Chapter 24

"If any one should knock, Thérèse, just step to the kitchen porch door and say that I am engaged for an hour, at least."

"Oui, oui, Père Honoré."

He closed the door.

"There, now you can have your chat 'all to yourself' as you requested," he said smiling. He sat down in the other chair he had drawn to the fire.

"I've been over to Maggie's this afternoon--"

She hesitated; it was not easy to find an opening for her long pent trouble.

Father Honoré spread his hands to the blaze.

"She has a fine boy. I'm glad McCann is back again, and I hope anchored here for life. He's trying to buy his home he tells me."

"So Maggie said--Father Honoré;" she clasped and unclasped her hands nervously; "I think it's that that has made me come to you to-day."

"That?--I think I don't quite understand, Aileen."

"The home--I think I never felt so alone--so homeless as when I was there with her--and the baby--"

She looked down, struggling to keep back the tears. Despite her efforts the bright drops plashed one after the other on her clasped hands. She raised her eyes, looking almost defiantly through the falling tears at the priest; the blood surged into her white cheeks; the rush of words followed:--

"I have no home--I've never had one--never shall have one--it's not for me, that paradise; it's for men and women like Jim McCann and Maggie.--Oh, why did I come here!" she cried out wildly; "why did you put me there in that house?--Why didn't Mr. Van Ostend let me alone where I was--happy with the rest! Why," she demanded almost fiercely, "why can't a child's life be her own to do with what she chooses? Why has any human being a right to say to another, whether young or old, 'You shall live here and not there'? Oh, it is tyrannical--it is tyranny of the worst kind, and what haven't I had to suffer from it all! It is like Hell on earth!"

Her breath caught in great sobs that shook her; her eyes flashed through blinding tears; her cheeks were crimson; she continued to clasp and unclasp her hands.

The peculiar ivory tint of the strong pock-marked face opposite her took on, during this outburst, a slightly livid hue. Every word she uttered was a blow; for in it was voiced misery of mind, suffering and hardness of heart, despair, ingratitude, undeserved reproach, anger, defiance and the ignoring of all facts save those in the recollection of which she had lost all poise, all control--And she was still so young! What was behind these facts that occasioned such a tirade?

This was the priest's problem.

He waited a moment to regain his own control. The ingratitude, the bitter injustice had shocked him out of it. Her mood seemed one of defiance only. The woman before him was one he had never known in the Aileen Armagh of the last fourteen years. He knew, moreover, that he must not speak--dare not, as a sacred obligation to his office, until he no longer felt the touch of anger he experienced upon hearing her unrestrained outburst. It was but a moment before that touch was removed; his heart softened towards her; filled suddenly with a pitying love, for with his mind's eye he saw the small blood-stained handkerchief in his hand, the initials A. A., the man on the cot from whose arm he had taken it more than six years before. Six years! How she must have suffered--and in silence!

"Aileen," he said at last and very gently, "whatever was done for you at that time was done with the best intentions for your good. Believe me, could Mr. Van Ostend and I have foreseen such resulting wretchedness as this for our efforts, we should never have insisted on carrying out our plan for you. But, like yourself, we are human--we could not foresee this any more than you could. There is, however, one course always open to you--"

"What?" she demanded; her voice was harsh from continued struggle with her complex emotions. She was past all realization of what she owed to the dignity of his office.

"You have long been of age; you are at liberty to leave Mrs. Champney whenever you will."

"I am going to." The response came prompt and hard.

"And what then?"

"I don't know--yet--;" her speech faltered; "but I want to try the stage. Every one says I have the voice for it, and I suppose I could make a hit in light operetta or vaudeville as well now as when I was a child. A few years more and I shall be too old."

"And you think you can enter into such publicity without protection?"

"Oh, I'm able to protect myself--I've done that already." She spoke with bitterness.

"True, you are a woman now--but still a young woman--"

Father Honoré stopped there. He was making no headway with her. He knew only too well that, as yet, he had not begun to get beneath the surface. When he spoke it was as if he were merely thinking aloud.

"Somehow, I hadn't thought that you would be so ready to leave us all--so many friends. Are we nothing to you, Aileen? Will you make better, truer ones among strangers? I can hardly think so."

She covered her face with her hands and began to sob again, but brokenly.

"Aileen, my daughter, what is it? Is there any new trouble preparing for you at The Bow?"

She shook her head. The tears trickled through her fingers.

"Does Mrs. Champney know that you are going to leave her?"

"No."

"Has it become unbearable?"

Another shake of the head. She searched blindly for her handkerchief, drew it forth and wiped her eyes and face.

"No; she's kinder than she's been for a long time--ever since that last stroke. She wants me with her most of the time."

"Has she ever spoken to you about remaining with her?"

"Yes, a good many times. She tried to make me promise I would stay till--till she doesn't need me. But, I couldn't, you know."

"Then why--but of course I know you are worn out by her long invalidism and tired of the fourteen years in that one house. Still, she has been lenient since you were twenty-one. She has permitted you--although of course you had the undisputed right--to earn for yourself in teaching the singing classes in the afternoon and evening school, and she pays you something beside--fairly well, doesn't she? I think you told me you were satisfied."

"Oh yes, in a way--so far as it goes. She doesn't begin to pay me as she would have to pay another girl in my position--if I have any there. I haven't said anything about it to her, because I wanted to work off my indebtedness to her on account of what she spent on me in bringing me up--she never let me forget that in those first seven years! I want to give more than I've had," she said proudly, "and sometime I shall tell her of it."

"But you have never given her any love?"

"No, I couldn't give her that.--Do you blame me?"

"No; you have done your whole duty by her. May I suggest that when you leave her you still make your home with us here in Flamsted? You have no other home, my child."

"No, I have no other home," she repeated mechanically.

"I know, at least, two that are open to you at any time you choose to avail yourself of their hospitality. Mrs. Caukins would be so glad to have you both for her daughters' sake and her own. The Colonel desires this as much as she does and--" he hesitated a moment, "now that Romanzo has his position in the New York office, and has married and settled there, there could be no objection so far as I can see."

There was no response.

"But if you do not care to consider that, there is another. About seven months ago, Mrs. Googe--"

"Mrs. Googe?"

She turned to him a face from which every particle of color had faded.

"Yes, Mrs. Googe. She would have spoken to you herself long before this, but, you know, Aileen, how she would feel in the circumstances--she would not think of suggesting your coming to her from Mrs. Champney. I feel sure she is waiting for you to take the initiative."

"Mrs. Googe?" she repeated, continuing to stare at him--blankly, as if she had heard but those two words of all that he was saying.

"Why, yes, Mrs. Googe. Is there anything so strange in that? She has always loved you, and she said to me, only the other day, 'I would love to have her young companionship in my house'--she will never call it home, you know, until her son returns--'to be as a daughter to me'--"

"Daughter!--I--want air--"

She swayed forward in speaking. Father Honoré sprang and caught her or she would have fallen. He placed her firmly against the chair back and opened the window. The keen night air charged with frost quickly revived her.

"You were sitting too near the fire; I should have remembered that you had come in from the cold," he said, delicately regarding her feelings; "let me get you a glass of water, Aileen."

She put out her hand with a gesture of dissent. She began to breathe freely. The room chilled rapidly. Father Honoré closed the window and took his stand on the hearth. Aileen raised her eyes to him. It seemed as if she lifted the swollen reddened lids with difficulty.

"Father Honoré," she said in a low voice, tense with suppressed feeling, "dear Father Honoré, the only father I have ever known, don't you know _why_ I cannot go to Mrs. Googe's?--why I must not stay too long in Flamsted?"

And looking into those eyes, that were incapable of insincerity, that, in the present instance, attempted to veil nothing, the priest read all that of which, six years ago on that never to be forgotten November night in New York, he had had premonition.

"My daughter--is it because of Champney's prospective return within a year that you feel you cannot remain longer with us?"

Her quivering lips gave an almost inaudible assent.

"Why?" He dared not spare her; he felt, moreover, that she did not wish to be spared. His eyes held hers.

Bravely she answered, bracing soul and mind and body to steadfastness. There was not a wavering of an eyelid, not a suggestion of faltering speech as she spoke the words that alone could lift from her overburdened heart the weight of a seven years' silence:

"Because I love him."

The answer seemed to Father Honoré supreme in its sacrificial simplicity. He laid his hand on her head. She bowed beneath his touch.

"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 Honoré 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 God--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 Honoré 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 Honoré felt the tears bite his eyeballs.

"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 Honoré 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 passionately. "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 Honoré 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 asserting this?"

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

Father Honoré 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 Honoré, 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 Honoré 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 passion for her, she said never a word; her two pronounced traits of chastity 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 Honoré; 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 button 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 Honoré 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 hell 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 æons, it lies here so near the blue above our Flamsted Hills, worthy to be used and put to all noble 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 noble 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 Honoré," she said humbly, gratefully.

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

"Good night, Aileen, and God bless you."

"Good night, Father Honoré."

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 Honoré 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 passengers as they left the train and commented freely on one and another known to them.

"I'll bet that's the new boss at the upper quarries," said one, pointing to a short thickset man making his way up the platform.

"Yes, that's him; and they're taking on a gang of new men with him; they're in the last car--there they come! There's going to be a regular spring freshet of 'em coming along now--the business is booming."

They scanned the men closely as they passed, between twenty and thirty of them of various nationalities. They were gesticulating wildly, vociferating loudly, shouldering bundle, knapsack or tool-kit. Behind them came a few stone-cutters, mostly Scotch and Irish. The last to leave the train was evidently an American.

The crowd on the platform surged away to the electric car to watch further proceedings of the newly arrived "gang." The arrival of the immigrant workmen always afforded fun for the natives. The men shivered and hunched their shoulders; the raw March wind was searching. The gesticulating and vociferating increased. To any one unacquainted with foreign ways, a complete rupture of international peace and relations seemed imminent. They tumbled over one another into the cars and filled them to overflowing, even to the platform where they clung to the guards.

The man who had been the last to leave the train stood on the emptied platform and looked about him. He carried a small bundle. He noted the sign on the electric cars, "To Quarry End Park". A puzzled look came into his face. He turned to the baggage-master who was wrestling with the immigrants' baggage:--iron-bound chests, tin boxes and trunks, sacks of heavy coarse linen filled with bedding.

"Does this car go to the sheds?"

The station master looked up. "It goes past there, but this is the regular half-hour express for the quarries and the Park. You a stranger in these parts?"

"This is all strange to me," the man answered.

"Any baggage?"

"No."

At that moment there was a rapid clanging of the gong; the motorman let fly the whirling rod; the over full cars started with a jerk--there was a howl, a shout, followed by a struggle to keep the equilibrium; an undersized Canuck was seen to be running madly alongside with one hand on the guard and endeavoring to get a foothold; he was hauled up unceremoniously by a dozen hands. The crowd watching them, cheered and jeered:

"Goin' it some, Antoine! Don't get left!"

"Keep on your pins, you Dagos!"

"Steady, Polacks--there's the strap!"

"Gee up, Johnny!" This to the motorman.

"Gosh, it's like a soda bottle fizzin' to hear them Rooshians talkin'."

"Hooray for you!"

The cars were off swiftly now; the men on the platforms waved their hats, their white teeth flashing, their gold earrings twinkling, and echoed the American cheer:--

"Horray!"

The station master turned away laughing.

"They look like a tough crowd, but they're O. K. in the end," he said to the man beside him who was looking after the vanishing car and its trailer. "There's yours coming down the switch. That'll take you up to Flamsted and the sheds." He pushed the loaded truck up the platform.

The stranger entered the car and took a seat at the rear; there were no other passengers. He told the conductor to leave him as near as possible to the sheds.

"Guess you don't know these parts?" The conductor put the question.

"This here is new to me," the man answered; he seemed nothing loath to enter into conversation. "When was this road built?"

"'Bout five years ago. You'll see what a roadway they've made clear along the north shore of the lake; it's bein' built up with houses just as fast as it's taken up."

He rang the starting bell. The car gathered headway and sped noisily along the frozen road-bed. In a few minutes it stopped at the Flamsted station; then it followed the shore of the lake for two miles until it reached the sheds. It stopped here and the man got out.

"Can you tell me where the manager's office is?" he asked a workman who was passing.

"Over there." He pointed with his thumb backwards across some railroad tracks and through a stone-yard to a small two-storey office building at the end of three huge sheds.

The man made his way across to them. Once he stopped to look at the leaden waters of the lake, rimmed with ice; and up at the leaden sky that seemed to be shutting down close upon them like a lid; and around at the gray waste of frozen ground, the meadows covered lightly with snow and pools of surface ice that here and there showed the long bleached grass pricking through in grayish-yellow tufts. Beyond the meadows he saw a rude stone chapel, and near by the foundations, capped with wood, of a large church. He shivered once; he had no overcoat. Then he went on to the manager's office. He rang and opened the door.

"Can I see the manager?"

"He's out now; gone over to the engine-house to see about the new smoke stack; he'll be back in a few minutes. Guess you'll find a stool in the other room."

The man entered the room, but remained standing, listening with increasing interest to the technical talk of the other two men who were half lying on the table as they bent over some large plans--an architect's blue prints. Finally the man drew near.