Flamsted quarries Part 9

The road grew steeper; the man's pace did not slacken, but the straight back was bent at an angle which showed the priest had been accustomed to mountain climbing. In the leafy half-light, which is neither dawn nor twilight, but that reverential effulgence which is made by moonlight sifting finely through midsummer foliage, the Rothel murmured over its rocky bed; once, when in a deep pool its babble wholly ceased, an owl broke the silence with his "witti-hoo-hoo-hoo".

Still upwards he kept his way and his pace until he emerged into the full moonlight of the heights. There he halted and looked about him. He was near the apex of The Gore. To the north, above the foreground of the sea of hilltops, loomed Katahdin. At his right, a pond, some five acres in extent, lay at the base of cliff-like rocks topped with a few primeval pines. Everywhere there were barren sheep pastures alternating with acres of stunted fir and hemlock, and in sheltered nooks, adjacent to these coverts, he could discern something which he judged to be stone sheepfolds. Just below him, on the opposite side of the road and the Rothel, which was crossed by a broad bridging of log and plank, stood a long low stone house, to the north of which a double row of firs had been planted for a windbreak. Behind him, on a rise of ground a few rods from the highway, was a large double house of brick with deep granite foundations and white granite window caps. Two shafts of the same stone supported the ample white-painted entrance porch. Ancestral elms over-leafed the roof on the southern side. One light shone from an upper window. Beyond the elms, a rough road led still upwards to the heights behind the house.

The priest retraced his steps; turned into this road, for which the landlord of The Greenbush had given him minute instructions, and followed its rough way for an eighth of a mile; then a sudden turn around a shoulder of the hill--and the beginning of the famous Flamsted granite quarries lay before him, gleaming, sparkling in the moonlight--a snow-white, glistening patch on the barren hilltop. Near it were a few huts of turf and stone for the accommodation of the quarrymen. This was all. But it was the scene, self-chosen, of this priest's future labors; and while he looked upon it, thoughts unutterable crowded fast, too fast for the brain already stimulated by the time and environment. He turned about; retraced his steps at the same rapid pace; pa.s.sed again up the highroad to the head of The Gore, then around it, across a barren pasture, and climbed the cliff-like rock that was crowned by the ancient pines. He stood there erect, his head thrown back, his forehead to the radiant heavens, his eyes fixed on the pale twinklings of the seven stars in the northernmost constellation of the Bear--rapt, caught away in spirit by the intensity of feeling engendered by the hour, the place.

Then he knelt, bowing his head on a lichened rock, and unto his Maker, and the Maker of that humanity he had elected to serve, he consecrated himself anew.

Ten minutes afterwards, he was coming down The Gore on his way back to The Greenbush. He heard the agitated ringing of a bell-wether; then the soft huddling rush of a flock of sheep somewhere in the distance. A sheep dog barked sharply; a hound bayed in answer till the hills north of The Gore gave back a multiple echo; but the Rothel kept its secrets, and with inarticulate murmuring made haste to deposit them in the quiet lake waters.

IV

"But, mother--"

There was an intonation in the protest that hinted at some irritation.

Champney Googe emptied his pipe on the gra.s.s and knocked it clean against the porch rail before he continued.

"Won't it make a lot of talk? Of course, I can see your side of it; it's hospitable and neighborly and all that, to give the priest his meals for a while, but,--" he hesitated, and his mother answered his thought.

"A little talk more or less after all there has been about the quarry won't do any harm, and I'm used to it." She spoke with some bitterness.

"It _has_ stirred up a hornet's nest about your ears, that's a fact. How does Aunt Meda take this latest move? Meat-axey as usual? I didn't see her when I went there yesterday; she's in Hallsport for two days on business, so Tave says."

His mother smiled. "I haven't seen her since the sale was concluded, but I hear she has strengthened the opposition in consequence. I get my information from Mrs. Caukins."

At the mention of that name Champney laughed out. "Good authority, mother. I must run over and see her to-night. Well, we don't care, do we? I mean about the feeling. Mother, I just wish you were a man for one minute."

"Why?"

"Because I'd like to go up to you, man fashion, grip your hand, slap you on the back, and shout 'By Jove, old man, you've made a deal that would turn the sunny side of Wall Street green with envy!' How did you do it, mother? And without a lawyer! I'll bet Emlie is mad because he didn't get a chance to put his finger in your pie."

"I was thinking of you, of your future, and how you have been used by Almeda Champney; and that gave me the confidence, almost the push of a man--and I dealt with them as a man with men; but I felt uns.e.xed in doing it. I've wondered what they think of me."

"Think of you! I can tell you what one man thinks of you, and that's Mr.

Van Ostend. I had a note from him at the time of the sale asking me to come to his office, an affidavit was necessary, and I found he had had eyes in his head for the most beautiful woman in the world--"

"Champney!"

"Fact; and, what's more, I got an invitation to his house on the strength of his recognition of that fact. I dined with him there; his sister is a stunning girl."

"I'm glad such homes are open to you; it is your right and--it compensates."

"For what, mother?"

"Oh, a good many things. How do they live?"

"The Van Ostends?"

"Yes."

Champney Googe hugged his knees and rocked back and forth on the step before he answered. His merry face seemed to lengthen in feature, to harden in line. His mother left her chair and sewing to sit down on the step beside him. She looked up inquiringly.

"Just as _I_ mean to live sometime, mother,"--his fresh young voice rang determined and almost hard; his mother's eyes kindled;--"in a way that expresses Life--as you and I understand it, and don't live it, mother; as you and I have conceived of it while up here among these sheep pastures." He glanced inimically for a moment at the barren slopes above them. "I have you to thank for making me comprehend the difference." He continued the rocking movement for a while, his hands still clasping his knees. Then he went on:

"As for his home on the Avenue, there isn't its like in the city, and as a storehouse of the best in art it hasn't its equal in the country; it's just perfect from picture gallery to billiard room. As for adjuncts, there's a shooting box and a _bona fide_ castle in the Scottish Highlands, a cottage at Bar Harbor with the accessory of a steam yacht, and a racing stud on a Long Island farm. As a financier he's great!"

He sat up straight, and freely used his fists, first on one knee then on the other, to emphasize his words; "His right hand is on one great lever of interstate traffic, his left on the other of foreign trade, and two continents obey his manipulations. His eye exacts trained efficiency from thousands; his word is a world event; Wall Street is his automaton.

Oh, the power of it all! I can't wait to get out into the stream, mother! I'm only hugging the sh.o.r.e at present; that's what has made me kick against this last year in college; it has been lost time, for I want to get rich quick."

His mother laid her hand on his knee. "No, Champney, it's not lost time; it's one of your a.s.sets as a gentleman."

He looked up at her, his blue eyes smiling into her dark ones.

"I can be a gentleman all right without that a.s.set; you said father didn't go."

"No, but the man for whom you are named went, and he told me once a college education was a 'gentleman's a.s.set.' That expression was his."

"Well, I don't see that the a.s.set did him much good. It didn't seem to discount his liabilities in other ways. Queer, how Uncle Louis went to seed--I mean, didn't amount to anything along any business or professional line. Only last spring I met the father of a second-year man who remembers Uncle Louis well, said he was a cla.s.smate of his. He told me he was banner man every time and no end popular; the others didn't have a show with him."

His mother was silent. Champney, apparently unheeding her unresponsiveness, rose quickly, shook himself together, and suddenly burst into a mighty laughter that is best comparable to the inextinguishable species of the blessed G.o.ds. He laughed in arpeggios, peal on peal, crescendo and diminuendo, until, finally, he flung himself down on the short turf and in his merriment rolled over and over. He brought himself right side up at last, tears in his eyes and a sigh of satisfying exhaustion on his lips. To his mother's laughing query:

"What is it now, Champney?" He shook his head as if words failed him; then he said huskily:

"It's Aunt Meda's _protegee_. Oh, Great Scott! She'll be the death by shock of some of the Champo people if she stays another three months. I hear Aunt Meda has had her Waterloo. Tavy b.u.t.tonholed me out in the carriage house yesterday, and told me the whole thing--oh, but it's rich!" He chuckled again. "He got me to feel his vest; says he can lap it three inches already and she has only been here two weeks; and as for Romanzo, he's neither to have nor to hold when the girl's in sight--wits topsy-turvy, actually, oh, Lord!"--he rolled over again on the gra.s.s--"what do you think, mother! She got Roman to scour down Jim--you know, the white cart-horse, the Percheron--with Hannah's cleaning powder, and the girl helped him, and together they got one side done and then waited for it to dry to see how it worked. Result: Tave dead ashamed to drive him in the cart for fear some one will see the yellow-white calico-circus horse, that the two rapscallions have left on his hands, and doesn't want Aunt Meda to know it for fear she'll turn down Roman. He says he's going to put Jim out to gra.s.s in the Colonel's back sheep pasture, and when Aunt Meda comes home lie about sudden spavin or something. And the joke of it is Roman takes it all as a part of the play, and has owned up to Tave that, by mistake, he blacked Aunt Meda's walking boots, before she went to Hallsport, with axle grease, while the girl was 'telling novels' to him! Tave said Roman told him she knew a lot of the n.o.bility, marchionesses and 'sich'; and now Roman struts around c.o.c.ksure, high and mighty as if he'd just been made K.C.B., and there's no getting any steady work out of him. You should have seen Tave's face when he was telling me!"

His mother laughed. "I can imagine it; he's worried over this new move of Almeda's. I confess it puzzles me."

"Well, I'm off to see some of the fun--and the girl. Tave said he didn't expect Aunt Meda before to-morrow night, and it's a good time for me to rubber round the old place a little on my own hook;--and, mother,"--he stooped to her; Aurora Googe raised her still beautiful eyes to the frank if somewhat hard blue ones that looked down into hers; a fine color mounted into her cheeks,--"take the priest for his meals, for all me. It's an invasion, but, of course, I recognize that we're responsible for it on account of the quarry business. I suppose we shall have to make some concessions to all cla.s.ses till we get away from here for good and all--then we'll have our fling, won't we, mother?"

He was off without waiting for a reply. Aurora Googe watched him out of sight, then turned to her work, the flush still upon her cheeks.

V

Champney leaned on the gate of the paddock at Champ-au-Haut and looked about him. The estate at The Bow had been familiar to him throughout his childhood and boyhood. He had been over every foot of it, and at all seasons, with his Uncle Louis. He was realizing that it had never seemed more beautiful to him than now, seen in the warm light of a July sunset.

In the garden pleasance, that sloped to the lake, the roses and lilies planted there a generation ago still bloomed and flourished, and in the elm-shaded paddock, on the gate of which he was leaning, filly and foal could trace their pedigree to the sixth and seventh generation of deep-chested, clean-flanked ancestors.

The young man comprehended in part only, the reason of his mother's extreme bitterness towards Almeda Champney. His uncle had loved him; had kept him with him much of the time, encouraging him in his boyish aims and ambitions which his mother fostered--and Louis Champney was childless, the last in direct descent of a long line of fine ancestors--.

Here his thought was checked; those ancestors were his, only in a generation far removed; the Champney blood was in his mother's veins.

But his father was Almeda Champney's only brother--why then, should not his mother count on the estate being his in the end? He knew this to have been her hope, although she had never expressed it. He had gained an indefinite knowledge of it through old Joel Quimber and Elmer Wiggins and Mrs. Milton Caukins, a distant relative of his father's. To be sure, Louis Champney might have left him his hunting-piece, which as a boy he had coveted, just for the sake of his name--

He stopped short in his speculations for he heard voices in the lane.

The cows were entering it and coming up to the milking shed. The lane led up from the low-lying lake meadows, knee deep with timothy and clover, and was fenced on both sides from the apple orchards which arched and overshadowed its entire length. The st.u.r.dy over-reaching boughs hung heavy with myriads of green b.a.l.l.s. Now and then one dropped noiselessly on the thick turf in the lane, and a n.o.ble Holstein mother, ebony banded with ivory white, her swollen cream-colored bag and dark-blotched teats flushed through and through by the delicate rose of a perfectly healthy skin, lowered her meek head and, snuffing largely, caught sideways as she pa.s.sed at the enticing green round.

At the end of this lane there swung into view a tall loose-jointed figure which the low strong July sunshine threw into bold relief. It was Romanzo Caukins, one of the Colonel's numerous family, a boy of sixteen who had been bound out recently to the mistress of Champ-au-Haut upon agreement of bed, board, clothes, three terms of "schooling" yearly, and the addition of thirty dollars to be paid annually to the Colonel.

The payment of this amount, by express stipulation, was to be made at the end of each year until Romanzo should come into his majority. By this arrangement, Mrs. Champney a.s.sured to herself the interest on the aforesaid thirty dollars, and congratulated herself on the fact that such increment might be credited to Milton Caukins as a minus quant.i.ty.

Champney leaped the bars and went down the lane to meet him.