Father Honore got home from the lecture a little before nine. He renewed the fire, drew up a chair to the hearth, took his violin from its case and, seating himself before the springing blaze, made ready to play for a while in the firelight. This was always his refreshment after a successful evening with the men. He drew his thumb along the bow--

There was a knock at the door. He rose and flung it wide with a human enough gesture of impatience; his well-earned rest was disturbed too soon. He failed to recognize the man who was standing bareheaded on the step.

"Father Honore, I've come home--don't you know me, Champney?"

There was no word in response, but his hands were grasped hard--he was drawn into the room--the door was shut on the chill wind of that March night. Then the two men stood silent, gazing into each other's eyes, while the firelight leaped and showed to each the other's face--the priest's working with a powerful emotion he was struggling to control; Champney Googe's apparently calm, but in reality tense with anxiety. He spoke first:

"I want to know about my mother--is she well?"

Father Honore found his voice, an uncertain one but emphatic; it left no room for further anxiety in the questioner's mind.

"Yes, well, thank G.o.d, and looking forward to this--but it's so soon! I don't understand--when did you come?"

He kept one hand on Champney's as if fearing to lose him, with the other he pulled forward a chair from the wall and placed it near his own; he sat down and drew Champney into the other beside him.

"I came up on the afternoon train; I got out yesterday."

"It's so unexpected. The chaplain wrote me last month that there was a prospect of this within the next six months, but I had no idea it would be so soon--neither, I am sure, had he."

"Nor I--I don't know that I feel sure of it yet. Has my mother any idea of this?"

"I wasn't at liberty to tell her--the communication was confidential.

Still she knows that it is customary to shorten the--" he caught up his words.

"--Term for exemplary conduct?" Champney finished for him.

"Yes. I can't realize this, Champney; it's six years and four months--"

"Years--months! You might say six eternities. Do you know, I can't get used to it--the freedom, I mean. At times during these last twenty-four hours, I have actually felt lost without the work, the routine--the solitude." He sighed heavily and spoke further, but as if to himself:

"Last Thanksgiving Day we were all together--eight hundred of us in the a.s.sembly room for the exercises. Two men get pardoned out on that day, and the two who were set free were in for manslaughter--one for twenty years, the other for life. They had been in eighteen years. I watched their faces when their numbers were called; they stepped forward to the platform and were told of their pardon. There wasn't a sign of comprehension, not a movement of a muscle, the twitch of an eyelid--simply a dead stolid stare. The truth is, they were benumbed as to feeling, incapable of comprehending anything, of initiating anything, as I was till--till this afternoon; then I began to live, to feel again."

"That's only natural. I've heard other men say the same thing. You'll recover tone here among your own--your friends and other men."

"Have I any?--I mean outside of you and my mother?" he asked in a low voice, but subdued eagerness was audible in it.

"Have you any? Why, man, a friend is a friend for life--and beyond. Who was it put it thus: 'Said one: I would go up to the gates of h.e.l.l with a friend.--Said the other: I would go in.' That last is the kind you have here in Flamsted, Champney."

The other turned away his face that the firelight might not betray him.

"It's too much--it's too much; I don't deserve it."

"Champney, when you decided of your own accord to expiate in the manner you have through these six years, do you think your friends--and others--didn't recognize your manhood? And didn't you resolve at that time to 'put aside' those things that were behind you once and forever?--clear your life of the clogging part?"

"Yes,--but others won't--"

"Never mind others--you are working out your own salvation."

"But it's going to be harder than I thought--I find I am beginning to dread to meet people--everything is so changed. It's going to be harder than I realized to carry out that resolution. The Past won't down--everything is so changed--everything--"

Father Honore rose to turn on the electric lights. He did not take his seat again, but stood on the hearth, back to the fire, his hands clasped behind him. The clear light from the shaded bulbs shone full upon the face of the man before him, and the priest, searching that face to read its record, saw set upon it, and his heart contracted at the sight, the indelible seal of six years of penal servitude. The close-cut hair was gray; the brow was marked by two horizontal furrows; the cheeks were deeply lined; and the broad shoulders--they were bent. Formerly he stood before the priest with level eyes, now he was shorter by an inch of the six feet that were once his. He noticed the hands--the hands of the day-laborer.

He managed to reply to Champney's last remark without betraying the emotion that threatened to master him.

"Outwardly, yes; things have changed and will continue to change. The town is making vast strides towards citizenship. But you will find those you know the same--only grown in grace, I hope, with the years; even Mr.

Wiggins is convinced by this time that the foreigners are not barbarians."

Champney smiled. "It was rough on Elmer Wiggins at first."

"Yes, but things are smoothing out gradually, and as a son of Maine he has too much common sense at bottom to swim against the current. And there's old Joel Quimber--I never see him that he doesn't tell me he is marking off the days in his 'almanack,' he calls it, in antic.i.p.ation of your return."

"Dear old Jo!--No!--Is that true? Old Jo doing that?"

"To be sure, why not? And there's Octavius Buzzby--I don't think he would mind my telling you now--indeed, I don't believe he'd have the courage to tell you himself--" Father Honore smiled happily, for he saw in Champney's face the light of awakening interest in the common life of humanity, and he felt a prolongation of this chat would clear the atmosphere of over-powering emotion,--"there have never three months pa.s.sed by these last six years that he hasn't deposited half of his quarterly salary with Emlie in the bank in your name--"

"Oh, don't--don't! I can't bear it--dear old Tave--" he groaned rather than spoke; the blood mounted to his temples, but his friend proved merciless.

"And there's Luigi Poggi! I don't know but he will make you a proposition, when he knows you are at home, to enter into partnership with him and young Caukins--the Colonel's fourth eldest. Champney, he wants to atone--he has told me so--"

"Is--is he married?"

Father Honore noticed that his lips suddenly went dry and he swallowed hard after his question.

"No," the priest hastened to say, then he hesitated; he was wondering how far it was safe to probe; "but it is my strong impression that he is thinking seriously of it--a lovely girl, too, she is--" he saw the man's face before him go white, the jaw set like a vise--"little Dulcie Caukins, you remember her?"

Champney nodded and wet his lips.

"He has been thrown a good deal with the Caukinses since he took their son into partnership; the Colonel's boys are all doing well. Romanzo is in New York."

"Still with the Company?"

"Yes, in the main office. He married in that city two years ago--rather well, I hear, but Mrs. Caukins is not reconciled yet. Now, there's a friend! You don't know the depth of her feeling for you--but she has shown it by worshipping your mother."

Champney Googe's eyes filled to overflowing, but he squeezed the springing drops between his eyelids, and asked with lively interest:

"Why isn't Mrs. Caukins reconciled?"

"Well, because--I suppose it's no secret now, at least Mrs. Caukins has never made one of it, in fact, has aired the subject pretty thoroughly, you know her way--"

Champney looked up and smiled. "I'm glad she hasn't changed."

"But of course you don't know it. The fact is she had set heart on having for a daughter-in-law Aileen Armagh--you remember little Aileen?"

Champney Googe's hands closed spasmodically on the arms of his chair. To cover this involuntary movement, he leaned forward suddenly and kicked a burning brand, that had fallen on the hearth, back into the fireplace. A shower of sparks flew up chimney.

Father Honore went on without waiting for the answer he knew would not be forthcoming: "Aileen gave me a fright the other day. I met her on the street, and she took that occasion, in the midst of a good deal of noise and confusion, to inform me with her usual vivacity of manner that she was to be housekeeper to a man--'a job for life,' she added with the old mischief dancing in her eyes and the merry laugh that is a tonic for the blues. Upon my asking her gravely who was the fortunate man--for I had no one in mind and feared some impulsive decision--she pursed her lips, hesitated a moment, and, manufacturing a charming blush, said:--'I don't mind telling you; it's Mr. Octavius Buzzby. I'm to be his housekeeper for life and take care of him in his old age after his work and mine is finished at Champo.' I confess, I was relieved."

"My aunt is still living, then?" Champney asked with more eagerness and energy than the occasion demanded. His eyes shone with suppressed excitement, and ever-awakening life animated every feature. Father Honore, noting the sudden change, read again, as once six years before, deep into this man's heart.