said nothing, it was only because I thought the more; for just as you spoke those words, my eye caught the glitter of this piece of granite in the firelight, and I said to myself--'that is like what Aileen's life will be, and through her life what her character will prove to be.' This stone has been crushed, subjected to unimaginable heat, upheaved, submerged, ground again to powder, remelted, overwhelmed, made adamant, rent, upheaved again,--and now, after aeons, it lies here so near the blue above our Flamsted Hills, worthy to be used and put to all n.o.ble uses; fittest in all the world for foundation stone--for it is the foundation rock of our earth crust--for all lasting memorials of great deed and n.o.ble thought; for all temples and holies of holies. Take it, Aileen, and--remember!"

"I will, oh, I will; and I'll try to fit myself, too; I'll try, dear, dear Father Honore," she said humbly, gratefully.

He held out his hand and she placed hers in it. He opened the door.

"Good night, Aileen, and G.o.d bless you."

"Good night, Father Honore."

She went out into the clear winter starlight. The piece of granite, she held tightly clasped in her hand.

The priest, after closing the door, went to the pine table and opening a drawer took out a letter. It bore a recent date. It was from the chaplain of the prison and informed him there was a strong prospect of release for Champney Googe at least three months before the end of his term. Father Honore smiled to himself. He refolded it and laid it in the drawer.

III

Early in the following March, on the arrival of the 3 P.M. train from Hallsport, there was the usual crowd at The Corners' station to meet it.

They watched the pa.s.sengers as they left the train and commented freely on one and another known to them.