Chapter 16

Elmer Wiggins caught his arm.

"Look!" he cried under his breath, pointing to the crowd and a man who was mounting the tail of an express wagon that had halted on the outskirts of the throng. "That's one of the quarrymen--he's ring-leader every time--he's going to read 'em something--hark!"

They could hear the man haranguing the ever-increasing crowd; he was waving a newspaper. They could not hear what he was saying, but in the pauses of his speechifying the hoarse murmur of approval grew louder and louder. The cart-tail orator pointed to the headlines; there was a sudden deep silence, so deep that the soft scurrying of a mass of fallen elm leaves in the gutter seemed for a moment to fill all the air. Then the man began to read. They saw the Colonel on the outside of the crowd; saw him suddenly turn and make with all haste for the post-office; saw him reappear reading the paper.

The two hurried across the street to him.

"What's the matter?" Emlie demanded.

The Colonel spoke no word. He held the sheet out to them and with shaking forefinger pointed to the headlines:

BIG EMBEZZLEMENT BY FLAMSTED QUARRIES CO. OFFICIAL

GUILTY MAN A FUGITIVE FROM JUSTICE

SEARCH WARRANTS OUT

DETECTIVES ON TRAIL

"New York--Special Despatch: L. Champney Googe, the treasurer of the Flamsted Quarries Co.--" etc., etc.

The men looked at one another. There was a moment of sickening silence; not so much as a leaf whirled in the gutter; it was broken by a great cheer from the assembled hundreds of workmen farther up the street, followed by a conglomerate of hootings, cat-calls, yells and falsetto hoorays from the fringe of small boys. The faces of the three men in front of the post-office grew white at their unspoken thought. Each waited for the other.

"His mother--" said Emlie at last.

Elmer Wiggins' lips trembled. "You must tell her, Colonel--she mustn't hear it this way--"

"My God, how can I!" The Colonel's voice broke, but only for a second, then he braced himself to his martyrdom. "You're right; she mustn't hear it from any one but me--telephone up at once, will you, Elmer, that I'm coming up to see her on an important matter?--Emlie, you'll drive me up in your trap--we can get there before the men have a chance to get home--keep a watch on the doings here in the town, Elmer, and telephone me if there's any trouble--there's Romanzo coming now, I suppose he's got word from the office--if you happen to see Father Honoré, tell him where I am, he will help--"

He stepped into the trap that had been hitched in front of the drug store, and Emlie took the reins. Elmer Wiggins reached up his hand to the Colonel, who gripped it hard.

"Yes, Elmer," he said in answer to the other's mute question, "this is one of the days when a man, who is a man, may wish he'd never been born--"

They were off, past the surging crowds who were now thronging the entire street, past The Bow, and over the bridge on their way to The Gore.

XI

"Run on ahead, girlies," said Aileen to the twins who were with her for their annual checkerberry picnic, "I'll be down in a few minutes."

They were on the edge of the quarry woods which sheltered the Colonel's outlying sheep pastures and protected from the north wind the two sheepfolds that were used for the autumn and early spring. Dulcie and Doosie, obedient to Aileen's request, raced hand in hand across the short-turfed pastures, balancing their baskets of red berries.

The late afternoon sunshine of the last of October shone clear and warm upon the fading close-cropped herbage that covered the long slopes. The sheep were gathering by flocks at the folds. The collie, busy and important, was at work with 'Lias rounding up the stragglers. Aileen's eyes were blinded to the transient quiet beauty of this scene, for she was alive to but one point in the landscape--the red brick house with granite trimmings far away across the Rothel, and the man leaving the carriage which had just stopped at the front porch. She could not distinguish who it was, and this fact fostered conjecture--Could it be Champney Googe who had come home to help settle the trouble in the sheds?

How she hated him!--yet her heart gave a sudden sick throb of expectation. How she hated herself for her weakness!

"You look tired to death, Aileen," was Mrs. Caukins' greeting a few minutes afterwards, "come in and rest yourself before supper. Luigi was here just now and I've sent Dulcie over with him to Aurora's to get the Colonel; I saw him go in there fifteen minutes ago, and he's no notion of time, not even meal-time, when he's talking business with her. I know it's business, because Mr. Emlie drove up with him; he's waiting for him to come out. Romanzo has just telephoned that he can't get home for supper, but he'll be up in time to see you home."

Mrs. Caukins was diplomatic; she looked upon herself as a committee of one on ways and means to further her son's interest so far as Aileen Armagh was concerned; but that young lady was always ready with a check to her mate.

"Thank you, Mrs. Caukins, but I'll not trouble him; Tave is coming up to drive me home about eight; he knows checkerberry picking isn't easy work."

Mrs. Caukins was looking out of the window and did not reply.

"I declare," she exclaimed, "if there isn't Octavius this very minute driving up in a rush to Aurora's too--and Father Honoré's with him!--Why, what--"

Without waiting to finish her thought, she hurried to the door to call out to Dulcie, who was coming back over the bridge towards the house, running as fast as she could:

"What's the matter, Dulcie?"

"Oh, mother--mother--" the child panted, running up the road, "father wants you to come over to Mrs. Googe's right off, as quick as you can--he says not to stop for anything--"

The words were scarcely out of her mouth before Mrs. Caukins, without heeding Aileen, was hurrying down the road. The little girl, wholly out of breath, threw herself down exhausted on the grass before the door. Aileen and Doosie ran out to her.

"What is it, Dulcie--can't you tell me?" said Aileen.

Between quickened breaths the child told what she knew.

"Luigi stopped to speak to Mr. Emlie--and Mr. Emlie said something dreadful for Flamsted--had happened--and Luigi looked all of a sudden so queer and pale,"--she sat up, and in the excitement and importance of imparting such news forgot her over-exertion,--"and Mr. Emlie said father was telling Mrs. Googe--and he was afraid it would kill her--and then father came to the door looking just like Luigi, all queer and pale, and Mr. Emlie says, 'How is she?' and father shook his head and said, 'It's her death blow,' then I squeezed Luigi's hand to make him look at me, and I asked him what it was Mrs. Googe's was sick of, for I must go and tell mother--and he looked at Mr. Emlie and he nodded and said, 'It's town talk already--it's in the papers.' And then Luigi told me that Mr. Champney Googe had been stealing, Aileen!--and if he got caught he'd have to go to prison--then father sent me over home for mother and told me to run, and I've run so--Oh, Aileen!"

It was a frightened cry, and her twin echoed it. While Aileen Armagh was listening with shortened breaths to the little girl, she felt as if she were experiencing the concentrated emotions of a lifetime; as a result, the revulsion of feeling was so powerful that it affected her physically; her young healthy nerves, capable at other times of almost any tension, suddenly played her false. The effect upon her of what she heard was a severe nervous shock. She had never fainted in her life, nor had she known the meaning of an hysterical mood; she neither fainted nor screamed now, but began to struggle horribly for breath, for the shocked heart began beating as it would, sending the blood in irregular spurts through the already over-charged arteries. From time to time she groaned heavily as her struggle continued.

The two children were terrified. Doosie raced distractedly across the pastures to get 'Lias, and Dulcie ran into the house for water. Her little hand was trembling as she held the glass to Aileen's white quivering lips that refused it.

By the time, however, that 'Lias got to the house, the crisis was past; she could smile at the frightened children, and assure 'Lias that she had had simply a short and acute attack of indigestion from eating too many checkerberries over in the woods.

"It serves me right," she said smiling into the woe-begone little faces so near to hers; "I've always heard they are the most indigestible things going--now don't you eat any more, girlies, or you'll have a spasm like mine. I'm all right, 'Lias; go back to your work, I'll just help myself to a cup of hot water from the tea-kettle and then I'll go home with Tave--I see him coming for me--I didn't expect him now."

"But, Aileen, won't you stay to supper?" said the twins at one and the same time; "we always have you to celebrate our checkerberry picnic."

"Dear knows, I've celebrated the checkerberries enough already," she said laughing,--but 'Lias noticed that her lips were still colorless,--"and I think, dearies, that it's no time for us to be celebrating any more to-day when poor Mrs. Googe is in such trouble."

"What's up?" said 'Lias.

The twins' eagerness to impart their knowledge of recent events to 'Lias was such that the sorrow of parting was greatly mitigated; moreover, Aileen left them with a promise to come up again soon.

"I'm ready, Tave," she said as he drew up at the door. 'Lias helped her in.

"Come again soon, Aileen--you've promised," the twins shouted after her.

She turned and waved her hand to them. "I'll come," she called back in answer.

They drove in silence over the Rothel, past the brick house where Emlie's trap was still standing, but now hitched. Octavius Buzzby's face was gray; his features were drawn.

"Did you hear, Aileen?" he said, after they had driven on a while and begun to meet the quarrymen returning from Flamsted, many of whom were talking excitedly and gesticulating freely.

"Yes--Dulcie told me something. I don't know how true it is," she answered quietly.

"It's true," he said grimly, "and it'll kill his mother."

"I don't know about that;" she spoke almost indifferently; "you can stand a good deal when it comes to the point."

Octavius turned almost fiercely upon her.

"What do you know about it?" he demanded. "You're neither wife nor mother, but you might show a little more feeling, being a woman. Do you realize what this thing means to us--to Flamsted--to the family?"

"Tave," she turned her gray eyes full upon him, the pupils were unnaturally enlarged, "I don't suppose I do know what it means to all of you--but it makes me sick to talk about it--please don't--I can't bear it--take me home as quick as you can."

She grew whiter still.

"Ain't you well, Aileen?" he asked in real anxiety, repenting of his hard word to her.

"Not very, Tave; the truth is I ate too many checkerberries and had an attack of indigestion--I shall be all right soon--and they sent over for Mrs. Caukins just at that time, and when Dulcie came back she told me--it's awful--but it's different with you; he belongs to you all here and you've always loved him."

"Loved him!"--Octavius Buzzby's voice shook with suppressed emotion--"I should say loved him; he's been dear to me as my own--I thank God Louis Champney isn't living to go through this disgrace!"

He drew up in the road to let a gang of workmen separate--he had been driving the mare at full speed. Both he and Aileen caught fragments of what they were saying.

"It's damned hard on his mother--"

"They say there's a woman in the case--"

"Generally is with them highflyers--"

"I'll bet he'll make for the old country, if he can get clear he'll--"

"Europe's full of 'em--reg'lar cesspool they say--"

"Any reward offered?"

"The Company'll have to fork over or there'll be the biggest strike in Flamsted that the stone-cutting business has seen yet--"

"The papers don't say what the shortage is--"

"What's Van Ostend's daughter's name, anybody know?--they say he was sweet on her--"

"She's a good haul," a man laughed hoarsely, insultingly, "but she didn't bite, an' lucky for her she didn't."

"You're 'bout right--them high rollers don't want to raise nothing but game cocks--no prison birds, eh?"

The men passed on, twenty or more. Octavius Buzzby, and the one who in the last hour had left her girlhood behind her, drove homewards in silence. Her eyes were lowered; her white cheeks burned again, but with shame at what she was obliged to hear.

XII

The strike was averted; the men were paid in full on the Wednesday following that Saturday the events of which brought for a time Flamsted, its families, and its great industry into the garish light of undesirable publicity. In the sheds and the quarries the routine work went on as usual, but speculation was rife as to the outcome of the search for the missing treasurer. A considerable amount of money was put up by the sporting element among the workmen, that the capture would take place within three weeks. Meanwhile, the daily papers furnished pabulum for the general curiosity and kept the interest as to the outcome on the increase. Some reports had it that Champney Googe was already in Europe; others that he had been seen in one of the Central American capitals. Among those who knew him best, it was feared he was already in hiding in his native State; but beyond their immediate circle no suspicion of this got abroad.

Among the native Flamstedites, who had known and loved Champney from a child, there was at first a feeling of consternation mingled with shame of the disgrace to his native town. They felt that Champney had played false to his two names, and through the honored names of Googe and Champney he had brought disgrace upon all connections, whether by ties of blood or marriage. To him they had looked to be a leader in the new Flamsted that was taking its place in the world's work. For a few days it seemed as if the keystone of the arch of their ambition and pride had fallen and general ruin threatened. Then, after the first week passed without news as to his whereabouts, there was bewilderment, followed on the second Monday by despair deepened by a suspense that was becoming almost unbearable.

It was a matter of surprise to many to find the work in sheds and quarries proceeding with its accustomed regularity; to find that to the new comers in Flamsted the affair was an impersonal one, that Champney Googe held no place among the workmen; that his absconding meant to them simply another one of the "high rollers" fleeing from his deserts. Little by little, during that first week, the truth found its way home to each man and woman personally interested in this erring son of Flamsted's old families, that a man is but one working unit among millions, and that unit counts in a community only when its work is constructive in the communal good.

At a meeting of the bank directors the telling fact was disclosed that all of Mrs. Googe's funds--the purchase money of the quarry lands--had been withdrawn nine months previous; but this, they ascertained later, had been done with her full consent and knowledge.

Romanzo was summoned with the Company's books to the New York office. The Colonel seemed to his friends to have aged ten years in seven days. He wore the look of a man haunted by the premonition of some impending catastrophe. But he confided his trouble to no one, not even to his wife. Aurora Googe's friends suffered with her and for her; they began, at last, to fear for her reason if some definite word should not soon be forthcoming.

The tension in the Champ-au-Haut household became almost intolerable as the days passed without any satisfaction as to the fugitive's whereabouts. After the first shock, and some unpleasant recrimination on the part of Mrs. Champney, this tension showed itself by silently ignoring the recent family event. Mrs. Champney found plausible excuse in the state of her health to see no one. Octavius Buzzby attended to his daily duties with the face of a man who has come through a severe sickness; Hannah complained that "he didn't eat enough to keep a cat alive." His lack of appetite was an accompaniment to sleepless, thought-racked nights.

Aileen Armagh said nothing--what could she say?--but sickened at her own thoughts. She made excuse to be on the street, at the station, in The Gore at the Caukinses', with Joel Quimber and Elmer Wiggins, as well as among the quarrymen's families, whose children she taught in an afternoon singing class, in the hope of hearing some enlightening word; of learning something definite in regard to the probabilities of escape; of getting some inkling of the whole truth. She gathered a little here, a little there; she put two and two together, and from what she heard as a matter of speculation, and from what she knew to be true through Mrs. Caukins via Romanzo in New York, she found that Champney Googe had sacrificed his honor, his mother, his friends, and the good name of his native town for the unlawful love of gain. She was obliged to accept this fact, and its acceptance completed the work of destruction that the revelation of Champney Googe's unfaith, through the declaration of a passion that led to no legitimate consummation in marriage, had wrought in her young buoyant spirit. She was broken beneath the sudden cumulative and overwhelming knowledge of evil; her youth found no abiding-place either for heart or soul. To Father Honoré she could not go--not yet!

* * * * *

On the afternoon of Monday week, a telegram came for the Colonel. He opened it in the post office. Octavius coming in at the same time for his first mail noticed at once the change in his face--he looked stricken.

"What is it, Colonel?" he asked anxiously, joining him.

For answer Milton Caukins held out the telegram. It was from the State authorities; its purport that the Colonel was to form a posse and be prepared to aid, to the extent of his powers, the New York detectives who were coming on the early evening train. The fugitive from justice had left New York and been traced to Hallsport.

"I've had a premonition of this--it's the last stroke, Tave--here, in his home--among us--and his mother!--and, in duty bound, I, of all others, must be the man to finish the ugly job--"

Octavius Buzzby's face worked strangely. "It's tough for you, Colonel, but I guess a Maine man knows his whole duty--only, for God's sake, don't ask me!" It was a groan rather than an ejaculation. The two continued to talk in a low tone.

"I shall call for volunteers and then get them sworn in--it means stiff work for to-night. We'll keep this from Aurora, Tave; she mustn't know _this_."

"Yes, if we can. Are you going to ask any of our own folks to volunteer, Milton?" In times of great stress and sorrow his townspeople called the Colonel by his Christian name.

"No; I'm going to ask some of the men who don't know him well--some of the foreigners; Poggi's one. He'll know some others up in The Gore. And I don't believe, Tave, there's one of our own would volunteer, do you?"

"No, I don't. We can't go that far; it would be like cutting our own throats."

"You're right, Tave--that's the way I feel; but"--he squared his shoulders--"it's got to be done and the sooner it's over the better for us all--but, Tave, I hope to God he'll keep out of our way!"

"Amen," said Octavius Buzzby.

The two stood together in the office a moment longer in gloomy silence, then they went out into the street.

"Well, I must get to work," said the Colonel finally, "the time's scant. I'll telephone my wife first. We can't keep this to ourselves long; everybody, from the quarrymen to the station master, will be keen on the scent."

"I'm glad no reward was offered," said Octavius.

"So am I." The Colonel spoke emphatically. "The roughscuff won't volunteer without that, and I shall be reasonably certain of some good men--God! and I'm saying this of Champney Googe--it makes me sick; who'd have thought it--who'd have thought it--"

He shook his head, and stepped into the telephone booth. Octavius waited for him.

"I've warned Mrs. Caukins," he said when he came out, "and told her how things stand; that I'd try to get Poggi, and that I sha'n't be at home to-night. She says tell Aileen to tell Mrs. Champney she will esteem it a great favor if she will let her come up to-night; she has one of her nervous headaches and doesn't want to be alone with the children and 'Lias. You could take her up, couldn't you?"

"I guess she can come, and I'll take her up 'fore supper; I don't want to be gone after dark," he added with meaning emphasis.

"I understand, Tave; I'm going over to Poggi's now."

The two parted with a hand-clasp that spoke more than any words.

XIII

About four, Octavius drove Aileen up to the Colonel's. He said nothing to her of the coming crucial night, but Aileen had her thoughts. The Colonel's absence from home, but not from town, coupled with yesterday's New York despatch which said that there was no trace of the guilty man in New York, and affirmed on good authority that the statement that he had not left the country was true, convinced her that something unforeseen was expected in the immediate vicinity of Flamsted. But he would never attempt to come here!--She shivered at the thought. Octavius, noticing this movement, remarked that he thought there was going to be a black frost. Aileen maintained that the rising wind and the want of a moon would keep it off.

Although Octavius was inclined to take exception to the feminine statement that the moon, or the want of it, had an effect on frost, nevertheless this apparently innocent remark on Aileen's part recalled to him the fact that the night was moonless--he wondered if the Colonel had thought of this--and he hoped with all his soul that it would prove to be starless as well. "Champney knows the Maine woods--knows 'em from the Bay to the head of Moosehead as well as an Oldtown Indian, yes and beyond." So he comforted himself in thought.

Mrs. Caukins met them with effusion.

"I declare, Aileen, I don't know what I should have done if you couldn't have come up; I'm all of a-tremble now and I've got such a nervous headache from all I've been through, and all I've got to, that I can't see straight out of my eyes.--Won't you stop to supper, Tave?"

"I can't to-night, Elvira, I--"

"I'd no business to ask you, I know," she said, interrupting him; "I might have known you'd want to be on hand for any new developments. I don't know how we're going to live through it up here; you don't feel it so much down in the town--I don't believe I could go through it without Aileen up here with me, for the twins aren't old enough to depend on or to be told everything; they're no company at such times, and of course I sha'n't tell them, they wouldn't sleep a wink; I miss my boys dreadfully--"

"Tell them what? What do you mean by 'to-night'?" Aileen demanded, a sudden sharpness in her voice.

"Why, don't you know?"--She turned to Octavius, "Haven't you told her?"

Her appeal fell on departing and intentionally deaf ears; for Octavius, upon hearing Aileen's sudden and amazed question, abruptly bade them good-night, spoke to the mare and was off at a rapid pace before Mrs. Caukins comprehended that the telling of the latest development was left to her.