Читать книгу Flamsted quarries - Mary E. Waller - Страница 17

A land of entrancing inner waters, our own marvellous Lake Country of the East, lies just behind those mountains of Maine that sink their bases in the Atlantic and are fitly termed in Indian nomenclature Waves-of-the-Sea. Bight and bay indent this mountainous coast, in beauty comparable, if less sublime yet more enticing, to the Norwegian fjords; within them are set the islands large and small whereon the sheep, sheltered by cedar coverts, crop the short thick turf that is nourished by mists from the Atlantic. Above bight and bay and island tower the mountains. Their broad green flanks catch the earliest eastern and the latest western lights. Their bare summits are lifted boldly into the infinite blue that is reflected in the waters which lap their foundations.

Flamsted lies at the outlet of Lake Mesantic, on the gentle northward slope of these Waves-of-the-Sea, some eighteen miles inland from Penobscot Bay. Until the last decade of the nineteenth century it was unconnected with the coast by any railroad; but at that time a branch line from Hallsport on the Bay, encouraged by the opening of a small granite quarry in the Flamsted Hills, made its terminus at The Corners—a sawmill settlement at the falls of the Rothel, a river that runs rapidly to the sea after issuing from Lake Mesantic. A mile beyond the station the village proper begins at its two-storied tavern, The Greenbush.

From the lower veranda of this hostelry, one may look down the shaded length of the main street, dignified by many an old-fashioned house, to The Bow, an irregular peninsula extending far into the lake and containing some two hundred acres. This estate is the ancestral home of the Champneys, known as Champ-au-Haut, in the vernacular "Champo." At The Bow the highway turns suddenly, crosses a bridge over the Rothel and curves with the curving pine-fringed shores of the lake along the base of the mountain until it climbs the steep ascent that leads to Googe's Gore, the third division of the town of Flamsted.

As in all New England towns, that are the possessors of "old families," so in Flamsted;—its inhabitants are partisans. The result is, that it has been for years as a house divided against itself, and heated discussion of the affairs of the Googes at the Gore and the Champneys at The Bow has been from generation to generation an inherited interest. And from generation to generation, as the two families have ramified and intermarriages occurred more and more frequently, party spirit has run higher and higher and bitter feelings been engendered. But never have the factional differences been more pronounced and the lines of separation drawn with a sharper ploughshare in this mountain-ramparted New England town, than during the five years subsequent to the opening of the Flamsted Quarries which brought in its train the railroad and the immigrants. This event was looked upon by the inhabitants as the Invasion of the New.

The interest of the first faction was centred in Champ-au-Haut and its present possessor, the widow of Louis Champney, old Judge Champney's only son. That of the second in the Googes, Aurora and her son Champney, the owners of Googe's Gore and its granite outcrop.

The office room of The Greenbush has been for two generations the acknowledged gathering place of the representatives of the hostile camps. On a cool evening in June, a few days after the departure of several New York promoters, who had formed a syndicate to exploit the granite treasure in The Gore and for that purpose been fully a week in Flamsted, a few of the natives dropped into the office to talk it over.

When Octavius Buzzby, the factotum at Champ-au-Haut and twin of Augustus Buzzby, landlord of The Greenbush, entered the former bar-room of the old hostelry, he found the usual Saturday night frequenters. Among them was Colonel Milton Caukins, tax collector and assistant deputy sheriff who, never quite at ease in the presence of his long-tongued wife, expanded discursively so soon as he found himself in the office of The Greenbush. He was in full flow when Octavius entered.

"Hello, Tave," he cried, extending his hand in easy condescension, "you're well come, for you're just in time to hear the latest; the deal's on—an A. 1 sure thing this time. Aurora showed me the papers to-day. We're in for it now—government contracts, state houses, battle monuments, graveyards; we've got 'em all, and things'll begin to hum in this backwater hole, you bet!"

Octavius looked inquiringly at his brother. Augustus answered by raising his left eyebrow and placidly closing his right eye as a cautionary signal to lie low and await developments.

It was the Colonel's way to boom everything, and simply because he could not help it. It was not a matter of principle with him, it was an affair of temperament. He had boomed Flamsted for the last ten years—its climate, its situation, its scenery, its water power, its lake-shore lands as prospective sites for mansion summer cottages, and the treasures of its unopened quarries. So incorrigible an optimist was Milton Caukins that any slight degree of success, which might attend the promotion of any one of his numerous schemes, caused an elation that amounted to hilarity. On the other hand, the deadly blight of non-fulfilment, that annually attacked his most cherished hopes for the future development of his native town, failed in any wise to depress him, or check the prodigal casting of his optimistic daily bread on the placid social waters where, as the years multiplied, his enthusiasms scarce made a ripple.

"I see Mis' Googe yisterd'y, an' she said folks hed been down on her so long for sellin' thet pass'l of paster for the first quarry, thet she might ez well go the hull figger an' git 'em down on her for the rest of her days by sellin' the rest. By Andrew Jackson! she's got the grit for a woman—and the good looks too! She can hold her own for a figger with any gal in this town. I see the syndicaters a-castin' sheeps' eyes her ways the day she took 'em over The Gore prospectin'; but, by A. J.! they hauled in their lookin's when she turned them great eyes of her'n their ways.—What's the figger for the hull piece? Does anybody know?"

It was Joel Quimber, the ancient pound-master, who spoke, and the silence that followed proved that each man present was resenting the fact that he was not in a position to give the information desired.

"I shall know as soon as they get it recorded, that is, if they don't trade for a dollar and if they ever do get it recorded." The speaker was Elmer Wiggins, druggist and town clerk for the last quarter of a century. He was pessimistically inclined, the tendency being fostered by his dual vocation of selling drugs and registering the deaths they occasionally caused.

Milton Caukins, or the Colonel, as he preferred to be called on account of his youthful service in the state militia and his present connection with the historical society of The Rangers, took his cigar from his lips and blew the smoke forcibly towards the ceiling before he spoke.

"She's got enough now to put Champ through college. The first forty acres she sold ten years ago will do that."

"I ain't so sure of thet." Joel Quimber's tone implied obstinate conviction that his modestly expressed doubt was a foregone conclusion. "Champ's a devil of a feller when it comes to puttin' through anything. He's a chip off the old block. He'll put through more 'n his mother can git out if he gits in any thicker with them big guns—race hosses, steam yachts an' fancy fixin's. He could sink the hull Gore to the foundations of Old Time in a few of them suppers I've heerd he gin arter the show. I heerd he gin ten dollars a plate for the last one—some kind of primy-donny, I heerd. But Champ's game though. I heerd Mr. Van Ostend talkin' 'bout him to one of the syndicaters—mebbe they're goin' to work him in with them somehow; anyway, I guess Aurory don't begrutch him a little spendin' money seein' how easy it come out of the old sheep pasters. Who'd 'a' thought a streak of granite could hev made sech a stir!"

"It's a stir that'll sink this town in the mud." Mr. Wiggins' voice was what might be called thorough-bass, and was apt to carry more weight with his townspeople than his opinions, which latter were not always acceptable to Colonel Caukins. "Look at it now! This town has never been bonded; we're free from debt and a good balance on hand for improvements. Now along comes three or four hundred immigrants to begin with—trade following the flag, I suppose you call it, Colonel," (he interpolated this with cutting sarcasm)—"a hodge-podge of Canucks, and Dagos, and Polacks, and the Lord knows what—a darned set of foreigners, foreign to our laws, our ways, our religion; and behind 'em a lot of men that would be called windbags if it wasn't for their money-bags. And between 'em our noses are going to be held right down on the grindstone. I tell you we'll have to bond this town to support the schooling for these foreign brats, and there's a baker's dozen of 'em every time; and there'll be tooting and dancing and singing and playing on Sunday with their foreign gimcranks—mandolin-banjos and what-all—"

"Good heavens, my dear fellow!" the Colonel broke in with an air of impatience, "can't you see that it's this very 'stir,' as you term it, that is going to put this town into the front rank of the competing industrial thousands of America?"

The Colonel, when annoyed at the quantity of cold water thrown upon his redhot enthusiasm, was apt to increase the warmth of his patronizing address by an endearing term.

"I see farther than the front ranks of your 'competing industrial thousands of America,' Milton Caukins; I see clear over 'em to the very brink, and I see a struggling wrestling mass of human beings slipping, sliding to the bottomless pit of national destitution, helped downwards by just such darned boomers of what you call 'industrial efficiency' as you are, Milton Caukins." He paused for breath.

Augustus Buzzby, who was ever a man of peace, tried to divert this raging torrent of speech into other and personal channels.

"I ain't nothin' 'gainst Mis' Googe as a woman, but she played me a mean trick when she sold that first quarry. It killed my trade as dead as a door nail. You can't hire them highflyers to put themselves into a town their money's bankin' on to ruin in what you might call a summer-social way. I found that out 'fore they left this house last week."

"Yes, and she's played a meaner one now." Mr. Wiggins made the assertion with asperity and looked at the same time directly at Octavius Buzzby. "I know all about their free dispensaries that'll draw trade away from my very counter and take the bread and butter out of my mouth; and as for the fees—there won't be a chance for recording a homestead site; there isn't any counting on such things, for they're a homeless lot, always moving from pillar to post with free pickings wherever they locate over night, just like the gypsies that came through here last September."

"It's kinder queer now, whichever way you've a mind to look at it," Joel Quimber remarked meditatively. His eyes were cast up to the ceiling; his fore-fingers and thumbs formed an acute triangle over the bridge of his nose; the arms of his chair supported his elbows. "Queer thet it's allus them upper tens an' emigrants thet keep a-movin' on, fust one place then t'other. Kinder looks ez if, arter all, there warn't no great real difference when it comes to bein' restless. Take us home folks now, we're rooted in deep, an' I guess if we was to be uprooted kinder suddin', p'raps we'd hev more charity for the furriners. There's no tellin'; I ain't no jedge of sech things, an' I'm an out-an-out American. But mebbe my great-great-great-granther's father could hev' told ye somethin' wuth tellin'; he an' the Champneys was hounded out of France, an' was glad 'nough to emigrate, though they called it refugeein' an' pioneerin' in them days."

Augustus Buzzby laid his hand affectionately on the old man's shoulder. "You're a son of the soil, Joel; I stand corrected. I guess the less any of us true blue Americans say 'bout flinging stones at furriners the safer 'twill be for all on us."

But Mr. Wiggins continued his diatribe: "There ain't no denying it, the first people in town are down on the whole thing. Didn't the rector tell me this very day that 'twas like ploughing up the face of nature for the sake of sowing the seeds of political and social destruction—his very words—in this place of peace and happy homes? He don't blame Mrs. Champney for feeling as she does 'bout Aurora Googe. He said it was a shame that just as soon as Mrs. Champney had begun to sell off her lake shore lands so as her city relatives could build near her, Mrs. Googe must start up and balk all her plans by selling two hundred acres of old sheep pasture for the big quarry."

"Humph!" It was the first sound that Octavius Buzzby had uttered since his entrance and general greeting. Hearing it his brother looked warningly in his direction, for he feared that the factional difference, which had come to the surface to breathe in his own and Elmer Wiggins' remarks, might find over-heated expression in the mouth of his twin if once Tave's ire should be aroused. But his brother gave no heed and, much to Augustus' relief, went off at a tangent.

"I heard old Judge Champney talk on these things a good many times in his lifetime, an' he was wise, wiser'n any man here." He allowed himself this one thrust at Mr. Wiggins and the Colonel. "He used to say: 'Tavy, it's all in the natural course of things, and it's got to strike us here sometime; not in my time, but in my boy's. No man of us can say he owns God's earth, an' set up barriers an' fences, an' sometimes breastworks, an' holler "hands off" to every man that peeks over the wall, "this here is mine or that is ours!" because 't isn't in the natural order of things, and what isn't in the natural order isn't going to be, Tavy.' That's what the old Judge said to me more'n once."

"He was right, Tavy, he was right," said Quimber eagerly and earnestly. "I can't argify, an' I can't convince; but I know he was right. I've lived most a generation longer'n any man here, an' I've seen a thing or two an' marked the way of nater jest like the Jedge. I've stood there where the Rothel comes down from The Gore in its spring freshet, rarin', tearin' down, bearin' stones an' rocks along with its current till it strikes the lowlands; then a racin' along, catchin' up turf an' mud an' sand, an' foamin' yaller an' brown acrost the medders, leavin' mud a quarter of an inch thick on the lowlands; and then a-rushin' into the lake ez if 't would turn the bottom upside down—an' jest look what happens! Stid of kickin' up a row all along the banks it jest ain't nowhere when you look for it! Only the lake riled for a few furlongs off shore an' kinder humpin' up in the middle. An' arter a day or two ye come back an' look agin, an' where's the rile? All settled to the bottom, an' the lake as clear as a looking-glass. An' then ye look at the medders an' ye see thet, barrin' a big boulder or two an' some stuns thet an ox-team can cart off, an' some gullyin' out long the highroad, they ain't been hurt a mite. An' then come 'long 'bout the fust of July, an' ye go out an' stan' there and look for the silt—an' what d' ye see? Why, jest thet ye're knee deep in clover an' timothy thet hez growed thet high an' lush jest on account of thet very silt!

"Thet's the way 't is with nateral things; an' thet's what the old Jedge meant. This furrin flood's a-comin'; an' we've got to stan' some scares an' think mebbe The Gore dam'll bust, an' the boulders lay round too thick for the land, an' the mud'll spile our medders, an' the lake show rily so's the cattle won't drink—an' we'll find out thet in this great free home of our'n, thet's lent us for a while, thet there's room 'nough for all, an', in the end—not in my time, but in your'n—our Land, like the medders, is goin' to be the better for it."

"Well put, well put, Quimber," said the Colonel who had been showing signs of restlessness under the unusual and protracted eloquence of the old pound-master. "We're making the experiment that every other nation has had to make some time or other. Take old Rome, now—what was it started the decay, eh?"

As no one present dared to cope with the decline of so large a subject, the Colonel had the floor. He looked at each man in turn; then waved the hand that held his cigar airily towards the ceiling. "Just inbreeding, sir, inbreeding. That's what did it. We Americans, are profiting by the experience of the centuries and are going to take in fresh blood just as fast as it can attain to an arterial circulation in the body politic, sir; an arterial circulation, I say—" the Colonel was apt to roll a fine phrase more than once under his tongue when the sound thereof pleased him—"and in the course of nature—I agree perfectly with the late Judge Champney and our friend, Quimber—there may be, during the process, a surcharge of blood to the head or stomach of the body politic that will cause a slight attack of governmental vertigo or national indigestion. But it will pass, gentlemen, it will pass; and I assure you the health of the Republic will be kept at the normal, with nothing more than passing attacks of racial hysteria which, however undignified they may appear in the eyes of all right-minded citizens, must ever remain the transient phenomena of a great nation in the making."

The Colonel, having finished his peroration with another wave of his cigar towards the ceiling, lowered his feet from their elevated position on the counter, glanced anxiously at the clock, which indicated a quarter of nine, and remarked casually that, as Mrs. Caukins was indisposed, he felt under obligations to be at home by half-past nine.

Joel Quimber, whom such outbursts of eloquence on the Colonel's part in the usual town-meeting left in a generally dazed condition of mind and politics, remarked that he heard the whistle of the evening train about fifteen minutes ago, and asked if Augustus were expecting any one up on it.

"No, but the team's gone down to meet it just the same. Maybe there'll be a runner or two; they pay 'bout as well as the big guns after all; and then there's a chance of one of the syndicaters coming in on me at any time now.—There's the team."

He went out on the veranda. The men within the office listened with intensified interest, strengthened by that curiosity which is shown by those in whose lives events do not crowd upon one another with such overwhelming force, that the susceptibility to fresh impressions is dulled. They heard the land-lord's cordial greeting, a confusion of sounds incident upon new arrivals; then Augustus Buzzby came in, carrying bags and travelling shawl, and, following him, a tall man in the garb of a priest of the Roman Catholic Church. Close at his side was a little girl. She was far from appearing shy or awkward in the presence of strangers, nodding brightly to Octavius, who sat nearest the door, and smiling captivatingly upon Joel Quimber, whereupon he felt immediately in his pockets for a peppermint which, to his disappointment, was not there.

The Colonel sprang to his feet when the guests entered, and quickly doffed his felt hat which was balancing in a seemingly untenable position on the side of his head. The priest, who removed his on the threshold, acknowledged the courtesy with a bow and a keen glance which included all in the room; then he stepped to the desk on the counter to enter his name in the ponderous leather-backed registry which Augustus opened for him. The little girl stood beside him, watching his every movement.

The Flamstedites saw before them a man in the prime of life, possibly forty-five. He was fully six feet in height, noticeably erect, with an erectness that gave something of the martial to his carriage, spare but muscular, shoulders high and square set, and above them a face deeply pock-marked, the features large but regular, the forehead broad and bulging rather prominently above the eyes. The eyes they could not see; but the voice made itself heard, and felt, while he was writing. The men present unconsciously welcomed it as a personality.

"Can you tell me if Mrs. Louis Champney lives near here?" he said, addressing his host.

"Yes, sir; just about a mile down the street at The Bow."

"Oh, please, yer Riverence, write mine too," said the child who, by standing on tiptoe at the high counter, had managed to follow every stroke of the pen.

The priest looked at the landlord with a frankly interrogatory smile.

"To be sure, to be sure. Ain't you my guest as long as you're in my home?" Augustus replied with such whole-souled heartiness that the child beamed upon him and boldly held out her hand for the pen.

"Let me write it," she said decidedly, as if used to having her way. Colonel Caukins sprang to place a high three-legged stool for the little registree, and was about to lift her on, but the child, laughing aloud, managed to seat herself without his assistance, and forthwith gave her undivided attention to the entering of her name.

Those present loved in after years to recall this scene: the old bar, the three-legged stool, the little girl perched on top, one foot twisted over the round—so busily intent upon making a fine signature that a tip of her tongue was visible held tightly against her left cheek—the coarse straw hat, the clean but cheap blue dress, the heavy shoes that emphasized the delicacy of her ankles and figure; and above her the leaning priest, smiling gravely with fatherly indulgence upon this firstling of his flock in Flamsted.