Part 8

"You see, mother, men _have_ to do it, or go under. It's about one chance in ten thousand that a man gets what he wants, and it's downright criminal to throw away a good opportunity to get your foot on a round. Run the scaling ladder up or down, it doesn't much matter--there are hundreds of applicants for every round; and only one man can stand on each--and climb, as I mean to. You don't get this point of view up here, mother, but you will when you see the development of these great interests. Then it will be each for himself and the devil gets the hindermost. Shouldn't I take every legitimate means to forge ahead? You heard what the priest said about Mr. Van Ostend's mentioning me to him? Let me tell you such men don't waste one breath in mentioning anything that does not mean a big interest per cent, _not one breath_. They can't, literally, afford to; and I'm hoping, only hoping, you know--", he looked up at her from his favorite seat on the lowest step of the front porch with a keen hard expectancy in his eyes that belied his words, "--that what he said to Father Honoré means something definite. Anyhow, we'll wait a while till we see how the syndicate takes hold of this quarry business before we decide on anything, won't we, mother?"

"I'm willing to wait as long as you like if you will only promise me one thing."

"What's that?" He rose and faced her; she saw that he was slightly on the defensive.

"That you will never, _never_, in any circumstances, apply to your Aunt Almeda for funds, no matter how much you may want them. I couldn't bear that!"

She spoke passionately in earnest, with such depth of feeling that she did not realize her son was not giving her the promise when he said abruptly, the somewhat hard blue eyes looking straight into hers:

"Mother, why are you so hard on Aunt Meda? She's a stingy old screw, I know, and led Uncle Louis round by the nose, so everybody says; but why are you so down on her?"

He was insistent, and his insistence was the one trait in his character which his mother had found hardest to deal with from his babyhood; from it, however, if it should develop happily into perseverance, she hoped the most. This trait he inherited from his father, Warren Googe, but in the latter it had deteriorated into obstinacy. She always feared for her self-control when she met it in her son, and just now she was under the influence of a powerful emotion that helped her to lose it.

"Because," she made answer, again passionately but the earnestness had given place to anger, "I am a woman and have borne from her what no woman bears and forgets, or forgives! Are you any the wiser now?" she demanded. "It is all that I shall tell you; so don't insist."

The two continued to look into each other's eyes, and something, it could hardly be called inimical, rather an aloofness from the tie of blood, was visible to each in the other's steadfast gaze. Aurora Googe shivered. Her eyes fell before the younger ones.

"Don't Champney! Don't let's get upon this subject again; I can't bear it."

"But, mother," he protested, "you mentioned it first."

"It was what you said about Almeda's furnishing you with money that started it. Don't say anything more about it; only promise me, won't you?"

She raised her eyes again to his, but this time in appeal. At forty-one Aurora Googe was still a very beautiful woman, and her appeal, made gently as if in apology for her former vehemence, rendered that beauty potent with her son's manhood.

"Let me think it over, mother, before I promise." He answered her as gently. "It's a hard thing to exact of a man, and I don't hold much with promises. What did Uncle Louis' amount to?"

The blood surged into his mother's face, and tears, rare ones, for she was not a weak woman neither was she a sentimental one, filled her eyes. Her son came up the steps and kissed her. They were seldom demonstrative to this extent save in his home-comings and leave-takings. He changed the subject abruptly.

"I'm going down to the village now. You know I have the serenade on my program, at eight. Afterwards I'll run down to The Greenbush for the mail and to see my old cronies. I haven't had a chance yet." He began to whistle for the puppy, but cut himself short, laughing. "I was going to take Rag, but he won't fit in with the serenade. Keep him tied up while I'm gone, please. Anything you want from the village, mother?"

"No, not to-night."

"Don't sit up for me; I may be late. Joel is long-winded and the Colonel is booming The Gore for all it is worth and more too; I want to hear the fun. Good night."

VIII

The afterglow of sunset was long. The dilated moon, rising from the waters of the Bay, shone pale at first; but as it climbed the shoulder of the mountain _Wave-of-the-Sea_ and its light fell upon the farther margin of the lake, its clear disk was pure argent.

Champney looked his approval. It was the kind of night he had been hoping for. He walked leisurely down the road from The Gore for the night was warm. It was already past eight, but he lingered, purposely, a few minutes longer on the lake shore until the moonlight should widen on the waters. Then he went on to the grounds.

He entered by the lane and crossed the lawn to an arching rose-laden trellis near the bay window; beneath it was a wooden bench. He looked up at the window. The blinds were closed. So far as he could see there was no light in all the great house. Behind the rose trellis was a group of stately Norway spruce; he could see the sheen of their foliage in the moonlight. He took his banjo out of its case and sat down on the bench, smiling to himself, for he was thoroughly enjoying, with that enjoyment of youth, health, and vitality which belongs to twenty-one, this rustic adventure. He touched the strings lightly with preliminary thrumming. It was a toss-up between "Annie Rooney" and "Oft in the stilly night." He decided for the latter. Raising his eyes to the closed blinds, behind which he knew the witch was hiding, he began the accompaniment. The soft _thrum-thrum_, vibrating through the melody, found an echo in the whirring wings of all that ephemeral insect life which is abroad on such a night. The prelude was almost at an end when he saw the blinds begin to separate. Champney continued to gaze steadily upwards. A thin bare arm was thrust forth; the blinds opened wide; in the dark window space he saw Aileen, listening intently and gazing fixedly at the moon as if its every beam were dropping liquid music.

He began to sing. His voice was clear, fine, and high, a useful first tenor for two winters in the Glee Club. When he finished Aileen deigned to look down upon him, but she made no motion of recognition. He rose and took his stand directly beneath the window.

"I say, Miss Aileen Armagh-and-don't-yer-forget-it, that isn't playing fair! Where's my token?"

There was a giggle for answer; then, leaning as far out as she dared, both hands stemmed on the window ledge, the child began to sing. Full, free, joyously light-hearted, she sent forth the rollicking Irish melody and the merry sentiment that was strung upon it; evidently it had been adapted to her, for the words had suffered a slight change:

"Och! laughin' roses are my lips, Forget-me-nots my ee, It's many a lad they're drivin' mad; Shall they not so wi' ye? Heigho! the morning dew! Heigho! the rose and rue! Follow me, my bonny lad, For I'll not follow you.

"Wi' heart in mout', in hope and doubt, My lovers come and go: My smiles receive, my smiles deceive; Shall they not serve you so? Heigho! the morning dew! Heigho! the rose and rue! Follow me, my bonny lad, For I'll not follow you."

It was a delight to hear her.

"There now, I'll give yer my token. Hold out yer hands!"

Champney, hugging his banjo under one arm, made a cup of his hands. Carefully measuring the distance, she dropped one rosebud into them.

"Put it on yer heart now," was the next command from above. He obeyed with exaggerated gesture, to the great delight of the serenadee. "And yer goin' to keep it?"

"Forever and a day." Champney made this assertion with a hyper-sentimental inflection of voice, and, lifting the flower to his nose, drew in his breath--

"Confound you, you little fiend--" he sneezed rather than spoke.

The sneeze was answered by a peal of laughter from above and a fifteen-year-old's cracked "Haw-haw-haw" from the region of the Norway spruces. Every succeeding sneeze met with a like response--roars of laughter on the one hand and peal upon peal on the other. Even the kitchen door began to give signs of life, for Hannah and Ann made their appearance.

The strong white pepper, which Romanzo managed to procure from Hannah, had been cunningly secreted by Aileen between the imbricate petals, and then tied, in a manner invisible at night, with a fine thread of pink silk begged from Ann. It was now acting and re-acting on the lining of the serenader's olfactory organ in a manner to threaten final decapitation. Champney was still young enough to resent being made a subject of such practical joking by a little girl; but he was also sufficiently wise to acknowledge to himself that he had been worsted and, in the end, to put a good face on it. It is true he would have preferred that Romanzo Caukins had not been witness to his defeat.

The sneezing and laughter gradually subsided. He sat down again on the bench and taking up his banjo prepared, with somewhat elaborate effort, to put it into its case. He said nothing.

"Say!" came in a sobered voice from above; "are yer mad with me?"

Ignoring both question and questioner, he took out his handkerchief, wiped his face and forehead and, returning it to his pocket, heaved a sigh of apparent exhaustion.

"I say, Mr. Champney Googe, are yer mad with me?"

To Champney's delight, he heard an added note of anxiety. He bowed his head lower over the banjo case and in silence renewed his simulated struggle to slip that instrument into it.

"Champney! Are yer _rale_ mad with me?" There was no mistaking the earnestness of this appeal. He made no answer, but chuckled inwardly at the audacity of the address.

"Champ!" she stamped her foot to emphasize her demand; "if yer don't tell me yer ain't mad with me, I'll lave yer for good and all--so now!"

"I don't know that I'm mad with you," he spoke at last in an aggrieved, a subdued tone; "I simply didn't think you could play me such a mean trick when I was in earnest, dead earnest."

"Did yer mane it?"

"Why, of course I did! You don't suppose a man walks three miles in a hot night to serenade a girl just to get an ounce of pepper in his nose by way of thanks, do you?"

"I thought yer didn't mane it; Romanzo said yer was laughing at me for telling yer 'bout the lords and ladies a-making love with their guitars." The voice indicated some dejection of spirits.

"He did, did he! I'll settle with Romanzo later." He heard a soft brushing of branches in the region of the Norway spruces and knew that the youth was in retreat. "And I'll settle it with you, too, Miss Aileen Armagh-and-don't-you-forget-it, in a way that'll make you remember the tag end of your name for one while!"

This threat evidently had its effect.

"Wot yer going to do?"

He heard her draw her breath sharply.

"Come down here and I'll tell you."

"I can't. She might catch me. She told me I'd got to stay in my room after eight, and she's coming home ter-night. Wot yer going to do?"

Champney laughed outright. "Don't you wish you might know, Aileen Armagh!" He took his banjo in one hand, lifted his cap with the other and, standing so, bareheaded in the moonlight, sang with all the simulated passion and pathos of which he was capable one of the few love songs that belong to the world, "Kathleen Mavoureen"; but he took pains to substitute "Aileen" for "Kathleen." Even Ann and Hannah, listening from the kitchen porch, began to feel sentimentally inclined when the clear voice rendered with tender pathos the last lines:

"Oh! why art thou silent, thou voice of my heart? Oh! why art thou silent, Aileen Mavoureen?"

Without so much as another glance at the little figure in the window, he ran across the lawn and up the lane to the highroad.

IX

On his way to The Greenbush he overtook Joel Quimber, and without warning linked his arm close in the old man's. At the sudden contact Joel started.

"Uncle Jo, old chap, how are you? This seems like home to see you round."

"Lord bless me, Champ, how you come on a feller! Here, stan' still till I get a good look at ye;--growed, growed out of all notion. Why, I hain't seen ye for good two year. You warn't to home last summer?"

"Only for a week; I was off on a yachting cruise most of the time. Mother said you were up on the Bay then at your grandniece's--pretty girl. I remember you had her down here one Christmas."

The old man made no definite answer, but cackled softly to himself: "Yachting cruise, eh? And you remember a pretty girl, eh?" He nudged him with a sharpened elbow and whispered mysteriously: "Devil of a feller, Champ! I've heerd tell, I've heerd tell--chip of the old block, eh?" He nudged him knowingly again.

"Oh, we're all devils more or less, we men, Uncle Jo; now, honor bright, aren't we?"

"You've hit it, Champ; more or less--more or less. I heerd you was a-goin' it strong: primy donny suppers an' ortermobillies--"

"Now, Uncle Jo, you know there's no use believing all you hear, but you can't plunge a country raised boy into a whirlpool like New York for four years and not expect him to strike out and swim with the rest. You've got to, Uncle Jo, or you're nobody. You'd go under."

"Like 'nough you would, Champ; I can't say, fer I hain't ben thar. Guess twixt you an' me an' the post, I won't hev ter go thar sence Aurory's sold the land fer the quarries. I hear it talked thet it'll bring half New York right inter old Flamsted; I dunno, I dunno--you 'member 'bout the new wine in the old bottles, Champ?--highflyers, emigrants, Dagos and Polacks--Come ter think, Mis' Champney's got one on 'em now. Hev you seen her, Champ?"

Champney's hearty laugh rang out with no uncertain sound. "Seen her! I should say so. She's worth any 'primy donny', as you call them, that ever drew a good silver dollar out of my pockets. Oh, it's too good to keep! I must tell you; but you'll keep mum, Uncle Jo?"

"Mum's the word, ef yer say so, Champ." They turned from The Greenbush and arm in arm paced slowly up the street again. From time to time, for the next ten minutes, Augustus Buzzby and the Colonel in the tavern office heard from up street such unwonted sounds of hilarity and so long continued, that Augustus looked apprehensively at the Colonel who was becoming visibly uneasy lest he fail to place the joke.

When the two appeared at the office door they bore unmistakable signs of having enjoyed themselves hugely. Augustus Buzzby gave them his warmest welcome and seated Uncle Joel in his deepest office chair, providing him at the same time with a pipe and some cut leaf. The Colonel was in his glory. With one arm thrown affectionately around young Googe's neck, he expatiated on the joy of the community as a whole in again welcoming its own.

"Champney, my dear boy,--you still permit me the freedom of old friendship?--this town is already looking to you as to its future deliverer; I may say, as to a Moses who will lead us into the industrial Canaan which is even now, thanks to my friend, your honored mother, beckoning to us with its promise of abundant plenty. Never, in my wildest dreams, my dear boy, have I thought to see such a consummation of my long-cherished hopes."

It was always one of Champney's prime youthful joys to urge the Colonel, by judiciously applied excitants, to a greater flowering of eloquence; so, now, as an inducement he wrung his neighbor's hand and thanked him warmly for his timely recognition of the new Flamsted about to be.

"Now," he said, "the thing is for all of us to fall into line and forge ahead, Colonel. If we don't, we'll be left behind; and in these times to lag is to take to the backwoods."

"Right you are, my dear fellow; deterioration can only set in when the members of a community, like ours, fail to present a solid front to the disintegrating forces of a supine civilization which--"

"At it again, Milton Caukins!" It was Mr. Wiggins who, entering the office, interrupted the flow,--"dammed the torrent", he was wont to say. He extended a hand to young Googe. "Glad to see you, Champney. I hear there is a prospect of your remaining with us. Quimber tells us he heard something to the effect that a position might be offered you by the syndicate."

"It's the first I've heard of it. How did you hear, Uncle Jo?" He turned upon the old man with a keen alertness which, taken in connection with the Colonel's oratory, was both disconcerting and confusing.

"How'd I hear? Le' me see; Champ, what was we just talking 'bout up the street, eh?"

"Oh, never mind that now," he answered impatiently; "let's hear what you heard. I'm the interested party just now." But the old man looked only the more disturbed and was not to be hurried.

"'Bout that little girl--" he began, but was unceremoniously cut short by Champney.

"Oh, damn the girl, just for once, Uncle Jo. What I want to know is, how you came to hear anything about me in connection with the quarry syndicate."

The old man persisted: "I'm a-tryin' to get a-holt of that man's name that got her up here--"

"Van Ostend," Champney suggested; "is that the name you want?"

"That's him, Van Ostend; that's the one. He an' the rest was hevin' a meetin' right here in this office 'fore they went to the train, an' I was settin' outside the winder an' heerd one on 'em say: 'Thet Mis' Googe's a stunner; what's her son like, does any one know?' An' I heerd Mr. Van Ostend say: 'She's very unusual; if her son has half her executive ability'--them's his very words--'we might work him in with us. It would be good business policy to interest, through him, the land itself in its own output, so to speak, besides being something of a courtesy to Mis' Googe. I've met him twice.' Then they fell to discussin' the lay of The Gore and the water power at The Corners."

"Bully for you, Uncle Jo!" Champney slapped the rounded shoulders with such appreciative heartiness that the old man's pipe threatened to be shaken from between his toothless gums. "You have heard the very thing I've been hoping for. Tave never let on that he knew anything about it."

"He didn't, only what I told him." Old Quimber cackled weakly. "I guess Tave's got his hands too full at Champo to remember what's told him; what with the little girl an' Romanzo--no offence, Colonel." He looked apologetically at the Colonel who waved his hand with an airiness that disposed at once of the idea of any feeling on his part in regard to family revelations. "I heerd tell thet the little girl hed turned his head an' Tave couldn't git nothin' in the way of work out of him."

"In that case I must look into the matter." The Colonel spoke with stern gravity. "Both Mrs. Caukins and I would deplore any undue influence that might be brought to bear upon any son of ours at so critical a period of his career."

Mr. Wiggins laughed; but the laugh was only a disguised sneer. "Perhaps you'll come to your senses, Colonel, when you've got an immigrant for a daughter-in-law. Own up, now, you didn't think your 'competing industrial thousands' might be increased by some half-Irish grandchildren, now did you?"

Champney listened for the Colonel's answer with a suspended hope that he might give Elmer Wiggins "one," as he said to himself. He still owed the latter gentleman a grudge because in the past he had been, as it were, the fountain head of all in his youthful misery in supplying ample portions of the never-to-be-forgotten oil of the castor bean and dried senna leaves. He felt at the present time, moreover, that he was inimical to his mother and her interests. And Milton Caukins was his friend and hers, past, present, and future; of this he was sure.

The Colonel took time to light his cigar before replying; then, waving it towards the ceiling, he said pleasantly:

"My young friend here, Champney, to whom we are looking to restore the pristine vigor of a fast vanishing line of noble ancestors, is both a Googe _and_ a Champney. _His_ ancestors counted themselves honored in making alliances with foreigners--immigrants to our all-welcoming shores; 'a rose', Mr. Wiggins, 'by any other name'; I need not quote." His chest swelled; he interrupted himself to puff vigorously at his cigar before continuing: "My son, sir, is on the spindle side of the house a _Googe_, and a _Googe_, sir, has the blood of the Champneys and the Lord knows of how many noble _immigrants_" (the last word was emphasized by a fleeting glance of withering scorn at the small-headed Wiggins) "in his veins which, fortunately, cannot be said of you, sir. If, at any time in the distant future, my son should see fit to ally himself with a scion of the noble and long-suffering Hibernian race, I assure you"--his voice was increasing in dimensions--"both Mrs. Caukins and myself would feel honored, sir, yes, honored in the breach!"

After this wholly unexpected ending to his peroration, he lowered his feet from their accustomed rest on the counter of the former bar and, ignoring Mr. Wiggins, remarked to Augustus that it was time for the mail. Augustus, glad to welcome any diversion of the Colonel's and Mr. Wiggins's asperities, said the train was on time and the mail would be there in a few minutes.

"Tave's gone down to meet Mis' Champney," he added turning to Champney. "She's been in Hallsport for two days. I presume you ain't seen her."

"Not yet. If you can give me my mail first I can drive up to Champ-au-Haut with her to-night. There's the mail-wagon."

"To be sure, to be sure, Champney; and you might take out Mis' Champney's; Tave can't leave the hosses."

"All right." He went out on the veranda to see if the Champ-au-Haut carriage was in sight. A moment later, when it drove up, he was at the door to open it.