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 inst.i.tution in France, had come to prepare a refuge for their order on the sh.o.r.es 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 Honore'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 Sat.u.r.day 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 Honore 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 circ.u.mstances."

"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 Honore 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; n.o.body 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.

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 Sat.u.r.day 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. .h.i.tched 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 pa.s.sing Champ-au-Haut, he looked up at the house; here and there a light shone behind drawn shades. Six years had pa.s.sed 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 b.u.t.tered, 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 sh.o.r.e. 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 sh.o.r.e--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, circ.u.mstances 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 a.s.sure you I didn't. It brought me down to bed rock, for I was making a conceited a.s.s 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."