Читать книгу Flamsted quarries - Mary E. Waller - Страница 19

On his way home Octavius Buzzby found himself wondering, as he had wondered many times before on occasion, how he could checkmate this latest and most unexpected move on the part of the mistress of Champ-au-Haut. His mind was perturbed and he realized, while making an effort to concentrate his attention on ways and means, that he had been giving much of his mental strength during the last twenty years to the search for ulterior motives on the part of Mrs. Louis Champney, a woman of sixty now, a Googe by birth (the Googes, through some genealogical necromancy, traced their descent from Sir Ferdinando Gorges. The name alone, not the blood, had, according to family tradition, suffered corruption with time), and the widow of Louis Champney, the late Judge Champney's only son.

The Champneys had a double strain of French blood in their veins, Breton and Flemish; the latter furnished the collateral branch of the Van Ostends. This intermixture, flowing in the veins of men and women who were Americans by the birthright of more than two centuries' enjoyment of our country's institutions, had produced for several generations as fine a strain of brains and breeding as America can show.

Louis Champney, the last of the line in direct descent, was looked upon from his boyhood up as the culmination of these centuries' flowering. When, at forty, he died without having fulfilled in any wise the great expectations of his townspeople and relations, the interest of the community, as well as of the family, centred in the prospects of Louis Champney Googe, his namesake, and nephew on his wife's side. Here, again, numerous family interests as well as communal speculations were disappointed. The Champney estate was left entire to the widow, Almeda Googe Champney, to dispose of as she might deem fit. Her powers of administratrix were untrammelled save in one respect: Octavius Buzzby was to remain in his position as factotum on the Champney estate and adviser for its interests.

It was at this juncture, when Louis Champney died without remembering his nephew-in-law by so much as a book from his library and the boy was ten years old, that a crisis was discovered to be imminent in the fortunes of the Googe-Champney families, the many ramifications of which were intricately interwoven in the communal life of Flamsted. This crisis had not been averted; for Aurora Googe, the sister-in-law of Mrs. Champney and mother of young Champney, sold a part of her land in The Gore for the first granite quarry, and in so doing changed for all time the character and fortunes of the town of Flamsted.

For many years Octavius Buzzby had championed openly and in secret the cause of Aurora Googe and her only son. To-night, while walking slowly homewards, he was pondering what attitude of mind he must assume, before he could deal adequately with the momentous event which had been foreshadowed from the moment he learned from the priest's lips that Mr. Van Ostend was implicated in the coming of this orphan child. He recalled that little Alice Van Ostend prattled much about this same child during the week she had spent recently with her father at Champ-au-Haut.

Was the mistress of Champ-au-Haut going to adopt her?

Almeda Champney had never wanted the blessing of a child, and, contrary to her young husband's wishes—he was her junior by twelve years—she had had her way. Her nature was so absorbingly tenacious of whatever held her narrow interests, that a child at Champ-au-Haut would have broken, in a measure, her domination of her weaker-willed husband, because it would have centred in itself his love and ambition to "keep up the name." That now, eleven years after Louis Champney's death, she should contemplate the introduction into her perfectly ordered household of a child, an alien, was a revelation of appalling moment to Octavius. He scouted the idea that she would enter the house as an assistant. None was needed; and, moreover, those small hands could accomplish little in the next ten years. She meant to adopt her then! An alien was to inherit the Champney property! Octavius actually shivered at the thought.

Was it, could it be an act of spite against Aurora Googe? Was it a final answer to any expectations of her nephew, Champney Googe, her husband's namesake and favorite? Was this little alien waif to be made a catspaw for her revenge? She was capable of such a thing, was Almeda Champney. He knew her; none better! Had not her will, thus far in her life, bent everything with which it had come in contact; crushed whatever had opposed it; broken irrevocably whosoever for a while had successfully resisted it?

His thin lips drew to a straight line. All his manhood's strength of desire for fair play, a desire he had been fated to see unfulfilled during the last twenty years, rose in rebellion to champion the cause of the little newcomer who smiled on him so brightly in the office of The Greenbush. Nor did he falter in his resolution when he presented himself at the library door with the telegram in his hand.

"Come in, Octavius; was there any mail?"

"Only a telegram from New York." He handed it to her.

She opened and read it; then laid it on the table. She removed her eyeglasses, for she had grown far-sighted with advancing years, in order to look at the back of the small man who was leaving the room. If he had seen the smile that accompanied the action, he might well have faltered in his resolution to champion any righteous cause on earth.

"Wait a moment, Octavius."

"Now it's coming!" he thought and faced her again; he was bracing himself mentally to meet the announcement.

"Did you see the junk man at The Corners to-day about those shingle nails?"

In the second of hesitation before replying, he had time inwardly to curse her. She was always letting him down in this way. It was a trick of hers when, to use his own expression, she had "something up her sleeve."

"Yes; but he won't take them off our hands."

"Why not?" She spoke sharply as was her way when she suspected any thwarting of her will or desire.

"He says he won't give you your price for they ain't worth it. They ain't particular good for old iron anyway; most on 'em's rusty and crooked. You know they've been on the old coach house for good thirty years, and the Judge used to say—"

"What will he give?"

"A quarter of a cent a pound."

"How many pounds are there?"

"Fifty-two."

"Fifty-two—hm-m; he sha'n't have them. They're worth a half a cent a pound if they're worth anything. You can store them in the workshop till somebody comes along that does want them, and will pay." He turned again to leave her.

"Just a moment, Octavius." Once more he came back over the threshold.

"Were there any arrivals at The Greenbush to-night?"

"I judged so from the register."

"Did you happen to see a girl there?"

"I saw a child, a little girl, smallish and thin; a priest was with her."

"A priest?" Mrs. Champney looked nonplussed for a moment and put on her glasses to cover her surprise. "Did you learn her name, the girl's?"

"It was in the register, Aileen Armagh, from an orphan asylum in New York."

"Then she's the one," she said in a musing tone but without the least expression of interest. She removed her glasses. Octavius took a step backwards. "A moment more, Octavius. I may as well speak of it now; I am only anticipating by a week or two, at the most, what, in any case, I should have told you. While Mr. Van Ostend was here, he enlisted my sympathy in this girl to such an extent that I decided to keep her for a few months on trial before making any permanent arrangement in regard to her. I want to judge of her capability to assist Ann and Hannah in the housework; Hannah is getting on in years. What do you think of her? How did she impress you? Now that I have decided to give her a trial, you may speak freely. You know I am guided many times by your judgment in such matters."

Octavius Buzzby could have ground his teeth in impotent rage at this speech which, to his accustomed ears, rang false from beginning to end, yet was cloaked in terms intended to convey a compliment to himself. But, instead, he smiled the equivocal smile with which many a speech of like tenor had been greeted, and replied with marked earnestness:

"I wouldn't advise you, Mrs. Champney, to count on much assistance from a slip of a thing like that. She's small, and don't look more 'n nine, and—"

"She's over twelve," Mrs. Champney spoke decidedly; "and a girl of twelve ought to be able to help Ann and Hannah in some of their work."

"Well, I ain't no judge of children as there's never been any of late years at Champo." He knew his speech was barbed. Mrs. Champney carefully adjusted her glasses to the thin bridge of her straight white nose. "And if there had been, I shouldn't want to say what they could do or what they couldn't at that age. Take Romanzo, now, he's old enough to work if you watch him; and now he's here I don't deny but what you had the rights of it 'bout my needing an assistant. He takes hold handy if you show him how, and is willing and steady. But two on 'em—I don't know;" he shook his head dubiously; "a growing boy and girl to feed and train and clothe—seems as if—" Octavius paused in the middle of his sentence. He knew his ground, or thought he knew it.

"You said yourself she was small and thin, and I can give her work enough to offset her board. Of course, she will have to go to school, but the tuition is free; and if I pay school taxes, that are increasing every year, I might as well have the benefit of them, if I can, in my own household."

There seemed no refutation needed to meet such an argument, and Octavius retreated another step towards the door.

"A moment more, Octavius," she said blandly, for she knew he was longing to rid her of his presence; "Mr. Emlie has been here this evening and drawn up the deeds conveying my north shore property to the New York syndicate. Mr. Van Ostend has conducted all the negotiations at that end, and I have agreed to the erection of the granite sheds on those particular sites and to the extension of a railroad for the quarries around the head of the lake to The Corners. The syndicate are to control all the quarry interests, and Mr. Van Ostend says in a few years they will assume vast proportions, entailing an outlay of at least three millions. They say there is to be a large electric plant at The Corners, for the mill company have sold them the entire water power at the falls.—I hope Aurora is satisfied with what she has accomplished in so short a time. Champney, I suppose, comes home next month?"

Octavius merely nodded, and withdrew in haste lest his indignation get the upper hand of his discretion. It behooved him to be discreet at this juncture; he must not injure Aurora Googe's cause, which he deemed as righteous a one as ever the sun shone upon, by any injudicious word that might avow his partisanship.

Mrs. Champney smiled again when she saw his precipitous retreat. She had freighted every word with ill will, and knew how to raise his silent resentment to the boiling point. She rose and stepped quickly into the hall.

"Tavy," she called after him as he was closing the door into the back passage. He turned to look at her; she stood in the full light of the hall-lamp. "Just a moment before you go. Did you happen to hear who the priest is who came with the girl?"

"His name was in the ledger. The Colonel said he was a father—Father Honoré, I can't pronounce it, from New York."

"Is he stopping at The Greenbush?"

"He's put up there for to-night anyway."

"I think I must see this priest; perhaps he can give me more detailed information about the girl. That's all."

She went back into the library, closing the door after her. Octavius shut his; then, standing there in the dimly lighted passageway, he relieved himself by doubling both fists and shaking them vigorously at the panels of that same door, the while he simulated, first with one foot then with the other, a lively kick against the baseboard, muttering between his set teeth:

"The devil if it's all, you devilly, divelly, screwy old—"

The door opened suddenly. Simultaneously with its opening Octavius had sufficient presence of mind to blow out the light. He drew his breath short and fumbled in his pocket for matches.

"Why, Tavy, you here!" (How well she knew that the familiar name "Tavy" was the last turn of the thumbscrew for this factotum of the Champneys! She never applied it unless she knew he was thoroughly worsted in the game between them.) "I was coming to find you; I forgot to say that you may go down to-morrow at nine and bring her up. I want to look her over."

She closed the door. Octavius, without stopping to relight the lamp, hurried up to his room in the ell, fearful lest he be recalled a fifth time—a test of his powers of mental endurance to which he dared not submit in his present perturbed state.

Mrs. Champney walked swiftly down the broad main hall, that ran through the house, to the door opening on the north terrace whence there was an unobstructed view up the three miles' length of Lake Mesantic to the Flamsted Hills; and just there, through a deep depression in their midst, the Rothel, a rushing brook, makes its way to the calm waters at their gates. At this point, where the hills separate like the opening sepals of a gigantic calyx, the rugged might of Katahdin heaves head and shoulder into the blue.

The irregular margin of the lake is fringed with pines of magnificent growth. Here and there the shores rise into cliffs, seamed at the top and inset on the face with slim white lady birches, or jut far into the waters as rocky promontories sparsely wooded with fir and balsam spruce.

Mrs. Champney stepped out upon the terrace. Her accustomed eyes looked upon this incomparable, native scene that was set in the full beauty of mid-summer's moonlight. She advanced to the broad stone steps, that descend to the level of the lake, and, folding her arms, her hands resting lightly upon them, stood immovable, looking northwards to the Flamsted Hills—looking, but not seeing; for her thoughts were leaping upwards to The Gore and its undeveloped resources; to Aurora Googe and the part she was playing in this transitional period of Flamsted's life; to the future years of industrial development and, in consequence, her own increasing revenues from the quarries. She had stipulated that evening that a clause, which would secure to her the rights of a first stockholder, should be inserted in the articles of conveyance.

The income of eight thousand from the estate, as willed to her, had increased under her management, aided by her ability to drive a sharp bargain and the penuriousness which, according to Octavius, was capable of "making a cent squeal", to twelve thousand. The sale of her north shore lands would increase it another five thousand. Within a few years, according to Mr. Van Ostend—and she trusted him—her dividends from her stock would net her several thousands more. She was calculating, as she stood there gazing northwards, unseeing, into the serene night and the hill-peace that lay within it, how she could invest this increment for the coming years, and casting about in her mathematically inclined mind for means to make the most of it in interest per cent. She felt sure the future would show satisfactory results.—And after?

That did not appeal to her.

She unfolded her arms, and gathering her skirt in both hands went down the steps and took her stand on the lowest. She was still looking northwards. Her skirt slipped from her left hand which she raised half mechanically to let a single magnificent jewel, that guarded the plain circlet of gold on her fourth finger, flash in the moonlight. She held it raised so for a moment, watching the play of light from the facets. Suddenly she clinched her delicate fist spasmodically; shook it forcibly upwards towards the supreme strength of those silent hills, which, in comparison with the human three score and ten, may well be termed "everlasting", and, muttering fiercely under her breath, "You shall never have a penny of it!", turned, went swiftly up the steps, and entered the house.